Friend Request

(Set four years after 2:07)

Chapter 1: Not A Weather Watching Kinda Guy

This sort of weather never bothered Harvey Specter, in fact, he wasn't even a weather watching kind of guy. But that March morning, as he stood staring absentmindedly out through his office window on the fiftieth floor, into the thick, grey rain, he wondered more about the weather than ever before. He thought for a moment, if for that second, someone he once knew was also watching the rain. But who was to say it was raining where they were? And where they were, he didn't even know.

His thoughts were abruptly interrupted by a familiar smooth greeting, 'Good morning Harvey, glad you made it in before nine today...' Jessica waited for him to turn to face her before perching her exquisitely covered backside on the edge of his desk. Before he could utter a response, still shaking off his thoughts of transatlantic weather conditions, she continued, 'Please tell me you're meeting with Ian Davison today?' Her eyes followed him as he made his way back to his black, leather chair and swivelled it to face his desk.

'Yes, it's fine,' he picked up his pen and began to write on various sheets of paper, distracting Jessica from the fact that he hadn't given it a second thought.

'Did Madeleine not tell you?' Jessica looked surprised. Madeleine has been a damn good secretary of Harvey's for almost four years and it was obvious now to Jessica that he wasn't the slightest bit aware of his meeting with their recently acquired client.

'Yes Maddie told me, yes I knew about it and yes I'm going,' his mood evident all over his response to his Managing Partner, 'Now Jessica, if you don't mind, I have a deposition to get to.'

She let the silence echo between them for a few moments and calmly studied his actions. All the while, he didn't lift his head to grace her with any eye contact. He began to type on his MacBook. She smiled and took her cue to leave.

'It's been four years Harvey, and you still have a job to do. Things just don't come to a stand still on this day every year,' Jessica turned to him in a quieter, softer voice as she went to leave her Senior Partner's office.

Some things were never just said, like a declaration of silence between them, even though there was a mutual understanding of his reason to be off his game today. To anyone else outside the 'Specter and Pearson bubble', he was on his game, the normal Harvey, but to Jessica, she knew different.

Mike knew, but never mentioned it, or her. It pained him too, to think back to that time she left and didn't return. Not that they didn't want her to return, she had made the decision to go. The best for everyone she had said, tearing a strip right from the heart of what was once Pearson Hardman.

Averting thoughts of weather to the very back shelf of his mind, he grabbed the blue folder from his desk and headed towards the deposition meeting in the conference room next door. Whilst passing Maddie's desk, he casually placed down an extra piece of paper on the front of her cubicle.

'This is the proposed budget outlook for this year from Seth Lyman on the 49th, please file it in 'I Don't Give a Shit'. As soon as those words left his mouth, a sharp pain in his chest hit him hard, accelerating him backwards into a different time. He placed his hand on the glass cover of the cubicle to assure himself that he was still standing, grounded to the spot. Those few jokey and throw away words so familiar, yet spoken to someone totally different to the dark-haired woman sat expectantly in front of him.

Maddie looked up at her boss with concern, 'Hey, are you alright?' Her hand reached up to his and made sure he had heard her.

He shook his mind clear, squeezed the bridge of his nose and regained his focus back onto the young girl in front of him. He replaced his hand on hers and forced a smile to acknowledge her sentiment.

'Yeah, I'm fine Mads, think I must have got up too quickly from my chair, obviously way too excited about this Davison merger deposition now...' he laughed it off as he turned away towards the conference room.

Shit on this day. His mind far from where it needed to be, he entered the room and reached out his hand to shake Ian Davison's. As he watched his limb move towards the grey haired, bearded CEO of Davison's Electronics, it felt like it didn't belong to him, it wasn't his possession. He felt out of control, unsure if he was even moving his own hand. He felt his legs begin to follow suit, so he quickly decided to sit right down on the nearest seat at the table. Mike, who was already waiting in the room with Ian, caught his friend's face and asked, only the way Harvey knew, if he was ok. Harvey responded with a single, almost unnoticeable nod towards his Junior Partner; his throat ceasing and drying, as he swallowed deeply. Today isn't going well, he thought.

XXXXXXXXXX

'Are you going to tell me what the hell happened back there?' Mike half whispered despairingly as the two of them walked side by side back down the corridor of Pearson Specter Litt.

'I'm fine Mike,' Harvey diverted the conversation quickly, he was good at that, 'Forget about what you think you saw and think about finding the copyright agreements for Davison's last six electronic builds and do it before yesterday!' Mike was used to being the sounding board to Harvey's ever changing moods. Today, March 27th, was always the tip of the iceberg, the day where anything Harvey said, Mike knew to take as a pinch of salt and to let him figure his shit out on his own. With an abrupt holt, that wasn't mirrored by Harvey, Mike turned and walked back towards his own office, leaving Harvey to continue to pace along the corridor, towards the elevators.

Jamming the button so forcefully with his finger, over and over again, was the only release of anger he could display at that moment in time. Each jab for four years of anger, for four years of agony over not saving her and the last jab for four years of pain from not having her in his life anymore. His head replayed the words he had spoken to Maddie only half an hour before. He closed his eyes momentarily to view the last time he had said those funny, throw away words and he suddenly saw that face smiling back and it wasn't Maddie's. The smooth red hair waved around her shoulders, her quippy remark just waiting to come back at him and her hazel green eyes...

The loud bing of the elevator brought him back around, he strode inside and inwardly thanked the metal box for being empty as he felt an all too familiar mist cloud his eyes.

XXXXXXXXXX

The invigorating blast of New York air hit him like an avalanche of clarity. He noticed the rain had now stopped and had left a scent of freshness in the city. He rubbed his face with his hand and upped his pace, jumping a step at a time down towards the sidewalk. It was only half a block's walk across to his favourite street vendor, but today he decided on the next one, further down Lexington, allowing him more time to clear his head and begin to think about what needed doing that day. Being inside the walls of PSL, housing too many lingering memories to comprehend, was not an option he wished to continue that morning. As he tried his best to conjure his mind onto other thoughts, rather than her, he felt his cell phone vibrate inside his suit jacket.

Facebook notification, I thought I'd turned those off? He thought to himself as he flipped it clear from the screen and placed it back inside his pocket without even checking. He wasn't a Facebook person per say, it was something he did just to please others. He couldn't give a damn about most of the school friends and Harvard alumni he had on his friend's list. He barely checked his Facebook; too busy, too distracted, too damn self righteous half of the time. And if truth be told, he goddamn hated that it just showcased everyone's happy lives and random pictures of Louis' cat. The second to last one, was the only one he would never say out loud, especially when Mike endlessly ribbed him for never checking or updating his newsfeed. People being happy, was something he definitely didn't need to see. And definitely not today.

'Don't feel like you're not young enough for social media Harvey, you know you can just adjust the font size, if you can't see it?' Mike would jest and play with him, to which Harvey would cut it short by listing the endless reasons why he doesn't use Facebook and then managing to successfully twist it so Mike needed to then justify his own reasons for social media usage.

XXXXXXXXXX

As he arrived at the second favourite vendor of choice, he reached into his pocket to take out his wallet.

'Hey Ed, cheese bagel and the usual coffee please,' he smiled as he handed over a ten dollar bill. 'Keep the change.'

'Coming right up Harv,' Ed began wrapping his bagel and grabbing a coffee cup of the side of the cart.

Harvey moved to the edge of the sidewalk to wait for his order, his fingers restless. He flipped pointlessly through his wallet; for some reason, making sure his cards were all the same way around, his dollar bills were straightened and his office ID card sat accessible on top.

'It'll just be a few minutes Harvey, I need to refresh the coffee.' Ed called over to him.

'No worries.'

Sliding his wallet into his pants' pocket, he swapped it for his cell phone from inside his suit jacket. In that moment, he remembered to check his emails from Mike to see if he'd forwarded the list of copyrights yet. As he opened his phone, the previous notification slid down from the top of the screen. Facebook: Friend Request. With an anguished roll of the eyes, he pressed it and waited for his app to load up. He had time to kill, so humoured his phone's blatant attempt at getting him to use his Facebook, as he waited for his late morning coffee and bagel.

He scrolled to the top of the notifications list to that most recent, persistent one.

It was at that moment that his chest missed a beat, transferring the rhythm of his heart into his ears, drowning out the reverberating sounds of the Manhattan mid-morning traffic.

His eyes fixated on the name, the profile picture and the 'accept' button. He hovered, he closed his eyes momentarily. Like this wasn't something he had once thought of doing himself before now, of course he Goddamn had, more than once. He had resisted the urge to even search for her, let alone make that move. He let his thumb hover unsteadily over her name.

Donna Paulsen sent you a Friend Request. Accept? Decline?

'Hey Harv, coffee's up...' Harvey's attention snapped back away from his phone as he focused again on the middle aged man next to him at the cart.

His thumb still hadn't made the decision. His head said one thing, the four year long ache in his heart said the other.