"Do you love Donna Paulsen?"
Harvey can feel his heartbeat in his fingertips. Louis looms ahead of him, unblinking, clearly surveying for some show of weakness. He will not find one. The light in the corner is flickering and there is a scuff in the carpet by Harvey's feet and this is just the same library as it has always been: no difference. No reason to react to the one question which Harvey Specter does not have the answer for.
(This is a lie. He knows the answer, and so does Louis, and so does Donna. So does anyone who has ever seen the expression which draws itself across his features the minute her name is mentioned. So does anyone who has seen the way he would leave the whole world for dead if she so much as asked.)
He clears his throat, buys some time, watches as a pair of associates trades some knowing glance. Harvey needs to answer, but he cannot lie. (He won't. Not to her). And there she is, a vision in blue, brows furrowed from the front row as though she can't quite parse his hesitation. Harvey lets his gaze trace the line of her jaw, the curve of her shoulder, the way her pulse jumps to double-time in her throat when she catches him staring. Donna. His Donna.
He can't bring himself to look her in the eye.
"I'm not answering that, Louis."
The words escape him before he has the chance to so much as think them through. To consider anything, really, except the way her dress dips beneath the shadow of her collarbone. Of course he loves her. Of course he cannot say this out loud. Donna only frowns at his answer, fixes him with a look which speaks of all the years between them, tries and fails again to meet his eye. The heat in her stare is blinding — the uncertainty of it. The worry which he sees plainly in the set of her hands.
"It's a yes or no question, Harvey." Louis smiles, wolfish. "Do you love," (pause, breath, pause. Hook, line, sinker.) "Donna Paulsen?"
This time he points to her, and Harvey can only watch as every eye in the room turns to the woman in blue. He bristles — he can't evade the question so carelessly for a second time. Not unless he wants his avoidance to be an answer in itself. Time seems to slow around the sound of his heartbeat in his ears, and for the first time in decades, Harvey Specter starts to lose his cool.
Thud-thud.
[Two in the morning. Ten years ago. Harvey wilts against a wooden bench, unspeaking, staring up at the courthouse exterior as though his leer alone could burn the place down. He hasn't moved from this spot in eight hours, and he doubts he'll shift again until the sunrise. Two years of mentorship under some crook. Two years of existing at the beck and call of some evidence-burying district attorney. The worst part: he knows exactly what will happen now. He'll leave the DA's office, and he will do it in silence. Cameron Dennis will continue with his crimes because Harvey is afraid.
Distantly, a car door slams, and Harvey doesn't think to look up until he hears the all-too-familiar click of stilettos on cold stone.
"Donna—"
"Not a word. What the fuck are you doing?" The concern in her tone betrays the steel of her words, though Harvey still does have the humility to look sheepish as she approaches. He doesn't answer. He's not sure how. "It's two in the morning, Harvey. What's going on?"
Another question, though softer this time as she takes a seat next to him. Distantly, he feels the warmth of her hand hovering over his shoulder. The coldness as she instead backs away from the touch — too much too soon — and rests her arm down again at her side. Do it, he almost says, touch me, except the words die on his lips and instead shutter out as a misty breath of air.
Eventually: "I'm leaving the DA's office." She doesn't react. Or maybe she does: his eyes are closed. He can't yet bring himself to open them.
"Then I'm coming with you." He can tell by the way her voice lands that she isn't looking at him, is instead staring straight ahead at the night-lit skyline, but he twists his head around to gape at her anyway. He knew she was loyal — of course he did, she's her — but he had not yet come to terms with the expanse of this constancy. The kind of no-questions-asked allegiance which manages to stand every single test.
"You don't have to," he tries, careful not to sound condescending. "There's no… contract." Donna only scoffs, turning to face him, lifting an eyebrow as though this is any other night, in any other place. "I know. I'm coming with you." She's never been more beautiful to him than this moment. Cut glass and shadows, and the planes of her cheek, and the glint in those eyes. He holds her gaze for so long that she blinks, tears her eyes away, stares down instead at the ground.
"Don't say anything."
He doesn't. Neither does she.
Minutes pass, and he barely registers the movement at all until her thumb presses cool to his palm. She doesn't ask for permission, and he finds a way to give it anyway, splaying his hand out so that she can wrap her fingers around his.
"Donna," he murmurs, and the word is so heavy between them that she can only squeeze his hand in response. If he kissed her, right now, she would let him. She'd never stop letting him.
"Will you stay?" Stay here. Stay with me. Stay standing. Stay until the sun rises. Stay.
"Always."]
Thud-thud.
[Midnight. Eight years ago. Gordon Specter is dead, and Harvey Specter is on his own. He sits drunk on the floor in the middle of his own living room, an empty bottle of scotch to his left. Harvey picks up the glass to his right and just hurls it at the wall closest, blinks sluggishly as the tumbler explodes on impact, flinging pieces of itself in every direction. Shards scatter across the room almost in slow-motion as he stares, feigning mild interest when one slices shallow into the skin of his cheek. The moon casts him in a pallid light, and the blood slipping down his face looks blackish instead of red in the darkness. As though he's unfeeling — as though he's inhuman. This is not the Harvey Specter we know.
Distantly, as though through water, he hears the sound of a key in a lock, a door crashing open, a pair of heels clicking fast along his stone floor. A silence as those heels are abandoned. A voice — nice voice. What's it saying. What's it saying? Harvey? Ah. His name. Harvey and the surname which he shares with his freshly-dead father. The world spins and Harvey spins with it, lying down flat instead of answering to the voice which calls him. The glass on the floor is quick to dig into him — his back, his arms, his skull — and he welcomes it. Welcomes the sharpness and the way it stings harsh against the numb of inebriation. He hates feeling like this. Why is he feeling like this? Who else in the world has a key to his apartment?
"Harvey— shit." A change in tone as the voice rounds the corner and, he presumes, takes in the sight of the man and the glass and the torment. The voice runs towards him. The voice has hands. He feels as they flutter over him, stopping once at his pulse point and then again at his cheek, closes his eyes into the sensation of being held — of being comforted. Of not being alone. Lots of words come, now, all at once, shit fuck oh my god harvey hey harvey harvey harvey it's me hey hey wake up it's okay hey i'm here i'm so sorry you're safe now i'm here i'm so sorry fuck shit FUCK until he eventually stops trying to pay attention to each individual phrase. As a collective they just sound like fear. Panic. Donna.
Donna?
Harvey blinks, doing his best to cooperate as he feels her hands slide under his back and lift him unceremoniously into a slumped half-seated position. From what he can gauge, she's kneeling somewhere to his left, facing him, one hand still at his shoulder blades while the other smooths over his face, swiping the hair from his temple, cupping gentle beneath his jaw. He leans into her touch and watches as she smiles, even here, resting her forehead to his for only a moment before something flashes across her features and she pulls away.
"I'm sorry," he manages, and she only shakes her head in response.
"Don't be stupid. You're hurting. I should've—" beat. "I should've been here."
"Not your responsibility."
"It was tonight."
"You're here now."
Even black-out drunk he understands that she cannot come up with a retort to this: the truth. He was alone and now he isn't. He was alone and now he's with her. Instead, she takes his head in her hands so determinedly that for a startling, delirious second he really believes that she's about to kiss him. She doesn't. He's not sure how to feel about that — about the hope, singing like blood through his veins.
"You ever feel like this again, you call me."
He nods.
"Swear it."
"Donna…"
"Swear it."
He takes a breath.
"I swear."
She finally shifts away from him — only slightly, only so that they're not directly touching anymore — and that's just how they are for a few minutes. Nothing except for the sound of her breathing as it slows. Eventually, she tugs at him, nodding towards the bedroom without saying anything else. He acquiesces, letting her pull him sluggishly upright and through the corridor.
She doesn't let go of his hand for the longest time.
They go through the motions, and Harvey lets himself get lost in the blur of it. He starts to unbutton his shirt as she disappears off and comes back with a glass of water, then sits stubborn and makes him drink the whole thing despite the fact that his over-starched top button is still done up. She takes the glass, he notes, and sets it down far away from his reach, watches him fiddle with his collar for a few more seconds before she (softly) calls him a moron and slips him free of the shirt herself.
"Donna." It doesn't sound like he's going to say much more, voice rasped with exhaustion. Until: "will you stay?" His voice is so fragile she thinks she might weep, but she doesn't.
"Of course."
As if she needs an explanation, he reaches out for her blindly from the bed. She lets him catch her hand, lets him hold it, lets his thumb find the pulse point in her wrist and prays to some higher being that he's too drunk now to make much sense of how fast her heart is racing.
"I don't want to be alone." He's never, ever been this vulnerable before, and she doubts he ever will be again.
"I know."
She stays.]
Thud-thud.
[Seven in the evening. Five years ago. Harvey's birthday. The year has been strenuous, and in a rare show of self-indulgence, Harvey let himself take the day off to do absolutely jack all. He's smoked some weed, bought a couple suits, rocked up at a classic car auction mostly just to see the kind of engines that are being sold nowadays. A good day, except the end result is this: one man and his bar. He's alone, which is fine, because this is what he knows.
He takes his shoes off, pads over to the sofa, flicks on the TV and loses himself within the equal pulls of a shitty nature documentary and his glass of scotch. Minutes pass until he hears a knock on the door — he doesn't even have to wonder who it is. There's only one non-family member in the world who knows the significance of this date to him, and as such only one person in this city who would find him in his home on the day which he's so clearly cleaved out as a do-not-disturb couple of hours.
He opens the door, and there she is. A marvel. Perfectly curled red hair drifts light past her shoulders, and her head is tilted just slightly to one side with a smile. That smile. Here she is grinning in a pencil skirt and a gorgeous black blouse and Harvey feels his knuckles going white against the doorframe with the effort not to reach forward and take her in his arms. She notices, because of course she does. A glimpse of something flickers across her expression until she schools it, takes a step forward, holds out a little box in one perfectly manicured hand.
"Happy birthday, Harvey."
He could kiss her. He wants to, quite terribly, though instead he takes the box with a murmured thank you, Donna and opens it to reveal a pair of chintzy store-bought Mustang cufflinks. They must have cost about three bucks. He adores them.
The real gift is this: that he is not alone. That there is someone here to spend the evening of his birthday with him, and that she will not comment on the open bottle of scotch or the terrible nature documentary, and that she will never once ask for anything in return. They both know it. Neither has the courage to say it out loud.
This is how it always is. She sits, and they talk, and he laughs at something she says and tries not to notice the way her eyes light up at the sound. Hours pass — until the only restaurant left open is the shitty Thai place four miles away, until the Scotch has been wholly consumed between them and the sun is almost up and there are half a dozen empty takeaway boxes strewn along his kitchen counter.
A pause in conversation finally comes. He wants to say something drastic, or insane, like can I kiss you or did you know that seeing you with other men makes my chest ache but he doesn't. Just stares. Lets her stare back. Feels the current start to thrum between them, warning bells made distant by the buzz of Macallan behind his eyes.
"I wish you wouldn't look at me like that," she murmurs, and he blinks at her, clearly taken aback. She is too. She doesn't know why she's telling him this except that she suddenly, desperately wants to know.
"Like what?" To his credit, Harvey does sound genuinely confused. Donna only hopes that he's not playing some game with her — she's not so sure that being toyed with is something she can bear right now.
She tilts closer to him. She doesn't mean to. She can't help it.
"Like we could… like this is something." He frowns as she speaks, and she almost wants to smack him. How is it that the smartest man she knows just isn't getting it? "Like we could be something."
Understanding flashes across his gaze, tragic in its warmth. He lifts his hands to cup her cheeks. His palms are soft on her skin. "Donna."
"Don't do that, Harvey. Don't— you can't just say my name and have that be your answer." She's panicking, now, saying so much so fast that it wouldn't surprise her if he were to just get up and run away. She feels like some hunted animal, lashing out in its last moments just to spite its captors. Using its last few stores of energy to slice talons deep into human skin.
He only nods. "I know. I'm sorry. It…" He trails off and then huffs out a sigh as if he's annoyed he can't find the right words.
"I don't understand any of this," he murmurs, finally. "It's just always been you. Since the beginning. And I don't—" he can't seem to finish a sentence tonight, and she can see the frustration in the set of his jaw. Desperation flares beneath her ribs: she almost wants to reach out, smooth a thumb along the line of his five o'clock shadow until he can relax enough to speak his mind.
His eyes flicker down to her mouth and then back up, and he furrows his eyebrows. "I don't know if I'm the only one who feels like that," he finishes in a half-whisper. His voice is shaking. (Has she ever once known his voice to shake?)
Donna can see the two paths before her clear as day. The easiest thing to do — the safest thing to do — is to tell him it's just him. Say he's the only one who feels it, and she's only been flirting because it's fun, and she's sorry if he caught feelings but she's definitely not interested and he should probably just go.
But that would be a lie. And even though she's perfected the art of deceptions and half-truths, she can't bring herself to do that right now. Not to him. Not tonight.
"I feel it too," she murmurs, feeling as every last one of her defences comes crashing down.
For a terrifying second, he looks stunned. And then his face breaks out into a smile so wide it takes her breath away, and she wants to kiss it from his lips.
So she does.
He tastes like scotch. He smells like rain and expensive cologne. He feels new but familiar and dangerous but safe and she's drunk on him. There's no other way to explain why she suddenly feels like she's floating on air.
One of his hands stays on her face but the other drops and slides along her waist. She arches toward him. He wraps his arm around her and pulls her against him, their chests flush and rising in unison on an inhale. When his tongue licks along the seam of her lips, she can't help the soft sound that spills from her mouth.
In the blink of an eye, it becomes everything that their relationship isn't. It's fierce and frenzied, a desire that sparks and then immediately blazes into an inferno. She tugs him closer and he tugs back. She presses into him as far as she physically can, her hands clutching his face to pull him down to meet her. He bends forward and slides his hands down her back, and when he squeezes her ass, she grins and sinks her teeth into his bottom lip. A murmur or a laugh rumbles through his chest. She can't tell which: it doesn't matter. She likes them both.
He lets go of her ass and bends down to curl his hands around the back of her thighs, and suddenly he's hauling her up and into his arms. She wraps her arms around his neck and takes advantage of the new height to kiss him even deeper. There's an urgency to the way their lips meet now, something wholly desperate and utterly unbidden and so bright that she thinks it might burn her. He turns and sets her on the kitchen island, hands immediately starting to roam again. They slide over her hips and slip beneath her shirt, and then they're curled around her ribs and his thumbs are brushing over the sides of her breasts just like they did all those years ago. Donna kisses him with hopeless, helpless abandon, feeling the ache of this want flood like fire through her veins with every breath. She needs him. She's always needed him. She wraps her legs around his hips to pull him closer, and accidentally kicks one of the bar stools nearby.
It hits the floor with a deafening crash.
Harvey breaks their kiss with a gasp of surprise, yanking his hands out from beneath her shirt. They're both frozen for a moment, their chests heaving and eyes wide as if they're teenagers who just got caught by their parents. Donna glances around them as the panic seeps from her ribs, as though everyone they know is about to burst through the front door and see exactly what was about to happen on this kitchen island.
But the door remains shut. There's a long silence, and then Donna leans forward to press her forehead to Harvey's shoulder and exhale a sigh of relief.
Harvey chuckles. "Scared the hell out of me," he murmurs, amusement in his voice. She smiles.
"Yeah. Me too."
He pauses, here, and she dreads the silence. She knows what's about to come: she's always known. It's always going to be like this.
"Don't do this," she murmurs, pleading even as she watches his expression change — that forever-subtle shift between what can and what cannot be.
"Donna."
"You're doing it again. My name isn't some death sentence, Harvey. You can't use it like a full stop."
His eyebrows furrow, and she knows that she's being overly cryptic, but she cannot stand when he just says her name in that tone and expects it to do the work for him. She needs to hear the words. She needs to hear out loud that he doesn't want her like this so that she can finally just know.
Nothing comes.
"Will you stay?"
Her heart breaks for him: this man who cannot take down his walls. She can't do this. She can't spend another decade toeing the line between stay and go.
"You're being cruel."
He must know it, because he only looks down at his feet, draws himself a step away from her at the sound of the ice in her voice.
"I'm sorry."
"I know." She pauses. Smooths down her skirt. Breathes. "Happy birthday, Harvey."
She does not stay.]
Thud-thud.
[Midday. Two years ago. Mike has pled guilty and Harvey walks back into the office looking like he's just seen a man killed (has he? has he? has he?) and Donna is wordless as she cancels all of his meetings for the next four days. He stands by his window, some silhouette, the stature of a wounded soldier working its way into the curve of his spine.
Mike is going to prison and Harvey has failed him. The thoughts are suffocating: if he'd run a little faster, if he'd realised a minute earlier, if he'd been a good enough mentor for Mike to let him take the fall — he doubles over, close to retching, staggering corpse-like onto his couch in an attempt to hide this weakness from the rest of the office. He can't breathe, and he loosens his tie and he's still short of breath, and he's going to die and he's ready to let it happen when he feels a hand on his knee.
"Not now, Donna."
She's kneeling beside him, reverent in the light of this tragedy, eyes rimmed with tears as she watches him try to make sense of the hurt.
"Don't be insane. I'm not leaving you."
He's in pain and she knows that — he's misery incarnate, hunched over and hyperventilating in the chair before her — but the knowledge of this doesn't quite lessen the sting when he spits out the word bullshit and says nothing else. She doesn't react. She doesn't reel away, or slap him, or call him a dick, even though they both know that she would have every right.
"I'm not leaving you," she says again, and this time he does not have a reply. "Breathe, Harvey. In and out. Come on." He lets her fill the air with these sweet nothings, lets his head fall back against the leather of the couch as she whispers that it's okay, it's alright, you're here, he still has seventy-two hours, you have to forgive yourself, come on Harvey, come on, I'm here, promise me you'll try.
Twenty minutes pass before he's breathing right again. And then he bursts into tears.
Donna is quicker to respond this time, curling herself onto the cushion next to him, shielding this vulnerability from the rest of the firm. Her arms come up to encircle him just like they always have, hands coming up to stroke through the soft-cropped hair at his nape. She keeps whispering, keeps telling him that it's alright despite the way the lie sticks heavy to her teeth. Because it is a lie — Mike is going to prison, and this is a fact, and not even the great Harvey Specter can wrangle his way out of this one. He presses himself into her shoulder and she lets him. She lets him. It will always be this way.
When she lets herself into his apartment two nights later there is glass on the floor on blood on his brow and she immediately assumes the worst. He's just sat there, on his recliner, the flannel in his hands unmoving.
She takes the cloth and tips his head up. Other than a split eyebrow and a busted lip there's nothing to be worried about physically, but it's his expression which startles her. He looks terrified. She swipes the flannel along his cuts, gentle as she goes. Her hands are shaking — so are his — and she hates the way his eyes flick to her trembling fingers. That he is worried about her feels like some celestial cruelty. He's not drunk, at least. There's a sharpness to his gaze which speaks of sobriety, and no bottle on the countertop to give him away.
"What happened?" The no-nonsense tone which she tries to employ fails miserably, and instead the words just sound scared. She sounds scared.
"I told Mike," he murmurs, and a wave of understanding crashes over her so suddenly that her knees threaten to buckle under the weight of the water. He keeps speaking, sentences so fragmented that it's a wonder he can put words together at all. "He knows. Innocent. The verdict, he knows now. He's telling Rachel. I asked him to hit me. He was innocent, Donna—"
"I know." He's spiralling: she cuts him off. "I know. I know. There was nothing you could've done." He's shaking, now, and she pulls him up, tugs him into a hug, doesn't manage to fully anticipate the way he sinks into her like some storm. His arms are at her back and his head is buried into the crook of her neck and he's trembling like a leaf in her embrace. Harvey, she murmurs, harvey-harvey-harvey-harvey-harvey until he finally calms against her.
"I could've saved him," he whispers finally, so broken-sounding that she almost starts to cry again. "I could've taken the fall." The idea floors her. Harvey in prison. She'd sooner take a bullet to the knee, and she almost says so before the gravity of the sentiment stops her in her tracks.
Instead: "do you want me to stay?"
He nods. She holds him closer.
She stays.]
Thud-thud.
Four in the afternoon. Today. The world waits for Harvey Specter to answer this question — do you love Donna Paulsen — and the answer is yes, yes, yes, yes. Over and over. Always. He would follow her into the end of the world.
Finally, (finally) he looks at her. She looks right back. Her eyes are searching, always searching, tracing his face as though to find some clue as to exactly how he's going to set about answering this. And she's beautiful. This isn't news.
She's so beautiful that Harvey has to take a breath before he speaks again, this panicked shudder which floods itself sharp beneath the bones in his chest. He does not break eye contact: he does not try. His pulse thrums at the hollow of his throat, frenzied, kicking into overdrive as the gravity of the situation turns itself over in his head. Through the terror, Harvey understands: he hasn't felt this certain about anything before in his life. It's always her. It's never going to stop being her.
She's still looking at him, still just staring and staring and staring, still with that look in her eyes which says it's still you. It's still you. It's always you. He takes a breath.
"I'm leaving."
The room stills.
Even Louis, near-electric with the thrill of this, pauses, brows furrowing as though he cannot quite process exactly what the fuck he just heard. If Donna reacts then he doesn't see it — he can't, he can't — and nobody moves to stop him as he stalks from the room. He hears a name (his name) and he knows that it's her calling him, that his evasion is truth enough, that she'll want answers just as fervently as he wants her.
There can be no coming back from this. He knows this, and so Harvey Specter does the same thing that he's been doing his whole life.
He runs.