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“Isn’t it funny. I’m enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever enjoyed love. Love is temperamental. Tiring. It makes demands. Love uses you, changes its mind. But hatred, now, that’s something you can use. Sculpt. Wield. It’s hard, or soft, however you need it. Love humiliates you, but Hatred cradles you.”
Janet Finch, White Oleander
Harvey knows hatred well. He sets it a place at the table, alongside his father’s ghost and his brother’s shame. Hate and be hated; the latter is definite, so Harvey will be too. The wall is against his back. He has hate in one palm and secrets in another; armed to the teeth. He’ll come out swinging; he’ll come out on top.
He hasn’t forgiven his mother, he tells Donna in the little hours, over scotch and the blood and bone of coffee, because what she did was unforgivable. When she levels him with a stare, he looks away. He can never lie to her when she’s reading his mind.
Harvey hates change. He takes his coffee with milk and vanilla; begins his day with Wes Montgomery and ends with Miles Davis; 8am starts Monday through Friday, the weekends reserve themselves for morning meetings or breakfast at Nougatine. He lunches with Jessica at least once a month. He calls Marcus on birthdays, the anniversary of their father’s death, and on special occasions. Before every trial, he and Donna take a moment with a can opener and a dozen something thumbtacks. Four times a year they go to Del Posto – the anniversaries of her starting to work for him, the move to Pearson Hardman, his junior partnership, and his senior partnership. One of these days, they’ll take Mike for drinks and Harvey will drink only McCallan. If they stay late, he’ll get Chinese with Mike; shitty Thai with Donna; sushi with Jessica. After fundraisers and galas, Ray joins him and Donna for whatever she’s been craving. The next morning, no matter how many drinks he buys them, Ray will pick him up at 7:45, and Donna will greet him with coffee at 8:02.
He is a creature of many things, but always of habit.
This, he tells himself, is why Donna’s faltering stream of boyfriends and fiances and flings bothers him. Ice melting on the nape of his neck, he cannot quite place the source of the discomfort, but he feels it everywhere. It's 8:18 and there’s no sign of her. At this rate he’ll have to get his own coffee. At 20 past he sends Mike downstairs – a vanilla latte and whatever monstrosity of cream and caramel she’s drinking this week. He leaves it on her desk – a boon or a warning, he isn’t quite sure.
She arrives at just gone 9, staunchly avoiding his eye. Harvey is a man of routine. He will tease the first few times, then let his anger show. If her distraction persists, though it rarely does, he’ll make a point to request she schedules his meetings early, and late. He bookends the day with work she cannot avoid, and if he feels guilt, it is hidden beneath the satisfaction at having her near, files and unspoken words and the look in her eyes when she reads his mind.
And if he conceals his dalliances, if only to make her think of them, well, that’s a question for another time.
He remembers when they came to Pearson Hardman, the taste of her toothpaste in his mouth as they stepped into the elevator. ‘They’ because since he first set eyes on them, he decided it was to be so. And what Harvey wants, he gets.
Well, except for that. But he contents himself with memories of red hair and strawberries, and the constancy of work, which love could never afford.
When she leaves the other man, and she always does, she will come in at 7:52. Harvey will know, because the cup will have cooled more than usual. She is effulgent in the morning light. The colours of her hair make him dizzy. He sips lukewarm coffee and tries not to let his relief show. Allows his meetings to start later, finish earlier, secure in the knowledge she’ll stay regardless. They trade familiar barbs; New York sings around them; the sunlight entwines around her and Harvey is enthralled. On mornings like these it is a struggle to keep his mouth shut.
When she asks him how he loves her it is even harder to do so. How does he love her? The ways and rhythms of his affection have been constant for years. Hasn’t she seen it on his face? In the motion of his hands? Doesn’t she know, like he knows, some innate instinct as familiar as breath, as sight, as the smell of her shampoo.
To answer will be to lose her. He knows this as surely as he has known anything. She will leave, because there are lines in the sand, and they cannot have both. The second time she leaves will be from his bed, some hazy morning when she has realised he is not worth the time and patience. And she will be gone; London fog, the mist over the harbor. She asked him, long ago, not to mention their loving late into the night – he will uphold that promise even now.
She leaves, regardless.
Harvey’s seen this play before. She always did embody every role to startling standards.
Two weeks pass, and he hasn’t yet shaken the chill she left behind. Gretchen’s fine. Business is running smoothly. He throws up thinking about her footsteps leading away from his; how she wiped her tears so boldly. He watches her through glass and thinks about when she was his.
Two hours after he blows up at Mike, mouths off to Jessica, and embarrasses Louis, he finds himself sitting around waiting for her scolding.
He thinks about her hair in the sunlight and how the dreams of her linger, as he lingers now, in memories of her.
Harvey finds Donna in the file room. She is no doubt busy, busy for Louis and God it still stings like she stuck him through with a knife. But when she sees him she doesn’t turn away, and that’s all the encouragement Harvey needs. He is a drowning, desperate man. He stands in front of her without precedent or evidence as to how or why he is a good man, but his hand is winning – he has loved her for so long he can boast to be the best.
“However you like,” He tells her, hands in pockets, trying not to let her see how much he’s trembling.
She doesn’t understand, it’s so rare he catches her off guard that he almost laughs.
“You asked me how I love you, and I’m saying you can make the rules. I’ll take what I can get.”
The expression on her face is priceless; half agony, half hope. She is a jewel which exceeds every notion of value. She is everything he has ever wanted.
She rights herself. Fiddles with the papers. Smiles in a way which is so blatantly her he wants to drop to his knees; he wants to stride to her and kiss her senseless; he wants to ask her to marry him.
He smiles back.
“I’m not gonna make it that easy for you, mister,” She laughs, and Harvey is sinking through sands of time, back to a bar when he first laid eyes on her in all her beauty.
“You’re worth the effort,” He tells her, sincere and honest and open, and he sees her eyes soften, knows he’s won her over. But he’ll play along – he has been a dick, after all, “I’ll pick you up at seven, we have a reservation.”
She grins, giddy and wide, “How did you know I’d agree?”
Weeks later, in the lingering warmth of their bed, he will tell her of his desperation, his inability to think without her. He will tell her how he would have moved heaven and earth to be with her; how cold it was without her. But now, in between the stacks and boxes of their careers, he simply smiles. He knows she will find him incorrigible, and laugh – and she does – and he feels her light and warmth once more.
Their dinner ends at his, red wine and giggles on his couch, her legs slung over his lap.
The next morning, Ray drops her off on the way to the gym. He buys her a coffee and arrives at work early, just to wait for her at the elevators. He feels slightly ridiculous, like a spotty high schooler asking to carry his crush’s books to her locker in the morning. But her smile when she sees him is worth it; even worth Louis’ ire when he catches them chatting at her desk. He snaps and snarls and provokes, but all Harvey can do is grin. He must look entirely gormless. It’s bad
for his image, but he’ll survive being thought a fool in love.
He finds he’s proud of it.
Slowly, they make their own routines. They take their coffee at home, watching New York ready herself for another day of fighting, of grinding, of living. He walks her to her desk and meets her there every evening. On Wednesdays they dine out, any day they leave the office before 8 he cooks, but for the most part he learns to delight in shitty Thai. He plays her Billy Joel on vinyl every morning, and they listen to his father’s tapes in the long nights. She showers first if they take turns, spends an hour on her hair and makeup while he primps and preens in front of the bathroom mirror, fogged up enough that he can write D + H and erase it. Love makes him warm and soft. He is still black and blue, still ready for whatever hit he knows he’ll take next, but when the sun meanders through the strands of her hair, he is remade in shades of gold and red.