AN: Thank you so much to everyone who took their time to write reviews, faved and followed this story. What a welcome to the fandom of Suits!
Previously... Donna wasn't at her desk, which had Harvey first angry, then worried. He came to her apartment to find her sick with the flu. He then made sure she had everything she needed and went back to work, only to come back at night to bring her dinner.
Friday. Or: My Baby Just Cares For Me.
Donna woke up with the most horrible headache. She felt like the tracks under a heavy train. After what must have been the worst night's sleep she turned around in her bed when her look fell on her nightstand. She found a box of tissues, a cup that held some kind of liquid, and a large glass bottle of water. She reached for the water and took a big gulp, and then curiously eyed the cup that was filled almost to the rim. She sniffed its contents, but due to her flu she smelled nothing. Carefully did she pick it up and drank the tiniest bit of it. It was cold, and she thought it had the faintest taste of ginger. Harvey...
He must have made her ginger tea before he left the night before. She peeled her tired ass out of bed and grabbed all the used tissues she could find and took them in the kitchen where she threw them in the trash. She took a look around and noticed quite a lot of fruit. She saw bananas, pomegrenates, kiwis. She found some grapes in the fridge and noticed a month's supply of citrus in her fruit bowl on the counter. The growl in her stomach signified her body's need for breakfast. She refilled the kettle for more tea and found a note on the cabinet door.
I got you some yogurt and granola. Should make a decent breakfast.
-H
She again checked her fridge and grabbed the yogurt container. Before she prepared her breakfast though, she went to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. Donna applied a generous amount of moisturizer to her face to make up for the fact that she had committed the deadly sin and not applied any for an entire day, brushed her hair and fixed it in a low ponytail, a bun would be too trying on her poor head, and dabbed some ointment under her noise to prevent it from getting red and dry. As she was walking back to her kitchen where the kettle gave away its telltale whistling sound, she heard her apartment door unlock. Terrified, she grabbed the frying pan that sat on the top of her stove and held it above her right shoulder like a baseball player held his bat. With her heart almost jumping out of her ribcage, she reluctantly looked around the corner into the living room.
"Donna, you're up early. Are you feeling better?" Harvey said casually.
While he spoke so casually, he was dressed in one of his best three piece suits, giving the opposite impression with his looks.
"Are you trying to kill me?" she croaked.
"In fact, I'm here to prolong your life, not shorten it."
"Is that so? Then how come you just scared the living daylights out of me?"
"Hm, Dalton's first Bond. One of my favorites. You can put the skillet down now," he said with a safisfied grin as he passed her.
Only then did she notice that he was carrying a bag.
"What's in there?" she asked while she motioned with her hand to the bag that he was just putting down on her kitchen counter. She then had to sneeze and tried to suppress it. She didn't really succeed.
"I didn't know what you liked for breakfast, so I picked up some bagels on the way."
"Well, your talk is all 007, but your actions are very much Richard Gere in Pretty Woman," she noticed with a certain cockiness in her voice.
He smirked at her then, leaned closer to her and said with a voice like honey, "Maybe I have a thing for redheads."
She felt the heat rise in her cheeks and wished she hadn't made the comparison. She quickly recovered though. "Now, before you start singing Roxette, you better go to work. I can't have you miss more than you already have," she ordered.
"Alright. Is there anything else you need?"
"Peel me a grape? Crush me some ice? Skin me a peach, save the fuzz for my pillow?"
He rolled his eyes while at the same time trying to suppress a smile.
"Harvey, you brought me everything I need. I just need some sleep and the strongest aspirin I can find in my medicine cabinet."
After he had gone, she made breakfast with yogurt, bananas and granola and went back to bed where she ate it and sipped more tea. Part of her felt lucky her sense of taste was almost gone, because she was sure if she had to taste sage tea, she'd never drink it. When she was done, she took a shower and changed into fresh pajamas. She picked up the trash around her bed, took two aspirin and went to sleep.
When she woke up in the afternoon, she actually felt pretty well, well enough to strip her bed and put some fresh sheets on it. She hated being tied to the bed. The least thing she could do was make it as comfortable as possible. She checked her phone for the first time in almost two days and noticed it had been dead. She went to the small bureau in her entryway, a lovely piece of furniture she had inherited from her grandmother, and got her cell phone charger. As soon as it was plugged in, her phone started vibrating for a couple of seconds. She saw that Harvey had sent her an email and she also had six voicemails. After a couple moments she also received texts from Rachel, Mike, Louis and even Norma. Who knew the older woman could text! All of them wished her a speedy recovery and expressed how much she was missed. She missed them too. And most of all, she missed being at work and having something to do.
Donna was a bit surprised that Harvey had been in her apartment more often in the last 24 hours than he had in over a decade. Not that he wasn't a caring boss, or even a caring person, but she was surprised nonetheless. Any outsider would expect him to be self-involved, partly because it was the image he had been cultivating over the last years, but Donna was one of the rare people outside his family who was allowed to see the real Harvey. She knew about the anonymous checks to the widow in the Coastal Motors case. She had seen him when cases nearly destroyed him at the DA's office. She knew why Harvey hired Ray to be his personal driver, and she had a ringside seat to the mentorship with Mike and the ensuing friendship between both men.
It wasn't ever questioned by Donna that Harvey was someone who cared for others than himself, it was more of a question of why he cared for her. They had a peculiar relationship, and he was usually on the receiving end of things. Not that she didn't appreciate his generous gifts for the annual Secretaries Day, but their professional relationship defined their personal relationship, and it took some getting used to being pampered by him in other ways than monetary. Normally, Donna provided him with everything he needed, from emergency dry-cleaning pick up to late-night phone calls with emotional insight into his soul. Now, however, that dynamic seemed reversed to a certain degree.
She checked her voicemails. The first one was from Harvey. He sounded angry and asked where the hell she was. She smiled. Of course he was angry. Anger was always the first emotion he went to. The second one was also from Harvey, and he sounded slightly less angry, but still pretty annoyed. In the third one he dropped an f-bomb, but it was the fourth one where she could detect a noticeable shift. His voice sounded strained, and before he hung up, she swore his voice was trembling. Maybe she was reading too much into it. Or maybe the absence of her sense of taste made her hearing all the more receptive. By the fifth voicemail he sounded honestly concerned, and the sixth one showed a degree of desperation in his voice she had barely witnessed before. She had to smile. She saved the last one, and deleted the first five. Six voicemails by Harvey Specter. She slightly shook her head. The man really was suffering from separation anxiety.
Donna did some more tidying of her apartment before she lay down on her bed and took a nap.
"Honey, I'm home," said Harvey with feigned sweetness as he entered her quiet apartment around 7.30 that night. He put the bag with their dinner on the dining table and carefully knocked on her bedroom door.
He looked at her for a moment. She looked almost angelic as she lay there on her bed. It was a rare occasion that he saw her still and quiet. He noticed that she was wearing something different and she also had new sheets on her bed. He slowly sat down next to her and gently pushed a strand of hair out of her face. The gesture woke her up, and her first reaction was to smile.
"You're back," she half-asked as she sat up.
"I am. Someone had to make sure you're alright."
"Miriam checked in twice today," Donna said and got up from her bed. He quickly copied her motion.
"I brought dinner," Harvey told her as he followed her out the door.
Suddenly she turned on her socked feet, nearly ran him over, but he caught and steadied her. She went back to her bedroom where she opened a window to let in some fresh air.
"That's so nice. What did you get?" she asked him before she coughed into the crook of her arm.
"I brought chicken noodle soup for you, and chow mein for me," said he as he took both containers out of the plastic bag.
Donna raised an eyebrow. He was just full of surprises. "We're having dinner together?"
"Yeah, I haven't had time to eat yet. Is that OK?"
"Sure, if you don't mind me being underdressed?" she asked and motioned to her pajamas.
He couldn't remember her ever not looking good, even in her sweats or pajamas. He appreciated the expensive dresses that dipped dangerously low between her breasts, but didn't find her attire at the moment objectionable. "Not at all."
As Donna got him a plate and a bowl for herself, Harvey took off his suit jacket, vest and tie, and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He put his clothes over the backrest of her couch and sat down at the table. She helped him transfer their food to the plates and they shared the meal. It wasn't often that Donna and Harvey had dinner together besides the annual evening at Del Posto. Lunch was the most frequent meal they shared, and they had had quite a few drinks together. It felt really nice, just the two of them eating in relative silence.
"Not that I'm complaining, but why did you come back today?" she asked him when her bowl was empty.
"As I said, I wanted to see how you were, and I didn't know if you had any food, or if you had the strength to stand to make you something."
"I made some scrambled eggs for my avocado bagel earlier."
He finished his food, got up and took her bowl with him.
"I got one more thing."
"Harvey..." she started to say, but a sneeze cut her off.
"Now before you say anything, I didn't buy it. It's from Katrina."
Donna immediately knew. He brought back a small plastic bag and put it on the table before her. Her face was one huge smile and she felt her mouth water.
"Wow, I've never seen you like this," he stated, but quickly corrected himself. "Well, I did see you like this exactly twice, but there was no food involved."
Now his smile matched hers, but his was way cockier.
"Excuse me, mister, but could you please wipe that smile off your face? Besides, strawberries and whipped cream are food," she clarified, knowing exactly which two times he was referring to.
He reduced the wattage of his smile and cleared his throat. "What kind of cookies make you smile like that?"
"Chocolate chip with butterscotch and pistachios," she said with a moan.
His brow furrowed. "How does Katrina know that?"
"Bertha from the DA's office told her."
Harvey had to smile at that. It really was a small world sometimes.
"If you're nice, I will share one cookie with you. You'll get half, not a crumb more," clarified Donna as she rose from her chair and walked to the couch, bag with cookies in her hand.
"Sure. What are we watching?"
"Well, nothing you'd probably normally watch, but I'm sick so I get to choose. Let's start with Some Kind of Wonderful, and make our way to Clueless."
Wordlessly, he sat down next to her and waited for her to offer him half of her cookie.
Halfway through Just One Of The Guys Donna finally asked what she has been holding back the entire evening. "So, about those voicemails..."
His head snapped towards hers. He had forgotten about all of them. Not much of that morning was something he really could remember, except the feeling of desperation because something might have happened to Donna.
"It was mostly because Mike was egging me on," he said and tried to sound nonchalant.
"Uh, the audition for Days Of Our Lives is two doors down," she commented on his acting abilities.
"I'm serious. We were working on the Miller-Fogarty case when he noticed you weren't at your desk," Harvey explained, while at the same time neglecting to tell about his own feeling of terror when he noticed her absence.
"Well, that might explain the first three, but what about the other three? You sounded like a high school senior without a date for prom."
"I had plenty of girls who wanted me to take them to prom."
"Oh, I don't doubt it. But who was the one who turned you down?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.
He was quiet.
"Aha! So there was one who turned you down!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "Let's just be happy there were no cell phones during the Stone Age, or you really would have embarrassed yourself."
"Donna, just so you know. You didn't turn me down," Harvey smiled broadly.
"Just because there was one time-"
"One night," he corrected. "Two times."
"-one night then, doesn't mean I didn't turn you down many, many times before and after."
"You're delusional. Maybe you should take your meds," he said and touched her forehead as if to prove his point.
"Haha. Anyway, that final one will be saved for all eternity."
"It was that good, huh?" he smirked.
"You truly need to go to therapy for an overdeveloped ego. It's not healthy."
"Says the one who is sick at the moment."
"I may be sick, but I'm still fabulous."
"Now who needs that therapy for their ego?"
"Admit it, Harvey. If I wasn't fabulous you wouldn't spend your free time with me," Donna said with a broad smile that he's been missing all day.
And with that, she effectively shut him up. He simply nodded, the corners of his mouth turning upwards in an involuntary smile.
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