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Harvey doesn’t say the words that night.
They’re not on his radar. There’s a feeling, sure; a fuzzy tickle, a warmth that seeps through his chest and out of the tips of his fingers, translated into kinetic energy, electricity and heat.
It’s a feeling he can’t put into words, not at the time.
But he says it with his lips as he sucks on her mouth, her nipples, the whipped cream out of her belly button. He says it with his hands in her hair, pads of his fingers brushing her ribcage, ghosting her inner thighs and bringing her to release again and again.
He says it when he rolls off of her, grabs the pillow from where they’d kicked it to the end of the bed and boosts her up, tucking her under his arm.
He says it when he helps throw her sheets in the wash the following morning, picks up her cardigan and drapes it over her closet door, and he says it as he strokes her elbow as he leans down to give her a kiss on the cheek.
It’s there, under the surface, brewing deep within his bones.
He pushes it down and chalks it up to the relief of physical intimacy.
Anything else would be too much to handle.
But over the years, he tells her with his gaze, with his actions, hidden in the spaces between other words uttered with fleeting vulnerability.
Somehow, it means more, holds more power than those three little words ever could.
———
“Of course, Donna. I’d do anything for you.”
It’s a reflex; he doesn’t even think about it. The second the question leaves her lips, Harvey is already on high alert, the pile of briefs in front of him mentally discarded as he focuses on her wringing hands and creased brow.
There is nothing he wouldn’t do for her.
Except put her in danger.
The panic — it’s a feeling he equates to uncertainty, to losing, but at the same time it’s deeper, less like a gut-punch and more like someone decided to reach right in and tear up his insides.
He should have talked to her first, he did try but she wouldn’t listen, and maybe it’s controlling but his stomach sits uncomfortably tight and he can’t just do nothing . Can’t let Donna be blindsided the same way he was.
There’s a question there, the Why capital W, and it gives him pause, keeps him up that night after confronting her father, his protectiveness overwhelming.
But he thinks in that moment the why doesn’t matter; Harvey will always do anything for her. Just like the sky is blue and the earth is round. An unquestionable fact.
———
He gives her Halloween off every year.
He agrees without hesitation. She doesn’t even have to ask anymore; he automatically assumes she’ll be out that day, does his best to make sure all loose ends are tied up so he won’t have to call her and interrupt whatever it is she does.
(He does call her, one year, because he needs to ask her if she filed that subpoena even though he holds the confirmation receipt in his free hand. Donna is barely heard over the screaming kids in line to get their faces painted and that night Harvey dreams about a little strawberry-blonde girl, clinging between them with a pumpkin on her cheek.)
So each year she asks and each year he gives her a good deal of ribbing. The answer’s always yes, and he knows she knows it, but there’s joy for both of them in this song and dance.
“You can have Halloween off this year.”
Just one small way he can repay her for the shit he puts her through.
———
“Look, I need you.”
She looks back at him incredulously, her posture intrigued yet defeated. “Need?”
And he finds himself as bared open and honest as he’s ever been on 57th at nine in the morning.
“Need.”
He’s a lawyer, he’s been taught to never negotiate from a position of weakness. But he is weak, without her, and maybe it’s time she knows that, if she doesn’t already.
———
He gives his full attention to her.
Whether it’s a meaningful discussion under the city lights or their easy morning repartee. Every cell, every nerve ending is zeroed in on her; her voice, her stance, the quirk of her brow, the scrunch of her nose (up to the right when she’s mad, quick and jaunty when she’s on the verge of laughter).
She laughs the same way this morning, as he faces her toe to toe, leaning against her cubicle while she tells him about the dickhead behind her in the Starbucks line this morning, and right now there is nothing more important to him.
———
His fingertips linger on her back as she climbs into the Lexus, and the drive to Nougatine is quiet, but not unpleasant.
He doesn’t know what else to say that wouldn’t end with him seething over Stephen fucking Huntley. But he knows she doesn’t want to talk about it — Harvey, you don’t have to do this — so he doesn’t say anything.
Instead, he takes out the bottle of vanilla from his breast pocket and adds it to her coffee without a word, and the smile they exchange says enough.
———
He picks up the flowers that night. Deliberately chosen, a mix of pinks and reds that he knows she likes.
Through this mess with Mike, Logan, Gillis, now Cahill — she’s been there for him every step of the way. Just like she has always been.
The least he can do is be there for her, tonight.
He presents the bouquet with a quirk of his brow and as her voice stutters, so does his heart.
———
Harvey has never seen Donna Paulsen cry.
It’s not that she’s cold or unfeeling. Anything but. It’s that she is the perfect picture of poise and professionalism and is usually much better than him at keeping her emotions in check.
For the first time in nearly eleven years, he is at a loss and all it takes is the smudges under her eyes and her quivering bottom lip.
And he doesn’t think about Mike, or himself — he thinks about her.
“You did everything you could have done,” he says gently yet with conviction, willing her to understand that.
It doesn’t matter if she knew. He won’t let her take the fall for something he did.
———
He won’t let her take the fall no matter what.
Liberty rail hits him like a truck, no pun intended. His emotions run high — anger, fear, annoyance, blame, worry, and a fierce protectiveness covering it all.
Mike berates him for not taking enough risks and his outburst of she’s different is what causes the pin to drop, makes him suck in a sharp breath and deflect before he has to think about the why and the what ifs.
But then he’s on her couch, and their thighs brush together and her eyes are warm and inviting and he tells her the same.
“With you, it’s different.”
His heart is on his sleeve. He doesn’t want to explain, but he wants her to know, and she knows but she wants the more that he isn’t sure he can give.
But his emotions run high, exhausted from the day and the sheer panic of potentially losing her, and he lets the three words slip out without really thinking because she should know .
And when he does say it, it’s loud and percussive, reverberates through his bones. It shocks him just as much as it shocks her.
They do better with half-truths and silent conversations.
———
“I wanted to thank you.”
“For what?”
“For twelve years.”
Heart in his throat, extending the olive branch, tentative and earnest and sincere in a way he’s really only ever been with her.
“Twelve years” means countless cups of coffee, inside jokes and telling glances, steering him in the right direction, accepting him when he drifts off course. Twelve years of coexisting, sharing each other’s space, Donna carving out a piece of his soul reserved for her and her alone. Until her piece grew and consumed him entirely.
It means I love you and I meant it, and I hope you know what to do with that and I hope you know that I’m trying.
———
“Are you saying you’re coming back to me?”
“Yes.” Donna pauses to lower her chin ever so slightly, defiantly, decidedly. “I am.”
The corners of his mouth turn up involuntarily. “Good.”
He utters the simple word with reverence. It’s way more than good , and it sounds like more, laced with equal yearning and relief.
———
He’s at her door because he has nowhere else to go. No one else who will talk this through with him, no one else who knows him like she does.
But he’s also at her door because this is the only place he wants to go.
Because I think you’re worthy... and I don’t want to lose you.
Suddenly the air around them is suffocating and it’s far too much like that one night, where he lost her and a part of himself and he swallows, falls silent, grips the back of the chair more tightly because he needs to leave, now .
So he does, and she’s not upset, or confused, or shocked into silence. Instead she looks him in the eyes and believes in him, profoundly and without reservation. His knees buckle with the weight of her words, her emotions, her stare. He knows what’s there. All he manages is a nod.
He doesn’t tell her that night.
Instead, he listens to her. Doesn’t turn himself in for Mike. He has faith in himself and he shows her.
———
You want to be alone?
No.
The single syllable slips out with unconscious defeat. There’s something crying out deep in his soul tonight and as soon as she’s next to him and holds out her hand, he grabs it tight and doesn’t let go.
They stay there for minutes, maybe hours, and she gives his fingers a gentle squeeze. The unspoken are you going to be okay thrums between them.
And he is. He will be. As long as he has her.
He reciprocates, squeezes back and rubs his thumb across her knuckles, smoothing over each bump and he can feel the pulse in her wrist and her breath hitch.
I’m okay.
I love you.
———
He doesn’t know when it becomes less of a fleeting thought and more of an inalienable truth. He just knows that one day he woke up and it wasn’t just I want you in that way . It was I want you in every way .
It’s there, simmering right below the surface, hidden under legal prowess and snarky humor and a layer of guilt and self-sabotage.
Even if he doesn’t say it out loud, it’s always there; in every conversation, every hungry thought, every gentle dream. Every time she clicks her pen or twirls her hair or winks at him through the door.
(And he’s terrified. Because the weight of this feeling is unlike anything he’s experienced before.)
———
He rips up her resignation letter like it’s burning his hands to hold.
“Will you come back?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m okay.”
He’s rigid and tense, but actions speak louder than words, and his eyes scream something deep and powerful and guttural that drowns out everything else.
“Do you want to come in?”
The resounding yes flips in his belly, but he knows himself and he knows her and he loves her and they’re too raw right now.
“Not tonight.”
It’s a promise. It’s a someday soon .
It’s a confession in its own right.
———
They’ve been drinking together since Bush’s second term. Since that night in the bar when she proved to be unlike any woman — anyone — he’d ever met.
He remembers the first time they shared scotch. How her nose had turned up, vehemently claiming she didn’t drink hard liquor. She finished the whole glass and he teased her mercilessly when she asked for a refill.
Tonight, it’s just them in the dark office, as it always was and always is and always will be. Toeing along their new normal since the unspeakable and what better peace offering than Macallan 18?
He swirls the liquid in her glass before handing it off to her, fingers brushing his and the electricity is familiar — because really, it never left.
Kissing her had flipped that switch they both agreed to shut off twelve years ago.
Harvey’s face is passive as he watches her, the light dancing off her face, one slender eyebrow raised in concern.
He shakes his head, says nothing, but clinks his glass against hers and hopes it says everything that he’s not, that he can’t.
It’s not about the drinks. It never was.
———
He’s never felt the words as strongly as he does tonight.
They haven’t been this close since the other time, since they were pressed skin to skin, face to face, heart to heart.
Now, her nose brushes his ear the same way it did when she whispered I’m going to come , convulsing around him with a wordless gasp and a bite to the lobe.
Now, his fingers curl around her waist the same way they did as she fit against him in the early dawn, and the indent of her waist welcomes him home.
Now, her palm is splayed on his back, smoothing over the same path she made with her fingernails after he emptied inside her, full and complete.
Harvey twists and turns with her in his arms, holds her hand as though it’s the most precious thing in the world and he hopes she can tell by the squeeze of his fingers that —
— he’s ready.
———
Together in bed, warm and fuzzy and crackling, all he can think is finally . Harvey hovers above her frame and grazes her cheek with his palm, the words threatening to explode from every inch of him.
All he manages is her name.
It says magnitudes.
“I know.”
She knows.
She’s always known.
———
“I love you, Donna Paulsen.”
It’s effortless, easy as breathing, floats out of his heart and into hers and there’s a lightness to him he hasn’t felt in years. Hasn’t felt ever , except when he’s with her.
This is how he loves her.
With everything he is.
The words are nice. The words are freeing. But the words are only a fraction of what she means to him.
And she smiles into their kiss and he’s ready to show her how he loves her for the rest of his life.