Fic inspired by happyoreokidd's tweet: "Harvey doesn't show up to Valentine's Day bearing flowers. No, he blocks off the whole day for both of them to go on a date. They walk for ages, hand in hand, and he thinks of a bajillion ways to tell her he loves her."
It ended up not being Valentine's Day-related but I hope you like it anyway :)
1.
He sees the flower stand at the end of the farmer's market aisle they're walking down, hand in hand, as they fill their Saturday with aimless wandering and chatter. They've been here before, at Donna's insistence, and he's seen the stand before, but he'd never stopped to notice it properly. Today he does, and he notices the pink peonies wrapped in delicate white tissue paper, as opposed to the plain, clear plastic stuff other places usually have.
Donna likes peonies.
He thinks of getting her some. Thinks of stopping by the stand - better yet, thinks of distracting her with a decoy coffee run and appearing later with a bouquet, or two, or ten. He thinks of getting her an arrangement so big she has trouble carrying it and her face disappears behind the flowers and all that's left of her is her shocked laughter rising to the air like pollen.
He thinks of filling every single corner of their apartment with flowers, every day, until he dies. Pink flowers and yellow flowers and purple flowers, flowers for when she's sad and for when she's happy, as congratulations and apologies and good mornings.
He thinks of coloring her entire field of vision until all she ever sees is beauty.
The thought flees his mind once they walk past the stand and she's in the middle of a story about Becky from Accounting, and he just leaves it be. He'll have other opportunities.
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2.
There's a couple of kids playing some sort of scavenger hunt close to them in the park. One boy picks up a pebble, studies it closely before excitedly handing it over to his friend as if it's something precious, something worth keeping.
He thinks of giving Donna jewelry, something that would make her eyes sparkle and her jaw drop.
It could be something big and flashy, something that came in a red or teal box, something that would live up to his salary, something so obnoxious it would turn heads and make people wonder how badly he must have screwed up to have to make it up to her like that.
Or it could be something meaningful, maybe a family heirloom. He could go back to Boston without her sometime, go through his grandmother's stuff, find something that could suit Donna and stand the test of time and tell a story of lineage and legacy.
He likes both ideas equally - being loud and boisterous about his feelings for her, making everyone look, and being private and loaded and rich with history, something they already are and which only grew a new layer now. He likes the permanence of diamonds, how they outlive us all, just like he hopes his feelings for Donna will.
He doesn't know what sort of jewelry Donna likes besides the dainty stuff she wears at work, or if she even likes jewelry, though he finds it hard to believe any woman would fail to be impressed by a big-ass rock. He makes a mental note to ask her about it sometime, just in case.
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4.
As they're crossing the street he sees two girls sitting on a bench sharing ice cream. The blonde one feeds the brunette a spoonful and they grin and kiss.
It makes him want to cook for Donna, and that's an urge he definitely never thought he'd have, mostly because he's not that good a cook, though what he does make, he makes well.
He pictures himself buying yellow heirloom tomatoes to bake her all the pizza she can possibly eat. He'd stock up and make sure they never ran out, that and Chunky Monkey. By now his brain has stored a fairly long running list of things Donna likes to eat and the function each of them serves - hangover food, late night snack, pick-me-up. He hasn't had to tap into that knowledge much since they got together, but he's eager to show off his extensive, almost scientific observations at first notice.
He knows she loves French pastries, and he doesn't know how to make those but he could learn, could watch a video tutorial in secret or sign up for a crash course and pretend he was working out a kink at the gym for a week. He'd make her raspberry macarons and chocolate mousse profiteroles and mille-feuilles with the lightest cream you've ever seen. He'd bake and cook anything she liked, from morning pancakes to romantic dinners and holiday treats for her family, pans after pans after pans until their kitchen acquired a permanent, almost invisible layer of flour on every surface.
She'd complain she wouldn't fit into her dresses anymore and that he was just trying to scare off the competition and he would tell her no, of course not, he just wants to make her happy, and then he'd whip out that mac and cheese that was her grandmother's recipe that she once told him about, all the way back at the DA's office.
He should call Clara and ask for that recipe. Given how much she likes him, he thinks it wouldn't be too hard to get it from her.
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7.
She asks to stop at the newsstand to look for a magazine and he catches a glimpse of some Hallmark cards, and he's never wanted to write anyone a letter or even a card but he could do it for Donna.
He could pick one of those cheesy Valentine's cards with a sparkly heart on the cover, scribble something simple and sign it, and slip it into her bag for her to find it at work. She's left him a million post-it notes over the years and every one of them has made his heart skip a beat, so maybe a card would do the same for her.
Or, maybe, if he put a little more effort into it, he could actually write the whole thing out. If he ever goes on another trip without her like he did with Samantha, he could leave Donna a letter - it would probably be dramatic and overly sentimental and disproportionate but, come on, they couldn't go a few hours without talking on the phone that time, and when he first heard her voice, he instantly missed her like crazy. Maybe a letter wouldn't be that much overkill.
Honestly, if he were to put pen to paper to express his feelings for her, he'd probably need pages and pages of letters, he'd need Shakespearean sonnets and Neruda poems, he'd need whole treaties because just describing what her hair looks like in the sunlight would already take up an entire chapter.
He'd have to replace her nightly novels with his own original reading material, and she'd probably roll her eyes at his presumptuousness but maybe here and there he'd catch her cheeks blushing from whatever silly, sappy or dirty thing he'd written, and she'd whisper his own words back to him in a kiss.
He wonders idly if he'd print it out or write it by hand, and then chuckles to himself, thinking how he can't remember the last time he actually wrote more than a few lines by hand, and then Donna is dragging him off somewhere else.
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12.
They're getting a hot dog when one of those horse carriages passes by them and there are kids in it, and they're so excited he can hear their little squeals from here, and despite his distaste for those things and his general impatience with children, he wishes fervently he could make Donna feel just as excited about something.
What would it take, that trip to Paris with her mother she once told him about? Are there other places she wants to visit, things she wants to do?
He knows of some, like a tour of the Provence and an ethical safari in South Africa and strolling the grounds of ancient castles. He pictures himself surprising her with plane tickets to somewhere far away, somewhere magical and spectacular, somewhere that would make her squeal just like that little girl just did.
Donna gets bouncy when she's excited and it's cute as hell, and he'd gladly spend the rest of his life surprising her like that just to see her juvenile glee at the world, and bask in it, and feel less old. He could book an impromptu trip, plan everything himself so that she would only need to go along with it, and give her endless days of turquoise waters or forgotten civilizations or art so mesmerizing it would make her weep at humanity's aptness for virtue.
He wonders what her hair would look like against the Great Barrier Reef, if her eyes would seem greener under the Northern Lights, if her kiss would taste different after having exotic tropical fruits straight from the earth. He knows Donna doesn't care all that much about jet-setting and luxurious stuff, but he chained her to a desk for a decade and he's at least partially certain that there are amazing things out there that you can't find in New York, and he wants her to see them.
Donna isn't very adventurous, but he'd go along with any adventure she could possibly want. Even just visiting her sister so she can spend Halloween with her niece.
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21.
They're slowly making their way back home, miraculously still finding topics to cover, and it's starting to get chilly. Slightly ahead of them there's an elderly couple; the old man is helping his wife into her cardigan, slowly but surely.
Harvey remembers a coat Donna once bought on his card, and wonders how many clothes he's gifted her one way or another over the years. He wonders if there's anything left to buy that she still wants, wonders if she knows he'd be more willing to put in the work to buy it for her himself now.
He wonders if she knows he'd give her the shirt off his back, because he would. He would give her anything, lay himself bare at her feet. He wants to give her everything he is, everything he's ever hoped for and dreamed of, though she's already both of those things.
He wants to give her pretty clothes but more than that, he wants to give her the comfort they bring. He wants to wrap her up in his arms to stave off the cold winter wind, wants to tuck her into the crook of her neck to protect her eyes from the strong summer sun, he wants her closet filled to the brim with pretty stuff that goes unused for weekends on end as she rolls around naked in bed with him, dressed only in his sheets. He wants to buy her a million dresses for him to take off of her, and he wants her to have a million options of lounging outfits that she'll forego in favor of his old Harvard t-shirts - he'll never find something he likes her better in than that.
He thinks back to all the looks he remembers her wearing at work, all the outfits she picked to make herself look stronger and more capable and imposing, and pictures himself being her armor instead, giving her the strength she used to draw from Roland Mourets and Oscar de la Rentas. He pictures himself wrapping his whole being around her, to the point where she wouldn't even need any of her outfits because he would already be laid thick over her skin, every inch of him touching every inch of her, right down to their souls.
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He loses count after 27. It doesn't matter either way, because he knows he won't do any of those things, at least not today. They've been dating for almost two months now but Harvey still struggles with saying the words out loud, and he thinks none of those 27 ways of showing it otherwise will mean as much until he figures out how to get over himself, because, one way or another, he's been showing it all these years, always leaving it up to her to interpret it. It's time for more now - she deserves more - and he wants to give it to her.
So he watches kids and couples and siblings, thinks of diamonds and flowers and notes, and tries to string it all together into syllables and sounds, into actual words he can use, words that will suit him and befit her.
He tugs on her hand eventually, says "Hey", and when she stops and turns to him expectantly he stalls again, adrift in the multitude of meanings and shapes and forms of all the things he feels for her. It's not as simple as all these strangers in the street made it seem, and he doesn't want to say it wrong, but he doesn't know how to say it right either, because it's a lot - it's the whole universe -, and she's watching him with her big hazel eyes, holding so much more faith than he knows what to do with.
The words don't come out. 27 ways of showing it and he still comes up empty.
"Today has been nice," he says instead, voice low, almost ashamed, but it must have sounded like "I love you" to her because Donna's expression breaks into a dazzling smile, one she can't seem to prevent from splitting her face, and her big eyes shine up at him.
She cups his cheek - that's probably 28 - and kisses him - 29 right there - chastely and deeply and so lastingly he thinks he's gonna feel that kiss for the rest of his life, and her lips are still smiling when they leave his.
"It has," she whispers back, and it sounds like "I love you too".
Maybe he doesn't need 27 ways, then. Maybe she knows. Yeah, maybe she knows.