AN: As always, I'm blown away and incredibly grateful for all your support. You guys are amazing. These two people here, on the other hand, are complicated as fuck, but they're worth it. And once again, can't express my gratitude to Blue for always being here.
Fasten your seatbelts, we are preparing for landing.
Chapter 7
He catches her reflection on the windows when she walks in, her form blending in with the New York City lights, but doesn't turn. Donna stops halfway to where he is and asks if he's going to be okay.
It's been some hectic months of worry and lack of sleep and breaking his back doing everything to get Mike out of prison and now, now that Mike is just finally out, now that he had finished dealing with the consequences of tanking Sutter's case to benefit Mike and he thinks life will go back to normal… Jessica decides to leave. He feels a heaviness on his shoulders and a void in his chest. And yet, somehow, he knows he will be fine.
"She was my mentor," he says through the knot in his throat. "But yeah. I'm gonna be okay."
"You wanna be alone?" she asks and he almost chuckles at the way she expects his answer to be affirmative, already turning halfway around, prepared to leave as soon as he confirms her assumption.
Instead, he shakes his head and tells her no.
If it had been anyone else coming to check up on him, he knows his answer would've been different. But it's her and going through this weird state of grieving someone who's alive and well and simply leaving sounds much more bearable having her around.
It's interesting, he thinks, that regardless of how sad he is about Jessica's departure, he knows with a certainty that he's going to be okay, whereas when Donna told him that she was simply moving down the hallway to work for Louis instead of him he felt like his world was ending. He crosses the thought off, considers the change an achievement of his therapy treatment.
He's not sure that's quite it.
She walks closer, standing tall and dependable and right beside him, just like she always had, and he doesn't know if it's him or her or some sort of magnetic pull that they seem to have, but their hands reach for each other and he holds her small palm in his and it suddenly feels like it's really okay if he breaks because she could put him back together with a simple touch of her hand.
They hold hands quietly in the dark. She watches the skyline, he chances a few glances at her reflection. They stand like that for so long he doesn't really notice when his thumb starts to slowly brush over the back of her hand.
They should probably let go, he thinks, and as soon as he does her hand starts slipping away from his. He grips her fingers tighter.
She lets him keep her hand in his, turning to find his eyes.
Her voice is quiet, careful not to break something. "You should go home, Harvey. Get some rest."
"That's not what I…" He shakes his head. Sighs. He's not tired and the last thing he wants is to be alone in his apartment right now. Actually, anything else he could possibly do right now sounds like an awful idea. Besides keeping her hand in his.
He thinks he probably doesn't have the right to ask and that he has spent twelve years asking too much of her – something it took her leaving and coming back for him to learn – and that he's about to be selfish one more time, but the way he craves to be near her tonight feels like more than he can bare. He doesn't just need her hand in his or his body in hers. He needs her. The way she makes him feel grounded, solid, peaceful. Happy.
He promises himself it's the last time he's acting selfish like this as a way to ease his mind before he asks for what he wants, even if deep down it's a promise he doesn't know whether he can keep.
"Hey, listen…" he says, his voice low. "I'm not really sure where we stand right now. I know it's not our anniversary and I don't even know if we still have an agreement or not. But... you asked if I want to be alone and that's the last thing I want."
Her wide hazel eyes keep fixed on his, cautious, and he can see the denial in them. Her hand goes slack in his. He figures she deserves a bit more honesty.
"I just wanna be with you," he says, earnest and quiet. Then decides to add for good measure, because he's a lawyer after all and these are some very important closing arguments. "Besides, we have a couple of those nights that went to waste and maybe we could… cash in on them." The corners of his mouth tug up slightly at his choice of words.
She shakes her head slowly. Smiles, thinking he's an idiot. "That's one hell of an exception you're asking for."
"I know."
"You do know the last we spoke of this, this agreement was over, right?" she says, but he sees there's just that tiny bit of her typical Donna humor, even in the heaviness of their moment, the way she almost smirks at him. Her hand gets hotter in his and he knows she's nervous although she would never let it show on her face.
"After all the time we've been together, I don't think it's ever really over between us." The words tumble out of his mouth so much on their own accord they sound raspier than ever. He thinks her breath catches and before she can breathe in and tell him no, he adds, "Just this once. Just tonight, Donna."
Slowly, so slowly that his lungs take a pause, her fingers tighten around his. She takes a deep breath, her gaze diving so deep into his eyes he fears one of them might drown. And that's her yes and maybe that's drowning but he can finally breathe.
.
.
Her hands are still wrapped around his when she guides him through her doorstep. It feels warm and small and comforting as she pulls him in behind her, locks the front door, drops her keys in the glass top of the small desk in the foyer. His chest is heavy but his mind is completely numb, except for the feel of her hand in his.
She sees this in him. How passively he lets her guide him, how quiet he is, the emptiness in his eyes.
"Hey," she says, rubbing her thumb over his knuckles. "You've had a rough day. Why don't we relax for a little bit?"
He exhales, shoulders dropping like that was the moment he realized it's only the two of them there and he doesn't have to carry the entire weight of the world because Donna is always okay with sharing the burden – and she's the only person he doesn't mind sharing it with.
She's looking at him expectantly from beneath her long eyelashes and he moves a breath closer, his lips just grazing her temple, breathing in the scent of her hair, before he moves back. "I'd like that."
Donna smiles, finally letting go of his hand and he doesn't really like it but she's moving down the corridor and he follows after.
"I'm gonna open a bottle of wine and what do you say I draw you a bath?"
"A bath?" he repeats, raising one eyebrow humorously.
"You know, hot water can do wonders for easing the tension on those muscles. And for your mood," she says, with a hand on her hips and a know-it-all look in her raised eyebrows.
A small chuckle escapes from his nose. "I'm assuming you'll join me…?"
"That can be arranged."
"Then there's not much you couldn't get me to agree with."
She smiles and shakes her head at him and disappears inside the kitchen after that bottle of wine while he shrugs off his jacket and sinks into the couch.
.
.
She was right, even though there's no surprise in that. Donna really did pull all the stops to relax him – she lit the bathroom with candles and filled the tub with bath salts, the combined scents of the two are soothing and the water is deliciously warm, but absolutely none of that feels as incredible as Donna's body right behind his, her legs around his body, her hands resting over his chest and her lips right by his ear.
There's no tension or sadness or feeling of abandonment that could ever survive that.
He has his hands on her thighs, fingertips scratching slowly over the soft skin behind her knees while Donna tells him a story about one of her college parties and how this girl Mindy Stevens ended up topless on the second floor window and he smiles, eyes fixed on her bent knee, just out of the water.
She finishes her story and he's quiet. Her hands keep gently brushing over his chest, down to his ribs and back up again in an easy slide in the hot, soapy water around them.
"It's gonna be okay, Harvey," she murmurs. "She had her reasons for leaving, all we can do is support her."
"Even if her reasons make no sense?"
"Well, they do to her. That's what matters. You had your reasons for hiring Mike and I'm sure Jessica thought those made no sense."
He huffs some sort of laugh. "Did it make sense to you?"
"Well, I mean, she says she wants to fight for something more and–"
"Not Jessica. Me, hiring Mike."
"You mean your 'life's like this and I like this' bullshit?" she says, gesturing with her hands in front of him, drops of water falling on his chest. He rolls his eyes at her even if she can't see it. "I mean, kind of. I knew that's who you were so…" She shrugs.
Harvey smiles quietly. "You get me."
"I do. That's not why I accepted it so easily, though."
"It wasn't?"
"No. I actually thought it was good that you had someone you needed to protect. It made you care. I thought it would be good for you."
"Donna…"
"You are a good man, Harvey, but there's always room for improvement, right? Before you hired Mike you thought caring only made you weak and now you're… I think you know that's not true."
"You're saying you predicted all this?" he says, an undeniable fondness to his tone.
She chuckles lightly. "I'm not saying that. I'm also not not saying that."
She rests her chin on his shoulder, then turns her head sucking on the space between his neck and shoulder like she wants to quench her thirst with the droplets of water collecting there, or just with him.
"I care about a lot of stuff," he says, laying his head back on her like he wants to afford her more access.
"I know you do." She brushes her lips along the shell of his ear, stopping to give his earlobe a little bite. "You always did, you're just stubborn."
"And since I can't read minds and predict the future like you, how do I suddenly become okay with what Jessica's doing?"
Donna places a lingering kiss on the side of his neck before she says, "You trust her. Have faith in her, in the fact that she needs this and that she's going to come out better on the other side."
That's what Donna did for him all those years ago and every day since, he thinks, with a smile on his face – trusted him to pull off a fraud because she thought it would make him a better man. She gets even the parts of him he doesn't and she's been placing her unwavering faith in him ever since they met. He doesn't think he deserves this. Her. The way she wraps her arms around him and kisses his neck like he's worthy.
"Can I ask you something?"
She hums against his skin.
"Some time ago you…" he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before he says, "You told me you had your rule just for me and not for anyone else."
He feels her body tense around his, her fingers stopping their movement over his chest.
"Yes…" she answers, carefully.
"Why?"
He's had that doubt stuck in his head for so long, ever since she told him her rule didn't really apply to Stephen Huntley or anyone else and he tried to shove it in a deep corner in his head where he shoves all his forbidden thoughts about her, ones he can't look too closely at, a corner he can't access, but this one keeps coming back and he can't wrap his mind around it. Why would she make a rule to never let him in?
"You already know this, Harvey," she says, quietly, and he frowns because he has no idea. "You called me out on it the second that rule came out of my mouth."
"I don–"
"I was afraid I'd fall for you."
Her words pour against his wet skin and sink into the vastness of his heart and the thoughts that maybe she did or maybe she didn't terrify him in equal parts so he just cranes his neck back to have his lips brush hers, the tip of his tongue sneaking out to lick at her top lip again and again until their mouths meet fully, kissing slow and deep, tasting the sweetness of her mouth and how the wine didn't hide even the littlest bit of the taste of her tongue he's so familiar with. Drowning out his thoughts and fears.
His hands smooth up and down the soft skin of her thighs, slowly swishing the water around and Donna's hand slides down his chest, fingertips splaying down his stomach, feeling the muscles of his abdomen contract, and further down, her fingers meeting the path of light hairs she follows until she wraps her hand around him, making Harvey sigh deeply against her lips.
She strokes and squeezes and twists her fingers around his length, hand easily sliding with the assistance of the water and he's fully hard in her hand before they even stop their kissing to take a breath.
She keeps him in her hand. Her thumb rubbing over a vein in his shaft that makes him groan, and he tries to touch as much of her as he can, one hand gripping her thigh at his side, the other reaching back to her neck, keeping her mouth against his and wettening the hairs in the base of her head she had tried to keep dry by tying her hair up in a knot. She doesn't seem to mind that right now.
She pumps him slowly, the only sounds around them coming from Harvey's low moans and the small waves in the bathtub water crashing around with the movements of her hand.
She twists her fingers around the head of his cock again and again and he groans, his hips buckling before he lets go of her neck to grip her wrist, ending her movements.
"Suddenly this bath is not as relaxing as you advertised," he says, his voice thick with arousal.
She chuckles, giving him a little squeeze. "Oh trust me. You're about to get very relaxed."
"I'll pass. I wanna put all this tension to good use."
"Oh. And what do you have in mind?" she teases, voice dripping sweet innocence.
"It starts with getting out of here. I'll clue you in on the rest later."
Donna grins, keeping another chuckle hidden for effect, when she moans in feign complaint. "But it feels good in here."
He moves, shifting and sitting up in the tub, and kisses her once, twice, holding her face in his hands. "I'll make you feel good out there."
He smirks and stands up and Donna sits there, her knees pushed up against her chest while she watches Harvey, water dropping down from his chiseled, naked body, his erection standing at full attention, getting out of the tub and spilling water on her bathroom tiles.
She bites her lips. Watches him quickly run a towel over his body, catching most of the droplets of water glistening over his skin. He rubs the towel on his face and hair in a haste before discarding it and grabbing a second one, which he opens in front of himself, smiling down at her in invitation.
She smirks up at him and stands in the water and his gaze drops down her body, particularly fixed on this one droplet of water hanging off her right nipple. She steps out of the tub and into the towel, which he wraps around her body in a hug, leaning down to kiss her in the process, his mouth open and wanting. His hands stroke her body over the towel, drying her shoulders and the small of her back. He takes a small step back, his hands pulling the edges of the towel forward to dry her breasts as he kneads both of them in his hands. Then he lowers the fabric, drying down her stomach, hands moving around her to knead her asscheeks, making sure they're dry.
Then he drops to his knees in front of her, circling her ankles with the towel, moving it slowly up her leg. The movement of his hands dragging the towel up her inner thighs makes her part her legs for him, and she places her hands on his shoulders for support. He reaches the crease just below her butt, then moves to do the same to her other leg, drying from her ankles up to the apex of her thigh.
"Now," he says, letting go of the towel that falls to Donna's feet and grabbing her thighs in his hands. "There's a place I definitely want to keep wet," he says with a smirk.
Donna chuckles until his thumbs move to her outer lips. He rubs lightly up and down, barely touching her, and she sighs, fingertips digging into his shoulders. His thumbs open her up to him and she feels as bare as she has ever felt in her life, not because she's standing naked in front of him, Harvey's face between her legs, his fingers spreading her open to his eyes, but because, in this moment, she's sure all her feelings are stripped down and raw and unequivocal. They have been all night and if he would just see it...
He closes his eyes, as his mouth meets her center and she moans a wordless hum that she hopes spells it out to him as he kisses her and kisses her and his tongue slides wet and smooth between her lips until her knees are almost buckling and she can't hold herself upright any longer.
"Harvey, I'm gonna fall," she gasps out and the irony doesn't escape her that she already had.
He kisses her. And kisses her lower belly and between her breasts and her lips. His arms wrap around her and he guides her to bed and himself between her thighs and inside her and with each slow, deep thrust, with each touch of her hands over his body, with each of her kisses and moans, each languid movement of their bodies, she finds his eyes in the dark and hopes he feels it. That she's in love with him.
.
.
It's never just sex between them, but tonight felt different.
They made love.
As all the nights they had spent together float around her memory she realizes it wasn't even the first time that happened, but it was the first time she didn't try to hide her feelings at all, the first time she wasn't afraid he would see right through her, the first time she wanted him to.
They've been over for a while now. Harvey has arms and legs over her body, breathing heavy and steady against the side of her neck and she hadn't even noticed she had fallen asleep until he shifts, bringing her back from the light slumber. She blinks up at him, disoriented from sleep, and his hand rubs her waist, apologizing for waking her up, and by the sluggish tone of his voice she knows he had also fallen asleep.
He disentangles from her, cups her jaw and presses his mouth to hers and right then is when she realizes he's kissing her goodbye.
"I have to go," he says.
He's moving away from her and her body misses him instantly and as strongly as if it was a part of her tearing itself away. He's seated, his back to her, moving out of her bed one more time and she doesn't think she can take it.
She moves before she can even think about it, her fingers gently wrapping around his wrist. He looks back at her questioningly and it takes all the strength she can muster to try and translate to words what her hand is so gently and easily spelling out on his skin.
"Harvey… stay."
He's still and it's dark and she can't really see his face enough to read him and that moment seems to stretch forever in a heartbeat.
He slowly turns around, holding her hand in his, dropping his body back into the mattress, shifting closer and closer until he's back beside her and she finally breathes.
He guides her in his arms, turning her, molding his body to the soft curve of her back, his arm stretching under her head, the other over her waist, nuzzling the back of her neck and she shivers. He always did like making her shiver. He inhales deeply the scent of her skin and falls back asleep.
And he stays. All through the night.
.
.
She wakes up to the feeling of his lips on her neck. Light kisses, his lips dragging over her skin slowly and the tip of his tongue swirling around. She realizes his large palm is cupping her breast when he kneads it gently, his fingers slowly rubbing over her nipple.
She hums, pressing her back against his body, feeling him hard against her. There's a hint of light coming through the curtains but it must be still too early.
His hand slides down her abdomen, between her legs, fingers hooking around her inner thigh and pulling it back, over his own leg so she's open for him, moving his cock between her thighs and rutting slowly as he keeps kissing her neck, his hand moving back up to fondle her breasts. She arches back and moans, feeling him rutt between her lips, forwards and back, while he rolls her nipple between his fingertips.
"Harvey…"
He hums in response, busy softly nipping her shoulder.
"Harvey," she calls again after a moment, more urgently, and he moves his hand back down to help press the tip of his cock to her entrance, painstakingly slowly moving inside of her and she moans, melting around him, wet and soft and warm as he moves in and out of her in unhurried thrusts of his hips, like he wants this to last forever.
His large palm flatten against her lower belly, keeping her in place, pressed firmly to him, and when she comes, body writhing against his, whining lowly, he can feel the muscles of her stomach contracting beneath his palm. He keeps moving inside her in the same unhurried pace and she keeps moaning in pleasure until he comes.
"Good morning," he says after he slides out of her.
She turns in his arms and he's never seen her like this. Face completely bare, her eyes small from sleep. He smiles lazily. She looks so beautiful.
"Good morning."
"This was the best night of sleep I've ever had," he tells her and she grins before he places a small kiss on her lips. "I have to go home and change for work, but I'll see you later, okay?"
She kisses him back. "Okay."
"Go back to sleep," he tells her. "It's too early."
Her eyes blink closed and she doesn't even hear the door on his way out.
.
.
In that moment, waking up in Harvey's arms, it felt like everything had changed, but it doesn't feel quite like that when she steps back into the firm. Everything feels too familiar, and not in a good way.
Harvey gets in a little after her and greets her good morning like he hadn't already done that two hours ago naked in her bed. Some of that heaviness she saw last night is back on his shoulders and it's not even 10AM when he avoids a conversation with Louis over who should run the firm which would most likely have turned into a fight, but he avoided the conflict because he had already fought Mike that morning when he delivered the news that he wasn't accepting Harvey's offer to go back to the firm.
And then Harvey's running around all day trying to get Mike another job which, in all fairness, was her advice to him, but she didn't think he would spend all day doing that, long enough for Louis to cause a disaster trying to run the firm and for her to squirm and lose her mind wondering where they stand.
He must know, she thinks. He must know she wouldn't have agreed to last night, she wouldn't have asked him to stay, she wouldn't have had sex with him this morning if things weren't different. He must have felt it last night. So she tries to steady herself, but it's no help that Harvey is so distracted.
It's late at night when she goes into his office to drop some documents on his desk and gets surprised finding Harvey sitting there in the dark.
"Did you know what Louis was up to?" he asks.
"I did."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because I said Louis wasn't ready to be managing partner but maybe you aren't either, because you're not around enough to know what's going on around here," she says, trying to make sure the frustration in her tone is only about the firm and not about them.
"I don't believe this. You're the one who said to do something about Mike."
"Yes, I did, but I didn't say you should spend your entire existence doing it."
"Donna–"
"Harvey, you can't do whatever you want. Jessica is not here to pick up the slack anymore."
His voice takes a dive then. "You think I don't know that?"
"Well, if you do then it's time you do what she would've done already," she says, taking a seat at the armchair near him. "You need to tell Louis he can't be managing partner."
"He doesn't wanna hear it."
"I know that. But the real reason we're having this conversation is that you're afraid to say it." His face falls at her words and she thinks about all the things she is afraid to say to him, but focuses on the situation in hand. "It's up to you, Harvey. Either step up and take the reigns or start looking for another job, because if you don't tell Louis he's not ready to run this firm, we're gonna be out of business one way or the other."
He takes in her words in silence and she gets up to leave. Tonight is clearly not the best moment to have the conversation they need to have. She's by the door when his voice beckons her back.
"Thank you for letting me stay last night."
"You don't need to thank me," she tells him, not even thinking about her words.
"No, I do. I know it's not part of our deal and I know we had our reasons for not doing it before but… I needed it."
She stares at him in silence, her lips just slightly apart as something heavy drops in her stomach. He thinks last night was a favor, an act of generosity from her, a one time exception to their agreement. She thought he understood, that he had finally seen… her lips part, head empty of the words she wanted so badly to say. So she smiles sadly and leaves him to his thoughts.
.
.
She thought they were done for the night but she still needs to put her feelings aside to stop his fight with Louis and talk to him about the one subject she had always known was off limits. He needs to reconcile with his mother or he'll never be able to fill the void she's left behind. So she tells him that, softly asking him to, please, go talk to her.
.
.
It just feels like bad timing.
The moments seem to slip by until she loses her courage and she tells herself she's waiting for an opportunity that never seems to arise, though she feels like they've had twelve years of missed chances.
Harvey is focussed on keeping the firm on its feet, on balancing his and Louis' decisions and on getting Mike into the Bar, and she focuses on her project with Benjamin. It's a good distraction until it makes something shift inside her, something that was there but she wasn't paying attention to or squashing down, a need for something more because being the best legal secretary in New York City was never her entire life plan and it hasn't felt like enough in a long time.
It's ironic that she has spent weeks trying to find the right moment to talk to him and when the moment falls on her head, unannounced but loudly screaming its presence, she chokes.
She had come to his office tonight to talk about work. About this project and the deal Louis had been able to get her, but when Harvey tells her she should give up and take the money she trembles in her spot because that's not what she wants.
She wants more. From work, from life, from him. And she has never said that out loud before but she can't pretend it's not true anymore.
He asks her, what does she mean more. But how can she tell him when he's looking at her with so much apprehension, confusion and fear in his eyes. How can she tell him when the last time the word love floated around their relationship it ripped them apart. How can she say what she means when his arms sagging at the sides of his body and his parted lips almost beg her not to. How can she tell him she's in love with him when she's petrified herself because Harvey is so much more than she can stand to lose.
"I don't know, Harvey…" She backtracks and she feels like a coward. "I guess I'm gonna have to figure that out."
.
.
The next day she asks for a seat at the table. One step at a time, she thinks, and this one seems much less scary than asking for his heart.
Three weeks later she finds out he's dating his therapist.