A/N: I finally finished this ficlet that I wrote more than two months ago. It's set during the other time and touches on Donna's past.
circumstances
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Her heart is still beating violently in her chest when her half-lidded eyes meet his dilated pupils. Harvey is looking at her with a quiet sort of thoughtfulness while he kisses the insides of her quivering thighs and Donna sees the clandestine question in his eyes.
She has the sudden urge to shift away and hide the scar but can't. It's the only one that has remained visible on her skin. It makes her want to go back to the yearning and not knowing, but it's too late. And if she's honest with herself, maybe now that they're not working together anymore either, she's okay with him knowing. It's not like she'll ever see him again after tonight.
He found a loophole in her rule just like she hoped he would. The moment he entered her apartment, all her walls came crashing down. So what's one more?
Harvey has no idea about the hardships she faced and dealt with in her past because she hid them deliberately. She's good at it by now. When she moved to his desk, she carefully concealed the dark rings under her eyes, put on a mask that feels like a second skin by now, and hid her inner demons.
As his secretary, she had a job, a rule, an escape. Only, the longer they worked together, the closer they grew and the harder she had to try to keep him at arm's length, to not let him into her scarred heart.
That part was unexpected; she wasn't supposed to find a friend in her boss. And certainly not this hot-shot lawyer who might be the only person she's ever met whose fear of commitment and emotional unavailability matches her own.
Donna stares back at him curiously. He keeps teasing her with his fingers, her thighs are already trembling with need for more, and she can't decide whether she wants him to ask or pretend not to see the scar.
He kneads the supple flesh of her thighs, then his hands travel up and meet in the middle of her lower abdomen. His fingertips trail over the silver, white scar carefully while his eyes follow the movement intently. He looks like he's equally as fascinated as shocked by the fact that there are things he doesn't know about her.
"What?" she whispers. The need to overplay her self-consciousness is too strong to ignore. "Did you really think I was an angel fallen from heaven just to help you do your job?"
"No," he replies without missing a beat. "We both know there's nothing innocent about you."
His hands glide further up her sticky stomach for emphasis and she chuckles, pleased that he played along.
"Alright, but I think you knew that before."
He smirks. "Well, I didn't know you were into strawberries and whipped cream."
"I bet you could have guessed that I'm not a vanilla kind of girl." She raises a perfectly plugged eyebrow.
"Mhm, true. There's nothing vanilla about you." He leans in and tastes her skin with the tip of his tongue. "I just didn't realise there were things I didn't know about you."
"Everyone has secrets."
"Ah, a woman's heart. An ocean of secrets, isn't it?"
"Oh you have no idea."
His thumb strokes gently over her slowly fading scar again.
"Were you ever going to tell me about this?" he murmurs, serious this time.
She shakes her head slowly, decidedly.
"Why not?"
He sounds hurt, she realises, like he genuinely can't understand why she didn't tell him about her past when he told her about his cheating mother and his busy dad.
She tilts her head. "Because it's a private matter, Harvey."
He nods in understanding. "Yeah, it looks like it."
For some inexplicable reason, she feels herself softening. It's been too long since anyone asked about it, too long since she wanted to share.
"I was in an accident years ago."
His hand reaches up to take hers; the moment suddenly becoming much more intimate. They just fucked each other sideways and yet his hand clasping her delicate one, showing her support, holds much more weight.
She almost panics because what is she supposed to say? Does he really want to know? Is she ready to talk about it? Probably not. But then she remembers ten fingers and ten toes, and her vision blurs.
"I may not know what exactly happened but I'm sorry you had to go through it," he says, struck with the inexplicable need to offer her some comfort.
"It's okay. The memory is mostly a dull ache I'm used to by now."
Her hand strokes over his cheek, trying to memorise him.
"You could've shared it with me."
His voice is as earnest as she's ever heard it and she thinks that she should say that she appreciates it but the truth is, she already knew and it wasn't about that.
"I just didn't want you to look at me differently."
His brows furrow but his brown irises are too sympathetic. She hates it.
"See, that look; pity."
"It's not pity," he protests. "It's compassion."
Donna shrugs and sits up to grab a blanket from the far corner of the bed. This conversation is getting too real and she's not sure she can handle having told him her deepest, darkest secret when he leaves in an hour and she never sees him again.
She stares out of the bedroom window, stars visible on the clear night sky. A car honks and a siren wails in the distance. It's been years and she still rather pretends that she was never pregnant, never had a daughter, than face the fact that she lost her in a car accident.
There was never any closure. It was just over and done. Life went on. Every year, she wonders where she'd be by now if things had been different, if she had been a good mother, if she had ever met Harvey.
"Thank you," she whispers eventually. "I know you mean well, but at the end of the day it's me who's going to have to deal with the wounds I will rip open by talking about it again."
"Donna, I… I'm sorry I asked." He sits down beside her, her cover sheet still wrapped around his midsection.
"No, please, don't be sorry. It shows I was right about you all along." She smiles gently and squeezes his arm. "You're a good man."
He looks at her with that same sort of unveiled hunger but thoughtfulness again and she's struck with the sudden urge to claim his mouth and his body. He may be cocky and arrogant, but he can also be extremely charming and playful, and she's always known that under all those layers, there is an incredibly sensitive man. For a moment, she allows herself to believe the notion that maybe this could be something. They could be something.
But then he shakes his head, catching the glint in her eyes.
"I'm not a good man, Donna." He leans over and cups her breast in his hand, teasing her hardening nipple with his thumb. "I'm a really bad man and I think that's why you let me in tonight, isn't it?"
She wants to forget, appreciates him not making this weird. And either way, her body reacts, longing for his large hands to be roaming over her skin again.
"Mhm maybe," she hums, biting her lower lip. "But see, I'm still waiting for the full Specter Special."
"Oh yeah? And what's that?"
She points at the used can of whipped cream on her nightstand. "Be creative."
His eyes crinkle as he crawls on top of her, the open can in his hand. "Oh, you're in for a treat," he promises and he means it literally. "I'll make you forget your own name."
And he does.
The only name she remembers by the end of the night is his.
A/N: Would you like to read a part 2 set post-canon?
