in response to this lovely prompt that Sassything sent me:
"Donna and Harvey are already together in season 2 when he has to fire her. So when she is fired how would he react coming home to her"
hope u all enjoy!
(some minor context in case some of u don't remember the specifics of what happened in season two — Tanner's coming after Harvey for burying evidence, Harvey maintains that he has never even seen the document which he's accused of burying, which is the truth, but then it's revealed that Donna actually received the document 4 years ago even though she doesn't remember it, so things are all at once very bad! because it suddenly looks like she DID actually bury it on purpose. and it's all kind of fine until she gets super stressed out and shreds the document. so then they really have destroyed evidence, which is a crime, so things go from very bad to Even Worse. Donna gets fired. it's a bit of a big deal)
He beats her home.
She takes a cab, probably, because the apartment is empty when he gets back and Ray was driving about as fast as he legally knows how to.
Harvey shuts the door behind him at something close to a slam, heart racing just as much as it has been all day. God. Fuck. He loves her, obviously, loves her like breathing, but he's scared. This is Donna. He would trust her with his life, ten times over — and yet.
He trusts her still. Nothing can change that, not even this, but trust doesn't matter so much when she's fucked up this bad.
The silence of the flat starts ringing a little and Harvey shakes his head against the haze. They've been through worse. They got out of the DA's office together. She got him out.
It'll be alright, he thinks, and tries not to wince at how blatantly it feels like he's lying to himself right now.
It would be alright. He wouldn't care, wouldn't care if it was just him, wouldn't care about any of this if it wasn't for how badly she's managed to catch herself in the crossfire — because of course she has. Because she would walk into a burning house for him and oh Christ, oh God, maybe this time she really has.
Harvey hears the familiar twist of her key in their lock right as he starts to spiral, and he's grounded only by the small snick of the latch where her key has always caught slightly, because she stood on it one time and there's been a small graze on one of its ridges ever since.
He knows these things about her, now. The sound of her footsteps, the sound of her breathing. The sound of her coming home.
He steels himself as she steps into their house, clamps his hands into fists so that she can't yet see how badly they're shaking. Prison. Perjurers get prison time. He doesn't know how to fix this. He's not sure he can.
The last time he saw her was just half an hour ago at the firm, that scene which has been burned into his eyelids ever since, of the look on her face as the elevator doors closed. Oh, the tears in her eyes. The hitch in her brow. More than anything he'd wanted to follow her in, follow her home, but Mike and Rachel watching through the glass partition had fouled the chances of even so much as a kiss to her cheek, and that was that. She must have thought— she must have wanted—
"Harvey."
The sound of her voice. The devastation. The fear. His heart breaks a little for it, and turning to look at her doesn't fix a thing.
She looks terrified.
"You came home."
He nods, still mute, tilting his head in askance of the most cautious question he knows to hazard.
Her reply is just as wordless. It's what they do. Donna all but stumbles into him, lets him catch her, lets him feel the way the relief has already started to card from her with every heartbeat.
"I'm so sorry, Harvey," she whispers, muffled into the collar of his shirt. "I'm so sorry."
More than anything he wants to lie. To say something stupid, like it's okay, it's okay, Donna, we're gonna be okay, to have the fact of his untruth stick to his conscience rather than hers.
Instead:
"I know."
She sinks a little further into him.
"You can't do things like this," he murmurs, soft as he can, carding gentle fingers up through the locks of her hair. "Ever."
"You're angry."
"I should be."
"You are."
"I am."
He sighs. "It's not who we are," he murmurs, finally. She pulls away from him, just by a few inches. Just enough to look him in the eye. "You should never have crossed that line in the first place, but you did, and that's fine, it could've been fine, it just—"
"I should've told you."
Harvey only nods. "But you didn't."
She hadn't wanted him to get hurt, he knows that. He's always known that. She'd break right through the shades of moral grey straight into any legal red zone if he ever so much as asked her to, except he hadn't. He wouldn't ever. And yet.
"I trusted you, Donna." Harvey feels more than sees the way her breath catches at the way he uses the verb in the past tense.
"Trusted."
Harvey sucks in a shuddering breath.
"Shit, yeah, okay, trusted. Is that how we're gonna play this?"
"God, Harvey, I don't know. You're the lawyer." She spits out the word, sets an intonation on his name that he can't fully parse, and he can't help but draw back a little, wounded even now.
There's an apology written so deep into her gaze that he could just about fall into it, but it's masked beneath about eight other emotions that he can't fucking read all of a sudden, and Harvey realises with a start that this is the first time in almost a decade that she's ever betrayed him.
Except it doesn't feel like a betrayal — it feels like a sacrifice. He's not sure what to do with that.
"Exactly. I'm the lawyer." He's being cruel. It doesn't matter. There are tears in her eyes. It doesn't matter. His voice is raised, he's stepping away, and it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, he's trapped, he's panicking, lashing out like a bitten dog— "I make the decisions. I make the mistakes. I fuck up, and I go down for it, not you."
Not her. Not her. Please, God, not her.
"You're scared," she whispers, her voice breaking over the words so badly that he can tell she's trying to justify his fury in her own head. She's scared. He's scaring her.
"You're goddamn right I'm scared!" It feels strange to admit it, especially at a volume so loud, and something nervous flickers in Donna's eyes for just long enough that Harvey starts to hate himself for it. He checks himself, swallows, breathes in and out again and watches the way her line of sight slips down to where the pulse is hammering at his throat.
He won't be this person. Not with her.
Harvey closes his eyes and starts again.
"Do you even remember doing it?"
Donna flinches a little, wounded by the quiet scrape of accusation to his tone, but the relief in her eyes at his lowered voice is all at once too devastating to think about and she must've been expecting the question because she manages to answer anyway.
"No." It sounds like the truth, which helps. "But I remember loving you. I remember knowing that I would've done— anything, for you, even then."
Harvey draws a single, careful hand up to her cheek. Slow. He would never hurt her. She has to know that.
"But I wouldn't have asked that of you, Donna."
She swallows down a sob, taken aback a little by how gentle he's being, even now.
"You never do. That's the point."
They'll fight, he knows. He's angry, still angry, still filled with too many swirling emotions to yet trust himself with figuring any of them out. None of this is reasonable: she's not being fair, and neither is he, and maybe he didn't fight hard enough for her today but maybe that's still her fault for having messed up in the first place. Of course he's mad. Of course he's scared.
Right now, though, there's only this — the love of his life in front of him. Pale. Shaking. Terrified. He won't lie to her, now or ever, but he also just doesn't have it in him to give her some lecture right now on how badly she's fucked both of them. Because he'll go down with her, which she might not know yet, but he will. Out of choice more than anything else. He's going to follow her into this hellstorm, and if she doesn't make it out, then neither does he.
It's how this goes, isn't it? She falls, he dives. He shoots, she bleeds. This might be the thing to ruin him, and he's going to watch it happen.
"It wouldn't matter," he starts, unsure of exactly where he's actually going with this one. "It wouldn't— if it was anyone else, I wouldn't care."
"I know," she presses, wrenched nearly in two by the guilt of this. "I know that."
"But it's you, Donna." He takes a breath against the threat of a shudder. "It's you. And I don't know how to fix it this time." Confession. Absolution. A man undone.
"You always fix things," she tries, sounding a little more desperate than he can bear. "It's what you do."
Harvey only shakes his head. "You buried evidence."
"That I don't ever even remember seeing."
"You buried evidence."
"Yeah, Harvey. I did. Not you."
He stiffens a little, and she feels it, reads the disbelief in his gaze.
"What are you saying?"
He knows. He knows what she's about to say. He can't let this happen.
"I'll go down for it."
"Donna—"
"Harvey," she interjects, stern as he's ever heard her. "Listen to me. They're gonna put me in a deposition, make me swear an oath to tell the truth. I'm going to tell the truth."
"They'll put you in jail," he says, fighting a little for breath. "You'll go to prison."
"I committed a crime."
"I don't care."
And then silence. Donna's looking at him in a way she never has before, and it's haunting, it's awful, it's stripping him to the bone.
"Don't do this." Harvey's vision starts to white out at the edges, and he's begging, he knows that, but she can't. "Come on. Don't take the fall for me. I can't— I can't let you do that."
"You can't stop me," she murmurs.
"I can't lose you," he returns, instant.
"You won't."
Donna shifts into him all over again, curving a hand up into the space where his jaw is set at a clench, stroking a thumb up and down until he finally softens.
"You won't lose me, Harvey. I'm not leaving you."
"There won't be a choice," he tries, giving way to the tears which have been threatening all day. One slinks down and pools in the hollow where her thumb is pressed, and Donna responds in a heartbeat, leaning in and kissing the salt from his skin. "Donna. Please."
"There's always a choice," she murmurs, and it's not a solution, but it could be. It could be.
"I'm gonna make this right," Harvey whispers, sounding a little too much like a scared little kid. Very deliberately, he doesn't use any words like fix or solve or remedy, but he does what he can. She must believe him — she must want to — because Donna only nods, carves herself further into him, smudges her lips to his so soft that it starts to taste like redemption. "I won't let anything happen to you."
Donna opens her mouth, maybe to ask him to promise, to swear, but nothing comes. He won't lie. She won't make him.
"Okay," she breathes, instead. "Okay, Harvey."
They stand there, intertwined, until his breaths finally start to come a little slower, until the thrum of her pulse stops flittering so erratically against his skin. It's enough. It's enough for now. It has to be.
Nothing, then, for minutes. Just the rustle of her dress beneath his fingertips as Harvey soothes a hand up and down her back.
"Are we gonna be okay?"
Harvey actually startles a little at how abruptly Donna's question breaks the silence. It must've been weighing on her, though, because the words were pronounced enough that he can tell she had been rehearsing them in her head.
She wants the truth. Of course she does. This is who they are.
"I don't know," he replies, finally. The admission nearly cleaves him in two — he loves her. He has had to deal with that. She doesn't react, but he feels the way her eyelids flutter closed against the fabric of his suit. He pulls her a little closer.
"Shit, Donna. I really don't know."
oops. bit more of an ambiguous/angsty ending than i usually go for but alas. c'est la vie!
as evidenced by this piece, i take prompts! please please always feel free to send me fic prompts because i LOOOVE responding to them, seriously. it's the best.
reviews are appreciated as always :)