Trapped
"You ever think about…" Harvey stops, scratching his nose, and breathing in sharply as the movement causes a twinge in his ribs. He's sure he cracked one, maybe two. Christ knows what else. But he squints at Donna through the darkness, trying to tell if she's in pain or just pissed at him.
"Don't you goddamn dare."
Her tone could rattle an army, dIsintegrate a battlefield, and right—angry it is. "Sorry." He rarely apologizes, is never quite sure why when he does. But even when Donna's seething with annoyance, admitting he's wrong usually cuts him some slack, and he shrugs. "I just—"
"Figured we were going to die down here, so what the hell?" She clutches her side, fairly certain the warm stickiness oozing between her fingers isn't good. It's too dark to see for sure, but she knows one thing; she didn't wait thirteen years for Harvey to admit his feelings, to hear them spill out as a 'maybe he should have gotten shit together sooner' because fate threw a freaking tunnel collapse on top of them.
"That's not—we're going to get out of here." He decides it's safer to change the subject, steer her away from assuming the worst. She's scared, he is too. But they heard the rescue start, a whir of machines clearing the rubble. People are coming for them. They just have to stay calm in the meantime.
"You wanted to catch the subway." He shrugs, figuring he can't make the situation any worse.
Her anger morphs into what's probably hysteria as laughter catches in her throat. He's the only person in the world who would have one foot in a shallow grave and still be making jokes, and she swipes the moisture coating her cheeks, not sure whether to thank him or go completely off the rails—no pun intended.
"You need to go back to therapy." She matches his bleak humor, figuring if he's on the precipice of saying whatever he wants, then she can too. "Paula clearly did a number on you."
He flinches, tension straining through the murmur of machinery as his gaze shifts from one black patch to another. But if she wants to address why he ended things with his ex-therapist, at least the topic is a distraction. He's grown tired of throwing up walls—the thought hugely ironic, given he's sitting trapped in a pile of rubble.
"I made a bad call," he admits, the cloak of darkness they're shrouded in helping to blanket his ego. The actual relationship with Paula isn't something he regrets. There was a time he was even convinced he wanted it to work. But then his ex-girlfriend forced him to realize that if he loses Donna, he loses everything. And his biggest mistake was not seeing that for himself sooner. "A lot of bad calls, if we're being honest."
"Are we?" The question scratches, barely above a whisper as she wonders the thought out loud. They flirt with the hard truths, dance around the easy ones, but somehow they never quite end up saying what they mean, both pushing each other enough to create ripples. But when waves threaten to break, they're too afraid to be pulled under by the current. And he's not the only one guilty of seeking shallow waters.
She's lied, too.
The difference is her deflections have always been to protect him, shield him from the love she knows he's capable of feeling if he could just find a way to access it. But as the darkness dims around her, none of that seems to matter anymore.
For all their faults, in spite of their mistakes, they always find their way back to each other. He's the place her heart goes home to whenever she's unsure or scared, and right now, there isn't anyone else she wants to be with.
"It's okay."
The rasp of forgiveness alerts him to the fact something is wrong. She tolerates his short-falls, sometimes even makes excuses for them, but she never lets him off the hook this easily, and he twists around, ignoring the sharp stab of pain in his side so he can check her.
She said she was fine, and he believed her.
Over a decade together, and he thought he could read her stubbornness, but as his hand clasps hers, feeling the witness leaking between her fingers, he knows he was a goddamn idiot—then and now.
"Why the hell didn't you say something!?" His frustration replaces her earlier anger, his tone harsh as he shrugs out of his jacket to place pressure against her wound. He's always let her protect him, given up because that was easier, but she's not standing in his office, berating him over some stupid decision. She's hurt, badly, from what he can tell, and she had no right to keep this from him.
She leans her head back, sucking in sharply as he pushes against her abdomen. Maybe she should have told him. Tried to scramble for some kind of redemption—for both their sakes—but as morbid as she knows it is, this is who they are. Their feelings only surface when they're in trouble, and she doesn't want his last memory of her to be clouded with guilt. They owe each other more than that. She can be the strong one, guide him, but he has to do his part too, and she clasps his wrist with a light squeeze, using all the energy she has to silently tell him it's okay.
This isn't his fault.
He chokes back the lump in his throat, refusing to let her give up without a fight. "Donna, look at me!" He presses down harder, not sorry when she gasps, even though hurting her is the last thing in the world he wants to be able to justify. But she needs to stay awake.
356 days a year, she's stubborn and does whatever the hell she wants.
Not today.
"Open your eyes. Keep talking to me."
She can hear the desperation in his voice buzzing through the white noise between her ears, and she tries. Manages to lift her eyes open, but she can't see him clearly.
She can feel him though, all around her.
The hands jammed at her side, his musky scent of sweaty cologne and his heavy breathing labored with worry. He's scared. She would be too, maybe. If she wasn't so tired. But she isn't cold anymore. Just drifting in the comfort of having him near. She floats in the contentment until he's no longer there. Pulled away by unseen forces, or she is.
Hard to say which.
But she misses him.
She always does when he's gone.
Days later, she learns the unseen forces were actually emergency service workers. People with names and faces who pulled her and Harvey from the wreckage.
He doesn't say much when she wakes up surrounded by beeping machines. At first she assumes he's angry. Maybe she said something to him down in the tunnel and can't remember, or he did. It's mostly all a blur, her efforts having been focused on not bleeding out before help arrived.
She figures a little crankiness ought to be excused.
But his mood doesn't improve.
No matter how much he sleeps he looks worse than she does, still won't talk to her, until one night she wakes up finding him in the hard, plastic chair beside her bed.
His eyes aren't glazed with tears, they're flooded by them.
Red-raw.
And for the second time in her life, she isn't sure what to say to him either. Instead, she shuffles over, disguising her wince with a small smile as she opens the thin hospital blanket up to him.
He hangs his head for a moment, then slides his palm across his cheek. A second later he slips off his shoes, and sinks onto the mattress, breathing through a twinge in his ribs as he pulls her closer.
Bruised, not broken.
That's what the doctor told him, not how he feels.
"I'm sorry," she whispers sheepishly. The tunnel collapse wasn't her fault, but she did unintentionally put him through the wringer. If he was the one hurt and she'd been left to pick up the pieces, she would be a mess too. "You were right... Next time we call a cab."
He nearly chokes on a surprising laugh. Anyone else and he should probably feel embarrassed. He's not the type to sit around crying out his emotions and isn't even sure what happened. One minute he was watching her sleep and fine, then the next he lost it.
But he could have lost her.
And did.
For a few minutes in the darkness, before the rescuers broke through with the promise of saving her, he didn't even know if she was still breathing. Those seconds without her were the longest, most painful he's ever faced. He doesn't ever want to feel like that again, and leans back with a sigh.
"Harvey."
He glances down at her quiet voice and the assurance in her gaze, the loose fingers clutched around his shirt. He should have told her how he felt a long time ago, not waited until—
Her soft kiss steals his thoughts, catching him off guard as she tentatively tests the waters, but she is his lifeline—always has been. And he dives straight in, parting her mouth with her lips, and smiling for what feels like the first time in days.
She'll heal, just like he will.
And they'll do it together.