Fic - Epicenter (Donna/Harvey) pg, 1/1
Oct. 1st, 2012 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
abvjTitle: Epicenter
Summary: When it comes to each other, they only deal in absolutes. Harvey, Donna, and a series of small confessions set in the aftermath of High Noon.
Rating: pg
Author's Notes: 2,716 words. General series spoilers with specifics for 2x10. All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not. Con-crit is, as always, welcome and appreciated.
Let us first take a moment to appreciate the sight of Donna owning this place like a BOSS (and, of course, the little smile these two idiots share):
They linger long after Jessica and Mike leave for the evening. Donna stays seated in her rightful spot in Harvey’s chair, her legs propped up on the desk he’s recently reclaimed. They’re crossed at the ankle, her feet bare as she stares out towards the bright lights of the city’s skyline. She hears the heaviness of Harvey’s gait as he rounds the corner, turns her head to greet him with a smile when he slides through the doorway all smiles of victory, holding up a bottle of scotch and two crystal tumblers. He’s still in his suit, but the jacket is a little wrinkled around the edges, his perfectly knotted tie slightly undone with the dimple just left of center. This is Donna’s favorite version of Harvey – slightly unkempt and just a little undone, when it is just the two of them, just him and her when the weight of the world isn’t closing in around them. Her smile grows wider as he nears her, his weight shifting to rest against the edge of the desk somewhere near her feet.
“Hardman’s?” she asks with an arched eyebrow. Harvey chuckles, the glasses clinking against the metal frame of the desk as he sets them down. He fills each with two fingers worth of what Donna can only imagine is very, very expensive and well-aged scotch.
“Of course,” he says smugly. “What’s his is now mine.”
“Isn’t stealing what started this whole thing to begin with?”
“Is it really stealing when security escorts you out of the building and you leave it behind?”
The question is rhetorical, of course, so Donna merely rolls her eyes. Harvey hands her the glass, and she’s a little surprised at the way he allows his fingers to linger against hers for a brief moment before pulling away. The soulful sounds of Charlie Parker play witness as the vinyl hums slowly in the background – the player and accompanying record were the first things he grabbed when they decided to reclaim his office – and she brings the glass to her lips, takes a slow, small sip. It’s thick and warm and burns a little on the way down, but Donna doesn’t allow it show, merely smiles at the way Harvey watches her every move, his lips curled around the rim of his own glass.
With the tumbler to her lips, the liquid is a little smoother as it slides down her throat a second time time; Harvey follows her lead and takes a swallow. He has this way of looking at her sometimes, all warm and bright, the curl of his lips soft. It’s too much now, with the alcohol humming under her skin and coiling with something completely separate deep in her belly, so she looks away, returns her attention to the skyline outside. Harvey sighs something weighted, finishing his glass and reaching for the bottle to pour another.
Taking a moment for herself, Donna reflects on the events of the past few weeks, on her time away from the firm, away from Harvey. She thinks about Hardman and that damn memo, about Harvey’s silence as she walked out of his life, how he let her walk out his life, and the betrayal and anger that cut a roadmap to her greatest weakness in the aftermath. Having Harvey in her life has always coincided with a certain amount of vulnerability that is impossible to escape; it’s something she has learned to accept, but this mess they made of things, this disconnect she felt so profoundly nearly unhinged her, left nerves raw and bare and ripe for picking to anyone who dared.
It would be too easy to blame everything on Harvey, she wants to blame everything on Harvey for her own sanity’s sake, but it isn’t that simple, and Donna has never been the type of person to take the easy way out of anything. The weight of everything that has transpired between them both professionally and personally is a burden they both have to carry.
This connection they share– while functional and almost necessary to ensure one, if not both of their survivals – is unhealthily codependent and complicated and messy.
It is also theirs and theirs alone, something no one else has been able to touch – until now.
There are times where Donna has trouble wrapping her head around what exactly cut deeper: Harvey’s own act of betrayal or the formation of a fault line in a foundation she had always believed was indestructible.
Days and weeks later, she is no closer to an answer.
“Where did you go just now?”
It should be his voice that shakes her out of her thoughts, but it’s not. Instead, it’s the feel of his touch against her skin, the weight of his fingers as they trace the subtle line of her ankle. She glances at his face, but he’s not looking at her. He’s watching his fingers as they smooth against her skin, and he must be drunk or damn well close to it, because they’ve always been careful about these sorts of things, about keeping their distance and being respectful of each other’s physical space.
There is a line they drew years before, one that is bold and bright and never ignored because at one point in their vast history with one another they arrived at the mutual decision that their relationship is too important, too vital to risk on something that has no guarantee of lasting. When it comes to each other, they only deal in absolutes.
Most days, Donna is okay with it. Most days, she realizes she is thankful for Harvey, thankful for his presence in her life because he is her boss, her friend. They have amassed this vast array of intimate knowledge of each other, and as much as she claims to know him, he knows her just as well. There is a certain amount of beautiful simplicity in that, and most days she finds it comforting.
But then there are the other days. The ones where Donna realizes the line they collectively drew between them means absolutely nothing. They’ve been finding ways around it for years, infiltrating all the tiny crevices of each other’s life, binding themselves to one another in every way but one.
Lately, she has found herself having a few too many of the other days – the days when she’s slow to start, and the bitterness, the slight tinge of regret lingers in the back of her throat before she gets a chance to bury it. She likes to blame it on circumstance, on the events that have unfolded over the past weeks and months instead of something else entirely.
She thinks about making a joke, something about how she hates to move, but he would see through it immediately. So instead, she just stares at his fingers as they rest against her ankle before saying honestly, “I am sorry, you know.”
Harvey’s hands still, but don’t leave her. His eyes slide towards hers as he looks at her expectantly. He doesn’t say anything, just waits patiently for her to continue when she’s ready.
There are things she needs to stay, truths she needs to share, and she can’t concentrate with him this close and the feel of his touch seeping into her bones, so she drags the glass to her lips and finishes what is left just so she can busy him with pouring her another. When he pulls away to do just that, Donna finds herself breathing a soft sigh of something akin to relief and watches the smooth line of his back as he twists to reach for the bottle.
“Not about what I did,” she amends and he smiles at her like he knew those words were coming as he presses her glass back into her hands. She supposes he probably did. “I will never be sorry for trying to protect you, Harvey. But I am sorry for not coming to you first. I should have trusted you. I should have trusted in us.”
He doesn’t look at her for a moment, his eyes trained on the liquid in his glass as he swirls it and drags it to his lips to take a sip. He goes to say something, even opens his mouth, but ultimately stops himself. Donna figures she knows what he was going to say – I’m sorry too, maybe, or something similar because he is and she knows it. It is a sentiment embedded into every action, but those words are a weapon Harvey likes to use sparingly even if they are true, and Donna knows this. It is why she is mostly okay with him never uttering them aloud, even if he did hurt her too. This is just one of the many allowances she makes for him everyday despite how frustrating it can be to do so, to allow these things of him when he doesn’t always do the same for her.
Pushing himself away from the desk, Harvey pulls away from her and the moment, from whatever he wanted to say but couldn’t bring himself to. Donna knows the record playing is about to draw to a close, drums out the beat with her index finger against her thigh, and watches as Harvey moves to the opposite side of the room where his collection used to stand on display, and switches one record with another he brought up from the 46th floor. Donna recognizes the familiar smooth and melodic sounds of Mingus immediately, her mouth curling at the corners slightly as Harvey crosses the room and back to her.
She tries to remember then if she liked jazz before him, if she even really understood what good music was before Harvey. She suspects she didn’t. It was one of the very first things he ever shared with her – the love for music that his father instilled him at such a young age. He resumes his position near her feet again, one hand in his pocket and the other tight around his tumbler as he closes his eyes and nods his head along with the beat. He looks boyish and young, with the soft twist of his mouth and the way his shoulders continue to soften second by second before finally relaxing completely. Donna takes a moment to herself to admire the sight of him like this, and allows a memory to find her then, one that is buried somewhere near the beginning of their long, expansive history with each other. It’s her and it’s Harvey in his tiny hole of an office when he worked for the DA. It was in the aftermath of his first major victory, the one that put him on the map, and instead of heading out to celebrate, they had stayed in, split a bottle of something cheap as he told her about his father, as he taught her how too appreciate the beauty of music.
It seems like a very long time ago now.
“You know this isn’t over, right?” she asks him quietly, breaking the silence. “They’re just going to keep coming for us.”
He doesn’t look at her as he murmurs grimly, “I know.”
“Hardman knew exactly what planting that memo would do. He knew you would send me to find it. He knew I would find it. And he also knew exactly what choice I would make when faced with the need to protect you.” She takes a long sip of her drink and feels it go straight to her head, makes a mental note of no more. “And now because of Hardman, everyone knows I have a weak spot and exactly where it is.”
Harvey’s mouth turns, but he doesn’t smile. Pulling his hand out of his pocket, he reaches for her again, his fingers briefly skimming the soft skin of her ankle once more. His touch is light, the pressure just so as he draws a delicate line around the jut of bone. Her breath hitches, just a little as he draws circles into her skin, and Donna knows, without a doubt, that he’s drunk. They both are, probably, but when he looks at her there is a blinding clarity in his features, a stunning amount of certainty that leaves her breathless.
“You’re mine too,” he tells her quietly, glancing at her as he ceases contact and shoves his hand back in his pocket. Harvey has never been good with these sorts of declarations, so he washes it down with the remainder of his drink and sets the now empty glass to the side. “Everybody knows it. Everybody who counts has always known it, and that is exactly why what happened – that divide between us – can’t ever happen again.”
She runs the pad of her thumb over the rim of her own glass, glancing at him as she says softly, “I know.”
“We can’t fight a war unless we are a unified front. I need you on my side. I need you with me.”
It’s the third time he’s used that word with her in so many days, and it still does something funny to her, causes this fierce constriction in her chest that almost hurts.
“I’ve always been on your side, Harvey,” she tells him. Setting her drink to the side, Donna sits up a little straighter in his chair. Her hands are steady as she counters, “Are you on mine?” The words are weighted and pointed, but sound kinder than she imagined they would.
Harvey doesn’t miss a beat. Says, “Always,” with the sort of conviction he usually saves for Jessica or the courtroom. His tone is softer when he adds a moment later, “And I am sorry that I made you doubt it. I really am.”
Any resentment, any anger she had been holding on to falls away, just that easily, and she hates herself a little for it, for continuing to make these allowances despite how much it exhausts her. Still, she finds herself smiling at him widely, teeth and all, as she can’t help but admire the way he responds all too readily in kind.
“Okay,” she breathes.
There is a moment that lasts for an inordinate stretch of time where they just grin stupidly at one another before Harvey suddenly pushes himself away from the desk again, effectively ruining the moment. He starts going through drawers and unopened boxes, tearing through items that don’t belong to him, before spotting a toolbox buried in a far corner which somebody must have left during the move. He heads straight for it, and Donna finally places her feet flat on the floor, her legs like jelly as she tries to stand.
Deciding better of it, she sits back down, counts to five before asking, “What exactly are you doing?” just as Harvey lets out a victorious shout and raises some sort of tool in the air. Her eyes narrow in on his hands. It’s a paint scraper.
“We,” he corrects, “are going to do maintenance a favor and peel that bastard’s name off the walls ourselves. Then I am going to take you to that fancy restaurant you like for a late dinner.” Harvey has that glint in his eye that she can’t help but sort of love, the one he saves for eleventh hour appeals, the hard-fought wins, and Donna finds herself grinning so widely in return that her cheeks start to ache.
In the doorway, he pauses, lingering to wait for her. Donna pushes herself out of the chair and crosses the distance to him in her bare feet, jumping slightly from left to right at the sudden rush of coolness from the tiles underneath her toes.
“Do I want to keep the D for Donna or the A for awesome? I can’t decide,” she says giddily, skipping a little as they start to make their way past the desk Donna will be reclaiming tomorrow and towards the elevators.
Harvey just laughs, the sound warm, rare, and so, so lovely as it presses into her skin.
She smiles up at him and stumbles a little as they walk, her legs tired and the alcohol and excitement weighing her down. Harvey is there though, his fingers strong and secure near the crook of her arm as he steadies her.
Summary: When it comes to each other, they only deal in absolutes. Harvey, Donna, and a series of small confessions set in the aftermath of High Noon.
Rating: pg
Author's Notes: 2,716 words. General series spoilers with specifics for 2x10. All mistakes are mine. These characters, however, are not. Con-crit is, as always, welcome and appreciated.
Let us first take a moment to appreciate the sight of Donna owning this place like a BOSS (and, of course, the little smile these two idiots share):
They linger long after Jessica and Mike leave for the evening. Donna stays seated in her rightful spot in Harvey’s chair, her legs propped up on the desk he’s recently reclaimed. They’re crossed at the ankle, her feet bare as she stares out towards the bright lights of the city’s skyline. She hears the heaviness of Harvey’s gait as he rounds the corner, turns her head to greet him with a smile when he slides through the doorway all smiles of victory, holding up a bottle of scotch and two crystal tumblers. He’s still in his suit, but the jacket is a little wrinkled around the edges, his perfectly knotted tie slightly undone with the dimple just left of center. This is Donna’s favorite version of Harvey – slightly unkempt and just a little undone, when it is just the two of them, just him and her when the weight of the world isn’t closing in around them. Her smile grows wider as he nears her, his weight shifting to rest against the edge of the desk somewhere near her feet.
“Hardman’s?” she asks with an arched eyebrow. Harvey chuckles, the glasses clinking against the metal frame of the desk as he sets them down. He fills each with two fingers worth of what Donna can only imagine is very, very expensive and well-aged scotch.
“Of course,” he says smugly. “What’s his is now mine.”
“Isn’t stealing what started this whole thing to begin with?”
“Is it really stealing when security escorts you out of the building and you leave it behind?”
The question is rhetorical, of course, so Donna merely rolls her eyes. Harvey hands her the glass, and she’s a little surprised at the way he allows his fingers to linger against hers for a brief moment before pulling away. The soulful sounds of Charlie Parker play witness as the vinyl hums slowly in the background – the player and accompanying record were the first things he grabbed when they decided to reclaim his office – and she brings the glass to her lips, takes a slow, small sip. It’s thick and warm and burns a little on the way down, but Donna doesn’t allow it show, merely smiles at the way Harvey watches her every move, his lips curled around the rim of his own glass.
With the tumbler to her lips, the liquid is a little smoother as it slides down her throat a second time time; Harvey follows her lead and takes a swallow. He has this way of looking at her sometimes, all warm and bright, the curl of his lips soft. It’s too much now, with the alcohol humming under her skin and coiling with something completely separate deep in her belly, so she looks away, returns her attention to the skyline outside. Harvey sighs something weighted, finishing his glass and reaching for the bottle to pour another.
Taking a moment for herself, Donna reflects on the events of the past few weeks, on her time away from the firm, away from Harvey. She thinks about Hardman and that damn memo, about Harvey’s silence as she walked out of his life, how he let her walk out his life, and the betrayal and anger that cut a roadmap to her greatest weakness in the aftermath. Having Harvey in her life has always coincided with a certain amount of vulnerability that is impossible to escape; it’s something she has learned to accept, but this mess they made of things, this disconnect she felt so profoundly nearly unhinged her, left nerves raw and bare and ripe for picking to anyone who dared.
It would be too easy to blame everything on Harvey, she wants to blame everything on Harvey for her own sanity’s sake, but it isn’t that simple, and Donna has never been the type of person to take the easy way out of anything. The weight of everything that has transpired between them both professionally and personally is a burden they both have to carry.
This connection they share– while functional and almost necessary to ensure one, if not both of their survivals – is unhealthily codependent and complicated and messy.
It is also theirs and theirs alone, something no one else has been able to touch – until now.
There are times where Donna has trouble wrapping her head around what exactly cut deeper: Harvey’s own act of betrayal or the formation of a fault line in a foundation she had always believed was indestructible.
Days and weeks later, she is no closer to an answer.
“Where did you go just now?”
It should be his voice that shakes her out of her thoughts, but it’s not. Instead, it’s the feel of his touch against her skin, the weight of his fingers as they trace the subtle line of her ankle. She glances at his face, but he’s not looking at her. He’s watching his fingers as they smooth against her skin, and he must be drunk or damn well close to it, because they’ve always been careful about these sorts of things, about keeping their distance and being respectful of each other’s physical space.
There is a line they drew years before, one that is bold and bright and never ignored because at one point in their vast history with one another they arrived at the mutual decision that their relationship is too important, too vital to risk on something that has no guarantee of lasting. When it comes to each other, they only deal in absolutes.
Most days, Donna is okay with it. Most days, she realizes she is thankful for Harvey, thankful for his presence in her life because he is her boss, her friend. They have amassed this vast array of intimate knowledge of each other, and as much as she claims to know him, he knows her just as well. There is a certain amount of beautiful simplicity in that, and most days she finds it comforting.
But then there are the other days. The ones where Donna realizes the line they collectively drew between them means absolutely nothing. They’ve been finding ways around it for years, infiltrating all the tiny crevices of each other’s life, binding themselves to one another in every way but one.
Lately, she has found herself having a few too many of the other days – the days when she’s slow to start, and the bitterness, the slight tinge of regret lingers in the back of her throat before she gets a chance to bury it. She likes to blame it on circumstance, on the events that have unfolded over the past weeks and months instead of something else entirely.
She thinks about making a joke, something about how she hates to move, but he would see through it immediately. So instead, she just stares at his fingers as they rest against her ankle before saying honestly, “I am sorry, you know.”
Harvey’s hands still, but don’t leave her. His eyes slide towards hers as he looks at her expectantly. He doesn’t say anything, just waits patiently for her to continue when she’s ready.
There are things she needs to stay, truths she needs to share, and she can’t concentrate with him this close and the feel of his touch seeping into her bones, so she drags the glass to her lips and finishes what is left just so she can busy him with pouring her another. When he pulls away to do just that, Donna finds herself breathing a soft sigh of something akin to relief and watches the smooth line of his back as he twists to reach for the bottle.
“Not about what I did,” she amends and he smiles at her like he knew those words were coming as he presses her glass back into her hands. She supposes he probably did. “I will never be sorry for trying to protect you, Harvey. But I am sorry for not coming to you first. I should have trusted you. I should have trusted in us.”
He doesn’t look at her for a moment, his eyes trained on the liquid in his glass as he swirls it and drags it to his lips to take a sip. He goes to say something, even opens his mouth, but ultimately stops himself. Donna figures she knows what he was going to say – I’m sorry too, maybe, or something similar because he is and she knows it. It is a sentiment embedded into every action, but those words are a weapon Harvey likes to use sparingly even if they are true, and Donna knows this. It is why she is mostly okay with him never uttering them aloud, even if he did hurt her too. This is just one of the many allowances she makes for him everyday despite how frustrating it can be to do so, to allow these things of him when he doesn’t always do the same for her.
Pushing himself away from the desk, Harvey pulls away from her and the moment, from whatever he wanted to say but couldn’t bring himself to. Donna knows the record playing is about to draw to a close, drums out the beat with her index finger against her thigh, and watches as Harvey moves to the opposite side of the room where his collection used to stand on display, and switches one record with another he brought up from the 46th floor. Donna recognizes the familiar smooth and melodic sounds of Mingus immediately, her mouth curling at the corners slightly as Harvey crosses the room and back to her.
She tries to remember then if she liked jazz before him, if she even really understood what good music was before Harvey. She suspects she didn’t. It was one of the very first things he ever shared with her – the love for music that his father instilled him at such a young age. He resumes his position near her feet again, one hand in his pocket and the other tight around his tumbler as he closes his eyes and nods his head along with the beat. He looks boyish and young, with the soft twist of his mouth and the way his shoulders continue to soften second by second before finally relaxing completely. Donna takes a moment to herself to admire the sight of him like this, and allows a memory to find her then, one that is buried somewhere near the beginning of their long, expansive history with each other. It’s her and it’s Harvey in his tiny hole of an office when he worked for the DA. It was in the aftermath of his first major victory, the one that put him on the map, and instead of heading out to celebrate, they had stayed in, split a bottle of something cheap as he told her about his father, as he taught her how too appreciate the beauty of music.
It seems like a very long time ago now.
“You know this isn’t over, right?” she asks him quietly, breaking the silence. “They’re just going to keep coming for us.”
He doesn’t look at her as he murmurs grimly, “I know.”
“Hardman knew exactly what planting that memo would do. He knew you would send me to find it. He knew I would find it. And he also knew exactly what choice I would make when faced with the need to protect you.” She takes a long sip of her drink and feels it go straight to her head, makes a mental note of no more. “And now because of Hardman, everyone knows I have a weak spot and exactly where it is.”
Harvey’s mouth turns, but he doesn’t smile. Pulling his hand out of his pocket, he reaches for her again, his fingers briefly skimming the soft skin of her ankle once more. His touch is light, the pressure just so as he draws a delicate line around the jut of bone. Her breath hitches, just a little as he draws circles into her skin, and Donna knows, without a doubt, that he’s drunk. They both are, probably, but when he looks at her there is a blinding clarity in his features, a stunning amount of certainty that leaves her breathless.
“You’re mine too,” he tells her quietly, glancing at her as he ceases contact and shoves his hand back in his pocket. Harvey has never been good with these sorts of declarations, so he washes it down with the remainder of his drink and sets the now empty glass to the side. “Everybody knows it. Everybody who counts has always known it, and that is exactly why what happened – that divide between us – can’t ever happen again.”
She runs the pad of her thumb over the rim of her own glass, glancing at him as she says softly, “I know.”
“We can’t fight a war unless we are a unified front. I need you on my side. I need you with me.”
It’s the third time he’s used that word with her in so many days, and it still does something funny to her, causes this fierce constriction in her chest that almost hurts.
“I’ve always been on your side, Harvey,” she tells him. Setting her drink to the side, Donna sits up a little straighter in his chair. Her hands are steady as she counters, “Are you on mine?” The words are weighted and pointed, but sound kinder than she imagined they would.
Harvey doesn’t miss a beat. Says, “Always,” with the sort of conviction he usually saves for Jessica or the courtroom. His tone is softer when he adds a moment later, “And I am sorry that I made you doubt it. I really am.”
Any resentment, any anger she had been holding on to falls away, just that easily, and she hates herself a little for it, for continuing to make these allowances despite how much it exhausts her. Still, she finds herself smiling at him widely, teeth and all, as she can’t help but admire the way he responds all too readily in kind.
“Okay,” she breathes.
There is a moment that lasts for an inordinate stretch of time where they just grin stupidly at one another before Harvey suddenly pushes himself away from the desk again, effectively ruining the moment. He starts going through drawers and unopened boxes, tearing through items that don’t belong to him, before spotting a toolbox buried in a far corner which somebody must have left during the move. He heads straight for it, and Donna finally places her feet flat on the floor, her legs like jelly as she tries to stand.
Deciding better of it, she sits back down, counts to five before asking, “What exactly are you doing?” just as Harvey lets out a victorious shout and raises some sort of tool in the air. Her eyes narrow in on his hands. It’s a paint scraper.
“We,” he corrects, “are going to do maintenance a favor and peel that bastard’s name off the walls ourselves. Then I am going to take you to that fancy restaurant you like for a late dinner.” Harvey has that glint in his eye that she can’t help but sort of love, the one he saves for eleventh hour appeals, the hard-fought wins, and Donna finds herself grinning so widely in return that her cheeks start to ache.
In the doorway, he pauses, lingering to wait for her. Donna pushes herself out of the chair and crosses the distance to him in her bare feet, jumping slightly from left to right at the sudden rush of coolness from the tiles underneath her toes.
“Do I want to keep the D for Donna or the A for awesome? I can’t decide,” she says giddily, skipping a little as they start to make their way past the desk Donna will be reclaiming tomorrow and towards the elevators.
Harvey just laughs, the sound warm, rare, and so, so lovely as it presses into her skin.
She smiles up at him and stumbles a little as they walk, her legs tired and the alcohol and excitement weighing her down. Harvey is there though, his fingers strong and secure near the crook of her arm as he steadies her.
