Harvey falls asleep on the phone a lot.
Donna remembers the first time he did. It was after they'd both left the DA's office, after Harvey had brought her across with him to his new job, after they'd crossed the line of 'I don't date people I work with' (they hadn't dated, but that felt superfluous anyway considering Harvey had spent half the night covered in cream and buried in her while she dragged her tongue over his skin and scratched marks down his back) and they'd agreed never to talk about it and put it out of their minds.
'It', of course, wasn't just avoiding talking about the sex. Sex was … sex. The sex had been amazing, yes, but that wasn't just it. The sex wasn't the thing that made them both shy away from ever acknowledging that night. What stopped them was that there had been a moment, somewhere in the dark between the moonrise and the dawn, where she swears that time itself had shut down to watch them, tangled against each other and breathing the whole world into gasping lungs, and it was absolutely one of those moments that would have changed the course of both their lives instantly and irrevocably if one of them had been just the tiniest bit braver in that diner the next day.
Even so, their lives still changed irrevocably, despite both of them trying their hardest for that night to be nothing more than a blip.
She'd felt forever in his hands. She doesn't know how else to explain it. But he'd asked her to work for him, and Donna has her rule. It was a good rule, a smart rule, because Donna was intelligent and capable and really, really good at her job. She didn't want her skill to be confused with luck, and she definitely didn't want it muddied with water cooler talk of 'did you hear she's fucking her boss'. So she drew a line in the sand, and she pushed both Harvey and the forever he held in his hands over that line.
They both stood as close to the line as they could, but they didn't cross it, and as the years go on Donna finds it easier to ignore how much they both want to.
It's a while, and things almost go back to normal. Normal for Donna and Harvey isn't what most people would call normal. It's what most people would call 'just get fucking married already'. At least that's what Rachel calls it, and then Mike, later, when Harvey pulls him into his frustratingly dangerous orbit.
She's not sure. She's not sure if normal is even the right word for it. Her normal is hovering around Harvey like she's in orbit and he's the sun and it's only the momentum of work-laugh-tease-home that stops her from crashing into him. Her normal is knowing what he needs before he needs it. Her normal is sleeping with important files under her pillow so they don't get lost, and thinking 'he'd like this' when she buys dresses for work, and trying to pretend his just-innocent-enough flirting doesn't make her want to tear his clothes off and mess up his hair.
It's working okay. It's hard, sometimes, and relationships just never seem to work, because he's there in the shadows all the time, but it's working okay.
And then one night, past midnight, her phone vibrates on her nightstand. And it's Harvey.
Harvey calls after work, when he needs a file or a meeting organised or something prepped for the first thing that day. But he never calls after 9pm, and she knows that's not so much him respecting her work boundaries as it is that 9pm is when he goes out to drink and gamble and find young blonde twenty-somethings that he can invite back to his apartment and his bed.
Donna used to be someone with healthy work boundaries. She used to audition, and read for plays, and use her evenings to use her degree, and she doesn't do that much anymore. She doesn't resent it - it just is. But it also means that she used to be out at some theatre bar, laughing with the crew and cast, and now she's home, and Harvey is calling. Maybe in the past she wouldn't have answered, out of principle, but it's Harvey, and it's Harvey after 9pm, when it's unusual to be Harvey calling, and maybe something is wrong, so she answers.
"Hey," he says.
"Harvey, it's late. Are you okay? Do you need anything?"
As she asks she fumbles on her night stand for the pen and pad she keeps there. Harvey is not a 9-5 commitment, and she finds anticipating his needs easier when she has something to make notes on when she wakes up at 2am with a hunch that he needs something.
There's silence on the line.
"Harvey? You there?" She tucks the phone into her shoulder.
"Yeah."
"What do you need? Have you thought of something with the case against Dolgny Pharmaceuticals? I saw you pacing around with that paperwork they sent through this morning and I -"
"I couldn't sleep."
That's not what she was expecting.
"You couldn't sleep," she repeats.
"No." He sounds embarrassed and frustrated, like he's more confused that he's calling than that he can't sleep, and he has the tone in his voice he gets when he's secretly hoping she'll explain his feelings to him so they can stop clutching at his chest and lungs. "I've been lying here for…" There's a pause and she imagines him checking the clock next to his bed. "… two hours. I'm exhausted. There's no reason I can't sleep. I just can't."
"Something on your mind?"
"I..." he trails off before he even gets started. Donna supposes that asking him about his feelings point blank is not a good way to start.
She settles back against the pillows. "Does this have anything to do about that phone call from Malik yesterday?"
"… how did you know about that?" he asks, but there's no real bite to the words. Of course she knows. He called to ask about an old case. One of the ones Cameron Dennis got a conviction on by burying evidence. Malik wasn't calling about that, he just had a few basic questions because the prisoner was appealing and he'd taken over the case. Malik and Harvey hated each other, but not enough not to extend the professional courtesy of a quick handover to each other. He wasn't sleepless because he was turning over panic about buried evidence, Donna knew. Harvey can deal with worry. Harvey can deal with what-if.
Harvey can't deal with guilt. There's a reason he runs from it like it's fire. "You're feeling bad about leaving the DA's office," she says.
"It was the right decision."
"I know. It's possible to make the right decision and still feel conflicted about it."
"Why?" He sounds like he wants it to be simple and he's frustrated that it isn't.
"Because doing the right thing usually isn't as easy in reality as it is in theory."
"I was.." he starts, then stops. She can almost feel him plucking at the sheets next to him. He likes to fiddle with things when he's being honest. It's almost like he has to distract himself just enough to let the truth through. "I was thinking about who Cameron might have put away who shouldn't have been." He pauses for a moment, then corrects himself. "I mean I was thinking about what else he's hidden to get the people he needed to locked away." Donna thinks he meant the first thing he said and not the second, it's just the first thing is too close to something he's not ready for. Guilty people sitting in prison because Cameron ignored procedure is one thing. Innocent people sitting in prison because Cameron couldn't see anything but the need to win was another altogether.
Donna is silent for a moment. Cameron is a sore spot between them. Harvey's loyal. Donna isn't. Not to Cameron, anyway.
She doesn't think about if it was Harvey in Cameron's position and her in Harvey's because that would be entirely too much to think about and too close to her admitting she'd have done the same thing in his shoes.
"I think about that too, sometimes."
"Yeah?" He sounds relieved, but Donna doesn't think he notices it. Harvey keeps himself so busy pretending he doesn't need people that he doesn't realise how obvious it is that he does.
"Yeah." Her hand flexes on the sheets. If they'd been discussing this in his office she might have reached out to grab his hand, she's trying to do it now instinctively. It's probably good he's just calling, she thinks.
A pause. "Do you think I did the right thing?"
Donna has never heard that from him. Ever. She considers what it is about a phone call in the middle of the night that makes him able to show her how thin he feels over this and she wonders how many nights he's lain awake turning it over in his head and not having anyone to talk to.
"Harvey-"
"Because maybe I should have gone to the judge and ratted on Cameron. But then that would have opened up a field day for all those guilty pieces of shit he nailed. All those cases, all the paperwork you found? All those guys who should be in jail, what if they'd gotten their cases turned over? What if they'd gotten out? What if they'd-" he doesn't finish the sentence. He doesn't need to. They're both thinking about the innocent lives that would have gotten torn up in the crossfire.
"Sometimes there isn't a perfect answer," Donna says quietly. It's not much, she knows. But it's all she can offer.
"I did the best I could." She hears his voice crack on the last word, and maybe he wanted to say more, but she can hear his breath punching into the phone line while he tries to compose himself and wonders why, even at midnight on the phone to someone he's called like it's a confession booth, he's still acting like he's stronger than he is.
"Oh, Harvey," she says. "I know you did."
He's quiet. She gives it a minute, but he just breathes down the line and she can hear him opening his mouth and closing it again, and maybe whatever he wants to say is too far gone for him to feel like he has the right to drag her into it.
So, after a minute, Donna says, "Did you hear about Nicole?"
"Louis' secretary?"
"Mmhmm. Quit."
"No way. Finally?"
"You'll never guess how."
She tells him stories until he falls asleep, murmurs, "Harvey," and when he doesn't answer, she ends the call, and presses herself under her blankets and into her pillows, and quietly worries about him.
.
Harvey keeps calling. At first she's surprised, but then it becomes regular. He doesn't call every night, but he never goes more than a week without calling either. Then he starts calling earlier. Before midnight, then before eleven, then before ten.
Sometimes he calls right at 9pm, and when he does he sounds shy, which is not like him, and she could almost swear that he's just been pacing and waiting until it's late enough to call her to talk about things that aren't work.
"Did I ever tell you about the time my dad took me to a Yankees game?" he begins once.
Another time, he says, "I was just watching tv and there's an ad for a new exhibition at the Guggenheim and I thought you might wanna know about it."
Sometimes he still calls late because he can't sleep. Sometimes he calls early because he wants to talk about nothing. Sometimes he asks her some ambiguous question about ethics or love and leaves her casting for answers while he waits patiently on the other end of the line as if she's the Dalai Lama.
It's just when he needs someone. He calls when he needs her.
One day, he calls, a couple of nights after his dad passes. This one wakes her up - it's late, even later than when he usually calls late.
"Harvey." Her voice is sleep drunk when she answers after one too many rings.
"Sorry, I woke you. I'll talk to you tomorrow."
"No, it's okay." She shifts against the pillows, pushing a hand through her hair and shaking the ends out. She swallows a yawn. "How's Boston? How was the wake?"
"Not ... great."
"What happened?"
"Lily was there. She had Bobby with her."
"You knew that might happen, Harvey."
"I know, and I thought I had everything under control. But I saw him with her and... I saw red, Donna. I just blacked out. I don't even know what I said. I just yelled at them and left."
"Harvey-"
"What the fuck kind of grown man has a tantrum at their dad's wake, Donna."
She doesn't say anything.
He sighs, the sigh he reserves for scrubbing his hands through his hair and over his face. She can feel him. She can feel the day old beard, she can feel his hair straggled and insolent from being pushed away from his forehead, she can feel his tie loose around his neck. She can feel him, tired and threadbare and done.
"What's wrong with me," he murmurs, and she hates that crack in his voice. He sounds small, and lost, and like - well, like a sixteen year old kid who discovered his mother having an affair and now doesn't know what to do with all the weight of secret and dishonestly that's suddenly landed on his shoulders.
Donna considers for a moment.
"You loved your dad. And you're not perfect."
"I still shouldn't have done that."
"No. You shouldn't have." She pauses before asking, "can you apologise?"
"Maybe," he says, but it's reluctant and it sounds like 'no'.
"Come home," she says, and they both ignore how much that sounds like they're much more than they are.
"Got a flight first thing tomorrow. Hotel's paid up tonight so I figured I may as well stay." She hears him sit, probably on the edge of the bed. "Did I ever tell you about how much I love Boston?"
Harvey talks to her, edging his way back towards the headboard and pillows as he does so. She imagines him, staring at the ceiling, one arm pillowing behind his head, legs crossed at the ankles, his suit rumpling and creasing as he stretches out. He tells to her about architecture and Fenway Park until his words drift off and his breathing is slow and steady.
She listens to him in the quiet, and pushes away the absurd need to get on a plane and go to him.
"Goodnight, Harvey," she says, and hangs up.
.
There's one time, just one time it goes too far.
He calls, drunk. She's been chasing a bottle of wine to the bottom of the bottle and she's not far behind him either. He's broken up with Scottie, she's broken up with … whoever the fuck it was. She's already forgotten his name. He'd at least had the good sense, unlike Mitchell, to see what she and Harvey were and call it early. They hadn't been seeing each other long. Long enough for a couple of evenings that ended in 'do you want to come up?', and they were nice but it was still early enough in the relationship that it was Harvey that danced before her eyes when he'd climbed onto her and into her, and it was Harvey's name she'd had to bite back on when she'd come. Ever since the other time he's done that, invaded her first nights with anyone else. She's never told him, because they've agreed not to talk about, but also because she thinks if she told him he might flash that smug grin at her so wide he'd probably dislocate his own jaw.
It hadn't really mattered. It hadn't really bothered her. But it was still another break up. And it was still another breakup because of Harvey.
So when he calls her, drunk, and she answers, drunk, still in her dress from dinner but with her shoes kicked off and a mostly empty bottle of merlot in front of her, her legs tucked up under her on her sofa, there's already trouble brewing on the horizon between them.
"Hey Donna." He says it like there's an extra N and two more A's in her name than there are and she knows what it means when he draws it out like that. She smiles. She never admits she likes him when he's drunk. He's slower, lazier. More thoughtful, somehow. More honest.
"Hey you. How many have you had."
"Half. Halfish. I'm at home." Either Ray has just dropped him off, or he's been robustly working his way through his private collection of single malts. Probably a bit of both. Half a bottle is impressive, even for him.
"Good night?"
"Charity event." He's distracted, she can feel the twisting of a cork plug in his hands, knows the phone is wedged between his shoulder and his ear. "Fuckin' ... cancer or something. Bar sucked. Fuck." She hears him fumble, and the pop of a cork, and the slosh of alcohol into a tumbler. "Not worth the tux and the ten grand."
"Who tied your bow tie?"
"Did it myself," he says, his pride half joke and half genuine. She hears him sigh as he sits. Probably on his bed. When he first started calling it was from his living room, unless he was calling because he couldn't sleep. Now he calls from bed mostly, even when it's only 9pm. "How was your night?"
"Dinner with the date. Then wine and watching the final scene Dirty Dancing several times."
"Ahh." He thinks for a moment. "What's his name? Ben? You guys break up?"
"Yup." She doesn't say why. Maybe he knows why. Maybe he doesn't. Harvey's usually oblivious.
"Did you break it off or did he?"
She takes a sip and she's not sure if the warmth in her belly is her wine or his voice. "He did."
"Huh." She hears him swallow, imagines the grimace. He always swallows too much whisky at once when he's drunk.
"Fucking idiot," he says, almost to himself.
She freezes. He's never said anything like that before.
"Yeah," She says, keeping her voice neutral. She's noncommittal but she wishes she wasn't.
"When?" he asks.
"Tonight. At dinner."
"Bastard." It's his favourite pastime, calling her ex-boyfriends bastards. She's never said she enjoys it as much as he does.
"I know. Got a new dress and everything."
"Yeah?" She hears him shift, and has the bizarre intuition he's working his courage up for something. And then, he says, "what are you wearing?"
God.
There's a layer of gravel in the back of his throat she's never heard before and it lands directly in her belly.
She should shut him down. He's not asking as a friend. It's suggestive and flirtatious and she should not be feeling the thrill up her spine that she does. She should say goodnight and hang up, they're both drunk and vulnerable and needy and it's a bad combo. She should cut this off right now, she thinks.
But instead, she says, "Mr. Specter, are you flirting with me?" and her own voice has also taken on a register she's never used with him, ever. It's half an octave lower than normal and mostly breath.
"Just curious," he says, but his tone says 'yes'.
She tells him about the dress, navy blue and form fitting to her waist, calf length, with a flare framing her hips and her legs just so. She details the designer and the flourishes she loves about it, but she's fairly certain the details are lost on him. Harvey only ever cares about four things when he asks about dresses. The only thing he ever admits to caring about is colour. She knows the other three things are how her tits look, how her ass looks, and how easy it might be to get off quickly if he needed to. She's figured that out by the way his eyes blow wide when she wears certain designers and certain styles in the office. He daydreams. She knows.
Sometimes she does it on purpose.
"Mmm," he says when she finishes, and she's not sure if he's just acknowledging or if it's appreciation. "Bet you had some killer shoes as well."
"Oh, they came off the second I got home," she says lightly. "Stilettos are not comfortable."
"Yeah, but they look great." Then, as if he feels the need to point out he's not just generalising, "on you."
"Still not worth wearing a second longer than I have to. You'll just have to use your imagination."
"Oh, I am."
She pauses for just a moment. They're rapidly approaching lines and boundaries, and her stomach and heart are fluttering with the fervent hope he'll just keep going but it's also terrifying. "Harvey, maybe we should..."
"I wanna talk," he says, but she knows his voice and his undercurrents and she swears it sounds like 'I want to fuck'.
"This isn't talking. Besides. You're drunk."
"You're gorgeous. And I'm not that drunk."
Goddammit, he's really going to do it, she thinks. "Harvey -"
"Do you want me to stop?"
"Harvey."
He sighs. "Donna, just tonight, can we just ... be who we are?"
"I'm not sure that's a safe thing for us to be." It's the closest either of them have come to anything close to talking about her and him and the thing they don't talk about. She feels her stomach flip and she's terrified and scared and turned on all at once, and she genuinely doesn't know what she's going to do.
"Then tell me to stop." A pause. "Donna.. do you want to stop?"
"...no."
Holy shit.
She can practically hear his smile at that. Smug bastard.
"How easy is it for you to undo your dress?"
"Not hard. It has a zipper in the side."
She hears him knock back the rest of his drink and drop the glass on the bedside table. "Unzip it. Slowly."
She listens to his slow, steady breathing as she does, tries to regulate her own, she doesn't want him to hear just how much the wine and his voice is affecting her. She slides the zipper down, the slight cool of the night flushing across her skin as she does.
"Okay."
"How does it feel?"
"This conversation? It feels crazy." She slides her hand in at her waist, lets her fingers fall onto her stomach under her dress, drawing slow circles. "But undoing my dress feels good. Freeing."
"Mmm." His voice is pure gravel and whisky. "Are you touching yourself?"
"My stomach. I need to pull my dress down to do any more."
"Pull it." Fuck, he's never sounded more decisive, and she didn't know that hearing his voice like this was a kink she had. "Touch yourself the way you would if it was just you."
Well, fuck. She guesses they've just blown past the lines they've drawn for themselves. So fuck it. She sets her phone to speaker and drops it next to her. She slides the structured torso of her dress down, quietly thankful the boning stitched in means she didn't need a bra. She slides a hand back over her stomach, up between her breasts and then over. She's never done this before, with anyone, let alone with Harvey. It's terrifying and exhilarating all at once. She tries hard to hold onto her breathing. "I'm touching myself," she murmurs. "Stomach. Breasts." She flicks her nipple, pushes out a slow breath.
"God. I can't tell you how often I've wanted to push my hands over you and tease your nipples. I swear to god Donna. I think about it almost every day."
She hums at that, teases both nipples into taut buds and wonders how even across a phone line the rumble in his voice can spike a flush of damp against her underwear. "I think about it too," she says. "You against me. Your … tongue. Fuck." She pushes her hips back against the sofa for some relief. "And I want to run my hands over your chest," she says. "Taste you. Are you sensitive on your chest?"
"I am." There's a reason he wears so many three piece suits, she's always thought, and maybe it's to push another layer between her and him because he probably knows she wants to get her hands on him, over him, press around and over his chest until she can tease his nipples tight and suck her mouth over them.
She tells him that, and he huffs a moan into the air between them.
"I've got my hands on myself," he says. "On my chest. Undoing my buttons. God damn." He's quiet for a moment, gathering concentration and breathing solidly, and says, "wish it was your mouth and hands on me."
She only just stops herself from telling him to come over right now.
Then, he says, "can you reach your underwear."
She hums, pulls the front of her dress up enough to slide her hand over the front of her underwear. They're damp, and she presses her palm flat against herself for a moment of relief. "I've got my hand against me," she says.
"And you're still playing with your breasts with your other hand?"
"I am." Her breathing is trying to get away from her. She keeps it slow and steady but it's punching out her lungs with more force than she has control over. "Touch yourself."
"I'm pushing my hand over the front of my pants," he says, his breath catching just a little. She swears she can hear him popping the button at the waist. There's a moment of silence, then, "take your panties off."
She slides them down, lifts her hips a little so she can slide them off her legs. Her hand goes back automatically, sliding between her legs. "They're off," she murmurs. "Your turn."
"I've got my pants open. Fly down," he says. "I'm pushing my hand over myself.' He grunts. "I'm so hard already. Did you know your voice does that to me?"
"It does?"
"Mmm. Sometimes I can't... get up from my desk. Especially when you... tease me. Fuck."
She's never heard him swear so much, and she also didn't know how much the sound of him swearing in this context could send sparks up her skin. The mental picture of him palming his dick while thinking of her is maddening and empowering all at once and she has to take a second to focus her breathing because her body is threatening to run away without her. She presses a finger between her folds, lightly, pretends it's him.
"I'm not going to lie. I've thought about this a lot," he continues.
"How a lot?"
"A lot a lot." He grunts. "Fuck. It's constant. I can't even get myself off any more without…" He leaves the thought unfinished. He doesn't need to finish it. They both know.
"Harvey," she breathes and it's not to tell him what to do. It's just to say it. She just wants to say his name. She listens to him breathing for a moment, then volunteers, "I'm running my finger over my pussy."
"How."
"In between. Just a little."
"Are you wet?"
She almost laughs at that. "You have no idea."
"Tell me."
"Harvey, you make me wet just the way you look at me. When you're really angry or happy or sometimes just because." She pauses a moment. "You really have no idea do you."
"Is that true?" he says after a beat. He sounds almost hopeful. Like it might mean something. Because it does. But they don't talk about it.
Donna pushes that thought away, which is easy. Her body is gasoline and he's matches, and the quiet moans hitching through his breathing sparks lightning in her abdomen. She slips another finger along her lips, teasing herself apart, and she lets her fingertips nudge her clit, just lightly. She huffs a moan. "Mmm. Yeah. At the office, or when you call, sometimes."
"In the office?"
"I keep spare underwear in my drawer."
"Fuck. Really."
"I have to." She knows this is a line she can't ignore even if they pretend tonight never happened. The office is neutral ground she she's about to declare war, but she says it anyway, he's already half blown it up himself and she wonders what the hell power it is that he has over her. "Sometimes I have to use the private bathrooms and get myself off thinking about you just so I can fucking concentrate."
He moans at at that. "God. I've got my hand around my cock. I'm stroking it slowly. Squeezing the head. And on the phone?"
"Not on the phone. Not while we're talking. But after. I touch myself like this." She pushes a breath out. "Two fingers now. Just teasing. Touching my clit a little."
"Tell me how to touch myself. How you'd do it."
"Grip firmly. Just pull yourself off slowly. If your other hand free?"
He takes a moment to answer. "Yeah."
"Cup yourself and massage lightly. Just tease with your fingers. Firmer with your other hand."
He's quiet for a moment, and she can hear his breathing shallow out and the delicious sounds of his hand slicking over his cock. He's definitely spreading precome down his length.
"Good?" she asks.
"Good. Fuck Donna this is ..."
Hot. "Yeah. It is."
"Tell me."
"I'm wet, Harvey. Fingers are sliding along my lips."
"Inside." It's guttural. "Curl your fingers up into yourself."
She slips one finger in and then another, up to her knuckles, and she's tight around her own hand. She says his name and he grunts in response. She strokes, lengthening her fingers until she finds the spot she's looking for, there, and she presses, strokes, and moans before she can breathe through the sensation and get words backing her mouth. "God," she breathes.
"Good?"
"Good." She can hear her breath pitching higher. "So good." She pauses a moment, bizarrely shy considering she's on the phone with Harvey and they're both almost out of control, then says almost in a rush, "I wish it was you inside me."
"Fucking hell."
"Your weight on top of me, pushing your cock inside me. It would be." She doesn't finish, she just moans at the same time he does, then, "I thought about you when I fucked Ben." She doesn't say she thought about him every time she's fucked anyone since that first night. Thinking about Harvey while she fucks some four-date guy is very different to thinking about fucking Harvey for six years even when she's in a full-blown 'call him my boyfriend' relationship, and it's too much.
"I thought about you when I fucked Scottie."
Jesus. That is a lot.
"You ... did?" The pause is half arousal and half her not sure she wants to hear the answer.
"Not always. But sometimes. Almost said... your name. Once. Fuck. I'm so hard. Touch your clit."
Donna slides her other hand between her legs, finds her clit with her thumb, presses down until she finds a rhythm that works with the slide and tuck of her fingers inside her. She hums deep from her core.
"What are you thinking about." His words are staggered, scattered.
"You inside me. I'd be so tight around you. And your fingers on my clit. Fucking me till I come. Letting you come in me." She's found it, found the spot and the rhythm and she's chasing her orgasm now. She can feel her stomach clenching. "Jesus Harvey I'm close."
"Me too." She can hear him stroking faster.
"Tell me."
"God dammit. I want you. Wanna bury myself in you, just deep and slow." He's drawing his words out long and low and it spikes inside her, she's all tension and sweat and nearly. "Just take my time. Kiss up your neck and all over your skin. Push your legs over my shoulders so I can push in further.' She hears him swallow. "You better be close Donna because I can't last much longer."
"I'm close. I'm almost - fuck. There. Keep talking."
Something breaks then. Harvey's murmuring away to her, but he suddenly isn't talking about the physicality of what he wants to do with and to her. It's much more intimate and much further than that. He's not telling her she's hot but that she's beautiful. He tells her he can't stop thinking about her, about her hair and her eyes and her smile, and she thinks dimly only he could make some drunken night of ill advised phone sex feel something like making love.
"Harvey," she says, and then she's falling apart, and he strokes a few more times, tries to say her name but it bites off behind his moan as he comes.
Then, silence, other than the sound of her breathing and his breathing coming through her speaker, and it feels strangely intimate to hear him catching his breath, and she imagines what he's like when he's come, if he stretches and rolls away or if he reaches out instinctively to tangle fingers through hair, and for some reason the thought of that pangs jealously through her. She brushes her own hair back, feeling her sweat slowly cooling against her skin.
She's going to have to get her dress dry cleaned.
"You okay?" she asks.
"I'm good. I'm here." He takes another breath then blows it out and she knows he's steadying his throat before he chuckles. "I'm going to need a new tux."
Silence.
"Harvey."
"Donna."
"That was -"
"Yeah."
"We can't -"
"I know."
.
A week later, he calls her and asks her to put on channel 12, and there's a rerun of Die Hard on because it's just before thanksgiving and it's getting close to Christmas and it's the only Christmas movie he'll watch. She watches it with him and debates him, claiming it's not a Christmas movie, and he calls her a snob. She asks questions she knows will annoy him. He quotes the key parts for her, and he eats popcorn while she eats chocolate.
He falls asleep half an hour after the movie finishes while he's talking to Donna about the sequels. Donna doesn't hang up. She plugs her phone in on her bedside table and climbs into bed, lies in the dark with the sound of Harvey breathing, deep and steady and calming next to her and she thinks, I'm in trouble.
.
He calls her on Thanksgiving.
She's at her parents, worn out from family laughter and stories, recounted shared histories and arguments over the best way to do the dishes, and one too many servings of pumpkin pie. She's pleasantly full, wearing her dads sweatshirt and an old pair of track pants she's owned so long that she's not even sure when and where she first got them. Her parents are in bed, and her sister is elsewhere reading. Donna's sitting in front of the fireplace, knees at her chin, thinking and quiet. She loves New York, loves the bustle and adventure and promise, but her parents house is a haven and she loves that too. It's where she can just be. No distractions, no sirens, no early morning language from the garbage collectors, and so she always avoids turning on the tv or scrolling through Facebook. She just watches the fire, and thinks about nothing and everything.
Her phone rings, and it's him.
"Hey."
"Hey."
"Are you fat?"
She laughs. "I'm working on it. Are you drunk?"
"I'll get there."
It's a running gag, a joke they make every year, but it's getting harder for her to play along. She knows where he is. He's at home by himself in his apartment, because he won't go to Boston for Thanksgiving. He's not with Jessica or Louis or Rachel either. They'd all invite him to their own family celebrations in a second if they knew, but they don't, because Harvey's never told them he doesn't go to Boston for Thanksgiving. He takes the day off so they think he's travelling, and the day after so they think he's travelling back. He might not lie if any of them asked outright if he goes. But they don't ask, they just assume, so he doesn't say anything.
Donna asked though, several years ago, and he almost didn't say anything to her either, but then she reminded him she'd know if he was lying, and then he still didn't say anything, but he sat there looking sheepish, silent while she guessed out loud that he takes two days off and sits at home drinking alone, and that's basically the same as Harvey telling her anyway.
Harvey doesn't ask for help. Harvey doesn't need anyone. So Harvey never lets anyone know, anyone but Donna, that he sits by himself on Thanksgiving, trapped between the family he can't be with and the friends he can't talk to.
"Do you want to come to my parents?" Donna had offered.
Harvey had smiled, but it was sad and, she thinks, lonely. "I don't think your dad would approve."
"He'll get over it."
"I'm okay. Honestly." He shrugged at her. "It's been a long time since I've been there for Thanksgiving or Christmas. It's…" she could see him searching for a word that's not 'fine', because they both knew it wasn't. "It's normal. This is how it is. But thank you."
She doesn't believe in physical heartbreak, but if she had, she could have sworn she heard her own ribcage crack at the resignation in his voice.
"You can call me," Donna suggested instead.
"I-"
"Harvey. Nobody should go all Thanksgiving without having someone to talk to. Just… promise you'll call. Five minutes. Then you can sit in the dark and brood and become a full blown alcoholic all you want."
He'd laughed at that. "Five minutes."
"Five minutes."
"Okay. You got it. I promise."
And that's what he'd done since that year. He'd called. Every Thanksgiving. The first year was just for five minutes. But as the years have gone by, the minutes have stretched out, and lengthened, and morphed into something that's hours. Sometimes they have to both have their phones plugged into the wall for power, and they sit together in the silence and read, and one of them will excuse themselves for a few minutes to make a drink, or get something to eat, or for Harvey to answer the door to the delivery guy while Donna gives him shit for still refusing to cook on Thanksgiving of all days.
Donna never thinks about how she always makes sure she's single, or has a good reason not to have a boyfriend with her, at Thanksgiving.
Eventually, one of them yawns one too many times, and announces, "bed time." They keep their phones on while they brush their teeth, and put pyjamas on (the first couple of years Harvey suggestively asks what she's wearing, but after they cross that line and gasp orgasms into their phones together he doesn't any more) and climb into bed.
"Where are you this year?" Harvey asks.
"Attic. Mom's turned my room into a studio."
"Nice."
"Harvey, I'm in my 30's. They needed to reclaim it sometime."
"Still." But there's a smile in his voice.
They talk, and laugh quietly in the inky blackness, and sometimes she thinks, if only.
"Happy thanksgiving, Donna." He doesn't say he's grateful to her. He doesn't have to. She knows.
"Happy thanksgiving, Harvey."
She waits until he falls asleep, and she doesn't hang the phone up.
end
A/N: Thank you for reading! This is also a jump off from a much more innocent piece I wrote (Follow) where Donna mentions to Rachel that Harvey falls asleep on the phone a lot. I liked that idea and wanted to explore it. There's so much backstory to Harvey and Donna and it feels like a crime that it's been so unexplored.
I promised when I started writing this is wasn't going to be quite so... explicit.
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