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It’s been the best two months of his life.
It’s not like he hadn’t been happy before - quite the contrary, just having Donna in his life in any capacity had already been so good that he hadn’t realized just how much better it could be with her in it in every capacity.
For fifteen years, Harvey had kidded himself thinking that what they had was enough, that he didn’t need nor want a real romantic relationship because those never lasted and everybody always left, that he could never really trust anyone with his heart.
What a waste.
The truth is, trusting Donna, letting her in, intertwining her with the rest of his life and with his very being, it had all been so natural that he never even noticed it had happened until he lost her for the first time - and then he tried even harder to keep a “healthy” distance between them because just being a few steps away from her had been so devastating he didn’t want to go through that again.
Thank God he eventually realized - much later than he should have, but, thankfully, still soon enough - that it was worth risking what they had for a chance to have everything. And thank God she felt the same way.
Since then, save for a handful of long, awful nights spent apart here and there, they’ve been inseparable. They wake up together and they go to sleep together, and every moment of his day that he’s not with her is spent thinking about her. It’s ridiculous, really, like he’s a schoolboy with a crush, but he doesn’t even care because the fullness and brightness he feels inside ever since they took that final step is worth all the sappiness and the cringeworthy things he’s taken to doing and saying.
But, as happy as he’s been, the whole thing hasn’t been without its challenges.
It took Harvey decades to build up the hard shell he still has around himself, years of ingrained beliefs and old, unhealed wounds festering inside of him, of pushing people away and suppressing his feelings and of being so afraid of being broken by a relationship that he didn’t let himself try to be healed by one.
It’s better now, he thinks, and he’s trying to get even better every day. But it’s hard to let go of some things. It’s hard to completely ditch the “fight or flight” instinct, to remember not to get his guard up, to be open and honest with Donna, to allow himself to be vulnerable.
And, most of all, it’s hard to stop feeling like she’ll leave all the time. They had a frank conversation about this after that first night they spent apart, and she told him explicitly that she wasn’t going to leave him. He keeps reminding himself of that, and sometimes it helps, but it’s not infallible. He knows arguments and rough patches are normal, but he still can’t quite shake the fear that, sooner or later, intentionally or not, he’ll do or say something that will make her think this whole thing was a mistake, that maybe he’s not good enough for her after all.
It’s the fear he has always had, ever since he was a kid, and as much as he trusts Donna, he just doesn’t trust himself enough not to screw this up. And he really, really doesn’t want to let her down, especially after everything he has put her through.
So he tries to show up in the best way he can, tries to do everything in his power to make her happy while still being true to himself, like she asked him to, and so far it’s been working out.
It might all come crashing down in a couple weeks’ time, though. Because Christmas is coming.
Donna is the biggest Christmas enthusiast he has ever met, it’s her favorite holiday after Halloween, and year after year he has had to endure her oppressive cheerfulness and her incessant dedication to the cause as soon as December came around. He finds it cute now that they’re together, but it can still be a lot to handle. Especially for someone who has never particularly liked Christmas.
He wouldn’t call himself a Grinch in the sense that he would want to end Christmas - he hates the crowds everywhere and the swarms of tourists and the Santas plastered in every single storefront and billboard and TV ad, but, apart from that, he doesn’t have an issue with the holiday itself.
It’s just that Christmas is celebrated as a holiday meant for family and community and happy childhood memories, and, for most of his formative years, he didn’t have any of that. His mother’s choices, though he has now made peace with them, made living in the same house as her a constant source of pain, irritation and discomfort. He didn’t want to be around her, didn’t want to bear the burden of her secrets, and especially didn’t want to be the one responsible for his father’s happiness.
And so when Christmas came around, things got especially hard, because not only did he still have to carry all of that like every other day, he was expected to do it with a smile on his face and a “Merry Christmas, mommy!” on his lips.
Of course, it’s been years now, and it had long stopped being such suffering, but, in the end, he just never developed the love for Christmas that most people seem to have. He doesn’t hate Christmas, but he’s not particularly fond of it either.
It’s not a big deal, and he doesn’t necessarily think Donna would leave him over it, but still, when he wakes up on December 2nd to find her already decked in an ugly Christmas sweater perched onto one of his island stools, with a gingerbread man-shaped mug in one hand and a notepad and pen in the other, his stomach flutters a little with nerves.
“Good morning,” Donna sing-songs, focused on her notepad.
“Morning, Ghost of Christmas Present,” Harvey jokes, dropping a kiss onto her head before heading for the coffee machine.
“Funny. So, I was thinking we could go to the Christmas tree farm upstate tomorrow to pick our tree, I already brought the decorations from my apartment so we can set it up, then next week we can go out to get Lucy’s present as well as our families’, and I saw they’re having a special Christmas Carols night at Lincoln Center, I figured we could go see it before dinner at Per Se. I already called my theater guy for tickets since it’s been sold out since last week but I think we can make it work.” The words come out of her mouth like a barrage, not even pausing for breath.
The long speech is a lot for Harvey when he hasn’t even had his morning coffee yet. “Sorry, what are we talking about exactly?” he asks, sleepily, as he pours the black liquid into a mug and blows on it.
“Our Christmas plans,” she replies like it’s obvious.
“Christmas isn’t until three weeks from now.”
Donna rolls her eyes, “No, Harvey, Christmas has already started, the 25th is basically the end of it.”
“So you’re already planning ahead for the whole month?”
“Please, these are just the plans till next week. I’ll update you as the weeks go by so you don’t forget everything.”
“Next week? You just spent twenty minutes rattling off a million tasks,” he finally turns to her, slightly aggravated.
“Yes, because it’s a busy time of the year and we need to organize ourselves if we want to get everything done.”
He would very much like to not get everything done. In fact, in his ideal world, he would get nothing at all done, and he and Donna would escape the snowy hellhole that is New York City at this time of the year and would spend the whole of Christmas in some deserted island soaking up tropical sun.
But he can’t very well tell her that, not only because it would spoil her fun, but also because he wants to try to maintain some sort of appearance that he likes Christmas just as much as the next guy.
“Okay,” he croaks out, trying to cover up his current line of thought.
“Okay! I’m excited!” Donna tells him, getting up from her seat and rounding the island to give him a peck on the lips.
It’s nice to see her excited, he thinks, and he doesn’t want to stifle that. It’s just a few weeks. He can pretend for a little while.
…
It’s been the busiest weeks of his life.
As much as he knew that Donna was intense about Christmas, he’d never actually been privy to her activities in her private time, so he didn’t know just how much she enjoyed doing.
It’s exhausting. At first they had those activities she mentioned, Christmas tree shopping and decorating. He hadn’t done that in almost forty years and he had definitely forgotten how freaking long it takes, especially with a perfectionist like Donna. He lost count of the amount of trees they surveyed before picking one, or how many times he had to disassemble and reassemble the ornaments at her behest because she wanted to try something else. It was a lot, and left him useless to the world afterwards.
Then came present shopping. Lucy’s gift was the longest he had ever spent at a store and it was freaking FAO Schwarz - and the kid wasn’t even his. The lines were gruesome and Donna rebuked every suggestion of his to just buy it online and have it delivered to Louis’ house. The adults’ presents were just as bad, and made worse by the fact that Donna, unsurprisingly, was very particular about what she wanted to get for each family member and they even had to hop between stores so she could find what she wanted.
And, when he was already completely drained, they capped off their night at the opera. He thinks he dozed off a little at some point of the recital, and he doesn’t know if Donna didn’t notice or just let it slide.
When he thought that was going to be it, Donna came along with more plans. They went to three different Christmas markets, went to the ice rink - she skated, he watched in awe and cold discomfort -, went to a gingerbread house workshop, a pet costume parade. He didn’t even know there were this many festive activities, it’s been a whole new world for him, and, though none of it was objectively bad, it was a lot, and he’d be lying if he said he feels that whole magic everyone is always talking about.
They’re still ten days away from the actual date, and Harvey thought surely there isn’t much else Donna can come up with at this point.
He was wrong.
“Hey, honey”, she calls out to him from the couch when he arrives home after a busy day at the firm.
“Hey,” he leans down to give her a kiss.
“I talked to Mike and Rachel and they’re coming so that makes eleven of us,” she tells him as he heads to the bedroom to change.
“Coming where?”
“Here.”
“Huh? When?”
“For Christmas.”
“What do you mean?” he sticks his head out the door to look at her.
“What do you mean, what do I mean? Mike and Rachel are coming here for Christmas, along with both our families. I told you this last week,” she tells him, sounding slightly annoyed.
A wave of panic surges inside of him - they’re hosting Christmas? A dinner for eleven people? In his condo? That’s insane, and he doesn’t remember agreeing to that, but it’s just as likely that Donna was on one of her holiday rants and he just wasn’t paying attention.
Unwilling to piss her off further, he fakes it. “Oh. Right. That. Uhm, okay.”
“You’re taking care of the food like we agreed, right? I’ll order a nice pie and take care of the seating and decorations,” she asks, clearly expecting his compliance, which he gives her.
How the hell is he going to figure out food for eleven people.
They sit down to watch TV but his mind is overtaken with this news. He starts thinking of the menu, of everything he needs to buy, of the prepping it takes, never mind that he never actually cooked any of that in his life. A solid thread of anxiety starts forming inside of him at the thought of every new task he needs to figure out and complete in just ten days, on top of work, and it’s already a lot.
“Hey, what if we ordered all the food?” he asks her suddenly, hours after she delivered the news.
She wrinkles her nose. “I mean, we could. But, seeing as this is our first Christmas together and we’re hosting our families, wouldn’t it be more special to cook it all ourselves? Especially since you’re such a good cook?” Donna smiles lovingly and caresses his chest, her signature move for when she wants to appease him.
He wants to say that no, it would not be more special, especially since it will be him doing most of the cooking, but she looks so happy and excited, and he put her through so much throughout the years that he doesn’t feel right saying no to her.
So he agrees, assuring her he’ll do the cooking, and hopes he can figure out how to get this all done and, more importantly, how to start getting in the Christmas mood.
…
Every day of the next week is torture.
The first couple of days, he’ll admit, he procrastinated. It’s just every time he thought about everything he’d have to plan, prep, execute and get ready, he just got extremely lazy and decided to do something else instead. His mistake was thinking he’d still have time.
The problem is that the final days before the holiday break are never quiet at the firm, he’s always known that, and yet he still didn’t consider that he might have to put out some fires before Christmas. With that, the “several days” he’d still have before the big party became less than a week, and panic started setting in.
Every time Harvey tried getting serious about actually starting all he had to do, he got paralyzed by indecision and by how daunting everything seemed. He didn’t know where to start doing it all alone, but he didn’t want to ask Donna for help either because he didn’t want to let her down, and so he got stuck in this limbo of being unable to find a solution.
The clock was ticking faster every day and the nervousness generated by that situation, along with his persistent lack of a Christmas spirit, put him in a near-constant state of anxiety that even started to make him lose sleep - he had insomnia for two nights straight, likely because of it. The worst part was that she asked him about his progress a couple of times, and he didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth, so he just said everything was under control.
It’s now the day before Christmas Eve and he has practically nothing to show for all his suffering. He managed to buy some ingredients and plan a few dishes but that was it, and he has less than 24 hours to get it all done, on top of work. It’s literally impossible, and he’s standing in his kitchen, trying to think of what to do, when Donna comes home from yoga.
He scrambles to cover up the scattered items he had laid out on the island, in a futile effort to hide from her the fact that he was lying and that everything is not, in fact, under control, but he isn’t fast enough.
“Hey,” she greets him before spotting the mess he made. “What is all this? Where’s the food for tomorrow?”
“I’m- still making it,” he tells her nervously.
“I thought you’d said you were gonna make it this afternoon while I was out,” she replies, guarded.
“Yeah, uh, something came up and I couldn’t get it all done, but I started it, I’ll just finish tomorrow.”
“Harvey, you won’t have time to do it all tomorrow, first off because everyone will be here at 4:30, and second off because we told Louis we’d drop by to give Lucy her present before that.”
“It’s fine, I can manage it.”
“How come you haven’t done it yet? I asked you about this several times this week,” she half-complains, starting to sound upset, and Harvey’s nerves get worse.
“I know, I just lost track of time,” he tries.
“How is that possible?” she flaps her arms.
“I just didn’t realize what day it was,” he explains lamely.
“It’s Christmas we’re talking about, how did you not realize?”
“It’s just… I…,” he struggles for another excuse, an explanation or a made-up story or anything that might get him out of telling the truth to her without pissing her off further. When he can’t find any, he just accepts his defeat, deflates, and sighs. “I just don’t really like Christmas, okay? And I thought I could just wing it somehow but I couldn’t.”
Donna frowns, as if she didn’t hear properly what he said. “What do you mean, you don’t like Christmas?”
He shrugs. “I don’t. And I know that’s not an excuse not to cook dinner but it’s been a busy month and I guess I just got holiday fatigue or something.”
“Harvey, why didn’t you tell me this? I wouldn’t have invited everyone over if I'd known,” Donna’s frown deepens, though she doesn’t sound super mad.
“I just didn’t want to disappoint you. I know how much you love it,” he scratches the back of his neck, embarrassed not only for having got caught but also for his customary inability to properly handle and express his emotions.
“Yeah, but me loving it doesn’t mean you have to love it too,” she cocks her head to the site. “I told you this before, I don’t want you lying to me about your opinions or wishes just to please me.”
He sighs, “I know. I’m sorry. I just didn’t want you to think we weren’t on the same page about this…”
“And so what if we weren’t?” she shrugs.
The question is simple, but his treacherous mind knows exactly so what. If they’re not on the same page, she might start thinking that they’re too different, or that he’s too much of a screw-up, or that he’s not good enough for her, and then…
He doesn’t tell her any of that, of course, but, in an effort to be more honest, he doesn’t make up any excuses either. “… You know…,” is all he says, awkwardly, then shrugs, burying his hands in his pockets.
Donna visibly softens in front of him, clearly understanding what he isn’t saying out loud.
“Hey,” she walks up to him, laying her hands on his hips. “I also told you this before: I love you, and I’m going to keep loving you, even if you screw up or if we fight and, yes, even if you don’t like Christmas.”
He chuckles and looks at her, finding her smiling tenderly at him, her eyes gentle.
He can’t believe how lucky he’s been to find her, to have her in his life for so long, to love her and be loved by her. It’s more than he’s ever thought he deserved, and it’s something he doesn’t ever want to lose - though he recognizes now that being honest and open despite his fear of abandonment is exactly what will prevent that from happening.
“Thanks,” he mutters, pulling her in by the waist and kissing her. She winds her arms around his neck and they don’t rush or intensify the kiss, just take their time savoring the taste of being back on the same page.
When they part, there’s a beat of comfortable silence, and then, “So, should I just tell everyone we’re having pizza tomorrow?” She smirks her playful grin that he loves so much.
“Oh, thank God, yes, please.”
In the end, they do have pizza, and no one thinks anything of it. They spend a surprisingly great night with their families and Mike and Rachel, who are also family, and exchange gifts and stories, and his mom even tells the crowd about one of his early Christmases.
And, of course, it’s all made better by Donna being by his side, smiling at him and holding his hand through the whole night. She seems happy, which is all he wanted, and his heart warms up at the view of everyone he loves together in one room, being merry and sharing a special time of the year.
Once everybody leaves and they’ve cleaned up, and they’re finally in bed together, Harvey thinks back at the past weeks, at all the craziness and the holiday plans and the full night they just lived, and he thinks maybe, just maybe, he might be starting to get the appeal of this whole Christmas thing.