Stay

He tugs her back again as she tries to head for the door, capturing her in his arms and pulling her against his chest. He kisses her long and slow, like they haven't just spent the past three hours doing exactly that.

"Harvey," she groans with a giggle. It's at least his third attempt to distract her from leaving his apartment and she finds his unexpected clinginess kind of adorable.

"I need to go," she mumbles over his lips, and he tightens his hold on her further in response.

"I don't want you to leave," he murmurs, kissing a path along her cheek. He says things like that now, tells her what he's feeling instead letting the silence between them whisper at the truth.

She pulls back and he pouts at her, tilting his head and giving her puppy dog eyes as he silently pleads for her to stay. "You're ridiculous you know that," she laughs, running her fingers through his hair, tidying some of the unruliness she had created earlier.

"So that means you'll stay?"

"Harvey, I haven't been back to my apartment all week, I'm officially out of clothes, I don't even have any clean underwear."

"If you stay I guarantee you won't be needing any underwear," he replies, voice dropping low with promise. Her knees buckle just a little, and it doesn't matter that they've already gone two rounds tonight, when he looks at her like that fire burns in her veins.

"Maybe not," she says, a little breathlessly, "But unless you want me heading to the office naked tomorrow, I need to go home."

"I hate this," he whines, sounding so very unlike Harvey. But the truth is she hates this as well. The constant lugging of clothes and necessities back and forth from each other's apartments over the past few weeks was getting tiring.

They rarely spend a night apart, as far as she was concerned they'd already spent far too many nights without each other, there was no need to deny themselves any further. She thinks she would find such a strong need to be together almost claustrophobic in any other relationship, but it's different with Harvey. She never tires of spending time with him, and she misses him on the nights she stays at her apartment alone. Misses the feel of him beside her and the way he kisses her awake in the morning, misses watching him dress and the fact he always insists on sharing her cup of coffee, even though she makes him one of his own.

She thinks that even if she has a hundred more years with him it wouldn't be enough, she's never going to grow weary of him, she's never going to be dulled to his presence. He's magnetic and there's no one else she wants to be stuck to.

"I hate it too," she sighs, pressing a quick kiss to his lips and then slips herself free from his grasp. His gaze looks a little distracted as she gathers up her bags.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she says wistfully, turning to leave for real this time. Because she knows if she doesn't leave right now she never will and she wasn't joking about being out of clean underwear.

He grabs hold of her hand once more just before she's out of reach.

"Stay."

"Harvey, we've been over this."

"I don't just mean tonight. I mean stay forever. " He grins at her earnestly and maybe with just a tiny bit of uncertainty as he adds, "Move in with me."

"What?" She's surprised and part of her thinks maybe she shouldn't be because it's not like she hasn't been considering this very option for the past few days and even if it's been less than two months, typical time frames seem irrelevant to her when they spent thirteen years getting to this point.

But still, this is Harvey asking her to move in. Harvey, who she spent countless years refusing to let herself imagine these moments with. Harvey, who is just so damn ready for everything now that it still takes her breath away sometimes.

"I want you to move in with me," he repeats, "or we can live at your place if you prefer? Or even find somewhere new. I honestly don't care where we live, Donna. I just want us to be together."

She laughs and calls him a sap, because if she doesn't make a joke she just might cry instead, and because humour always used to be her natural response when she needed to cover what she was really feeling around him and she finds it's a habit that's hard to shake. Both the teasing and the realisation that she doesn't have to hide those feelings anymore.

He frowns at her, pretending to be wounded by her words. "That's not an answer," he grumbles and she realises that he isn't actually certain of her answer, even though she thinks it should be obvious to him.

She cups his cheeks in her palms, slides her lips gently over his. "Of course I'll move in with you," she tells him, "I want us to be together as well."

He grins widely back at her, his eyes twinkling and she's not sure if she's ever seen him so happy. He captures her lips again with his, eager and hungry, and his hands run up her thighs and beneath her dress. "Oh fuck," he groans into her mouth as his palms encounter her bare skin.

"I told you I was out of underwear," she says with a smirk.

He spins them around, lifting her up onto the countertop. "Just like I told you you wouldn't need it," he growls, his lips already working their way up her inner thigh.

They make good use of his kitchen counter, and then Harvey accompanies her to her place that night, still refusing to spend it apart. On the weekend they set about packing up her apartment, with plans to eventually find a place of their own to share.

In the end the home they end up choosing together is located in a city on the other side of the country and they sign the contracts with rings on their fingers.