He's covered in blood.
"Jesus Christ," she hears, except it's her saying it, and he's so pale, is he supposed to be that pale, there's so much blood, and he's swaying towards her and she doesn't think twice about the consequences for her dressing gown as she catches him, locks her arms around his back, drags him in.
She's strong but not superhuman, so before she can pull him more than three steps towards the kitchen Harvey's keeling over, keeling into her. Donna does what she can to cushion the fall, pushing him into the wall as best she knows so at least it's more of a slide to the ground than a full-blown collapse.
What the fuck. What the fuck?
They skid to the floor as one and she finally finds it in herself to pull away from him. He's still conscious, at least, still cognisant enough to be blinking up at her in the half-light of her hallway.
"What happened," she begs, her hands coming up to swipe at his battered cheek, "Jesus, Harvey, what happened to you?"
"It's not mine," he grits against her, frantic. "It's not mine."
Donna blinks. He's — that's not true. He's bleeding. There's a gash on his temple still weeping blood, this waterfall which splays down the whole of his cheek, his neck too, staining the starched white of his collar. It must've gotten in his eye at some point, because he's blinking furiously against the sweep of red to his waterline. His nose is bleeding as well, badly, spilling into his mouth and then down again, and there's this split in his lip and another slice just below his left eye, less severe but still deep, and a new laceration at his brow which wasn't there before — it is his blood. So much of it. Coating his face, his shirt, all pooling in the hollow of his throat: Donna has to stop staring for fear of blacking out.
"It is," she whispers, her hands soaked in it. "Harvey, it is. Didn't you— didn't you know?"
He shakes his head, opening his mouth to speak, except he ends up sort of just huffing out spatters of more blood instead. She uses a sleeve to dab at his lips, wipe away the worst of it, and the action is so shockingly tender that Donna can feel the ache of it between her teeth.
She tamps the feeling down: this cannot be that. The man she loves like oxygen is staining her skin with his blood, and if she tries to call this moment beautiful then she'll never be able to separate him from the flame-red of this anguish. Maybe it's already too late, maybe the action of pressing a thumb to his bleeding forehead feels less like punishment and more like finding religion, but she has to try and get past the longing. Atonement can come later. Right now he's sin and she's salvation and the air tastes too much like iron to do anything except repent.
Harvey takes a rasping breath. His head falls to the curve of her shoulder. He's sprawled against the wall in something of a sitting position, his legs splayed, and Donna shifts a little so that she's kneeling in front of him instead of slumped somewhere to his side.
"I'm so sorry," she whispers, choked. She wants to say his name again but it's too much.
He arches towards her reflexively, wincing hard as he does. Donna catches him by the shoulders and pushes him back. Devastatingly gentle. Tears in her eyes.
"No," he manages, finally, around the split lip, around the agony. "Not your—" he gasps a breath. "Not your fault. Please."
She can tell that he wants to explain this, his jaw moving again as he tries to find the words, but the effort of speaking can only make this worse.
Donna panics, flails, reaches desperately for the only solution she can.
She kisses him.
All is lost.
She kisses him and it tastes like drowning. Tastes like blood. The relief of it is so instant and all-consuming that Donna almost forgets the fact of his open wounds.
As though through smoke, she feels the shock of his hands coming to cradle her face, the way they shake against her jaw. Whether from blood loss or disbelief, she doesn't know: maybe both. Maybe it's just joy. When he gasps into her mouth Donna revels in it, but the sound strikes a chord within her which she knows that she needs to attend to — he's injured, half-delirious, still bleeding, and it doesn't matter how desperately she wants to just give into all of this because more than anything else right now she has to help him.
When she pulls away her lips are stained with it. With him. The ichor in his veins.
He only stares up at her, too star-struck to blink. Donna lifts a hand to his chin, softens her index finger to the split in his lip.
"I'm sorry if I hurt you," she whispers, and even through the haze they both know that she isn't just talking about the cut.
"I don't mind," he breathes. She thinks it might be the most honest thing he's ever said. "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter when it's you." He starts to lean towards her but the pain of it is so enormous that he ends up wrenching backwards instead, face marred with agony. Donna carves into him, driven almost to tears by the ache of watching him suffer like this.
"Shh, hey, don't move." She whispers the words almost directly into his ear, pressing her lips the skin just above his jawline. I love you. Keep still. I love you. "We'll get up in a bit, okay? I'm—"
His eyelids flicker open as she breaks away to stifle a sob. She notes, with horror, how cloudy his gaze suddenly appears. Donna brings a hand up to her mouth, curling into herself, trying her best to stay quiet as she gasps through the tears. This is her fault. She left him, she left him, and he went out and, god, she's not even— she doesn't even know what he did. Two days away from Harvey and they're both shrouded in this sudden darkness. Where did he go? Who did this? Why did he just let it happen?
"I'm gonna help you," she manages at last. I'm gonna fix you. I'm going to fix this. Because she has to. Because he just spent two weeks working harder than he ever has before to keep her out of prison, and she repaid him by abandoning him out of nowhere in the middle of the night.
And now he's here. And his hair is matted with blood, and there's so much of it, and it's her fault no matter what he says.
It doesn't matter when it's you, he whispered to her, just seconds ago — but oh, it does. It does. It does.
Harvey lifts a swaying hand to curl at her wrist, to draw Donna's hand away from her face, and the gentleness of it makes her weep even harder.
"It's okay," he slurs, offering her this comfort even now. She hates herself. He presses a kiss to each one of her knuckles and she hates herself.
"It's not," she gasps. "I did this."
"You didn't. You weren't— there."
She wasn't where? God, she wants to know so desperately, but she can't make him talk about it, not yet.
"Donna," he says, seemingly out of nowhere, and she doesn't miss the stumble to his words, the way he draws out the 'n' sound without meaning to. He's getting worse. She has to— fuck, she has to do something. She just has no idea what.
"Harvey," she mimics, watching as his eyes light up. He loves her. His blood still stains her mouth. "What do you need?"
He frowns. Confusion. Concussion? God, she doesn't know, she's supposed to know these things—
"What can I do? To help you, Harvey. Tell me what you need."
He only stares.
"Need you." Like it's obvious. Like she's the answer.
Donna's breath catches in her throat. Not now. God, not now, she can't want him this badly when he's bleeding all over her fucking carpet. (But he needs her.)
"Soon," she swears, swallowing back against the heat. "I promise." Her voice breaks over the words. "Just, please, Harvey, tell me what hurts."
His face clouds with an emotion she can't parse.
"All of it," he whispers, more vulnerable than she knows how to deal with. Donna almost wants to tell him to stop talking, afraid of the regret he might feel tomorrow for letting these walls down if he even remembers. But she needs to know, needs to help, the urgency of it so sharp that she worries it might pierce her skin.
"Okay," she murmurs, rolling with the concussion theory, assuming delirium and talking to him almost like he's a kid again. "Okay, so what hurts most?"
"Head," he mumbles. He's slipping. "Bones."
Christ. Which bones?
She curves a hand around the back of his head, pulling him away from the wall just a little bit.
"What can I do?" She repeats, trying endlessly hard not to start crying again. "Harvey, please. What can I do?"
"Stay," he whispers.
And it's not— it's not an answer, not one she can use, but it rends Donna's heart a little anyway. The reminder there: that she left him. I'm leaving you, Harvey. How could she ever have been so cruel?
(Her fault. This is her fault.)
"Okay," she offers, smudging a kiss to his forehead. "Okay. I'm here."
He slumps a little further. When she breaks away from him, his eyes are drifting shut, and she's struck hardin the chest by a renewed wave of panic.
"We're gonna get up now," she says, more to herself than to him. "Alright? I'm gonna—" she rocks back onto her haunches, into a position where it'll be easier to stand from. She can't be sure, but she's ninety percent certain there's some kind of injury to his ribs or back as well, and the need to treat him gently crashes sharp into the need to just get him up.
He blinks up at her, increasingly puzzled, unmoving.
"You have to get up, Harvey. Please." She tugs at him and it doesn't do a thing. He's not some twig, she remembers, he's a boxer, heavier than people might otherwise assume behind the guise of a sleek-fitted suit. "Please."
In a final throwaway bid, Donna curls back down into him, lifting his chin until he manages to focus enough to hold her gaze.
"I will leave you here." The words ache. They aren't true, obviously, she's never leaving him again — but in order for this to work he has to believe her.
"I will leave you here," she repeats, watching as his face falls. It isn't true, she wants to say, but she can't, she can't, she can't. "If you don't get up, I'm leaving. I'm going to sleep. You'll wake up on this wooden floor and you won't remember why and you'll leave before I can come and find you, because that's what you do."
She chokes back a sob. The emotion on his face takes her to pieces: fear. Pure terror, just like two nights ago, the exact same expression which he wore as she walked away from him.
"And we'll never talk about it."
Harvey stiffens. It's working. Is this working? Can she even stomach having to lie to him for a single moment more?
"We'll never talk about it."
He moves so fast, so suddenly, that it's almost miraculous. Harvey comes close to clawing at her in his desperation to stand, crying out with the pain of it, clutching at his ribs, his chest, at Donna.
She lets him, lets his short nails dig into her through the gown. She doesn't welcome the pain, but she accepts it — deserves it. Christ, the guilt.
Abandonment existing as his one weakness, the one thing he cannot deal with — and she chose to leave him anyway. Maybe what he said was wrong, maybe she regrets ever inviting him over to her apartment that night, but it doesn't matter. None of it matters. Not when Harvey's upright next to her, close to collapse but standing nonetheless.
She blinks away a fresh set of tears for maybe the seventh time tonight. The misery can come later: right now they have to move.
Slinging Harvey's arm around her neck, and wrapping her arm around his back, Donna holds him up as best she can, stepping forwards with nothing to guide her except the hope that he will follow.
He does.
chapter 3 already written and coming soon! :) reviews are forever appreciated. thank u so much to all who commented on the previous chapter! means the world!