relativity (5/10)
Title: Relativity
Author: snowflake912
Pairing: Harvey/Donna
Rating: T
Part: 5/10
Words: 2,865
Summary: Time, she thinks, needs to be redefined. She rearranges the pieces of their history, and at least ten combinations make sense. This one doesn't.
Disclaimer: I still don't own them or anything really.
Note: Hello, lovely LJers! This took a lot longer than I intended for. Real life has been busy with finals, new jobs, travel and the whatnot. Thank you for your comments on the last installment and for continuing to ask about this story. You rock! We're halfway there, 5 more parts to go! There's only one more "flashback" chapter left. It's going to be set in July 2007, and yes it's the ever-so-elusive other time. Sequencing remains unclear at the moment. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks for reading!
5. Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
“I know you got plenty to offer baby,
But I guess I've taken quite enough.
While I'm some stain there on your bed sheet,
You're my diamond in the rough.”
(Candy - Paolo Nutini)
August 2007 -
There’s something boyish and mussed about Ryan Drake.
Donna wonders if it’s his casually tousled golden hair or his ripped jeans and tattered Converse shoes. He looks like an overgrown child, pensively occupying a corner of her couch, the stem of her wine glass lost between his calloused fingers. His green eyes are vibrant as they patiently follow her to the kitchen and back. He sits with the ankle of his right leg casually draped over his left knee, comfortably loose against her blue cushions.
She watches him surreptitiously, out of the corners of her eyes, and she occupies herself with menial tasks that clatter softly into the silence, not quite loud enough to shake either of them. They coexist in this contrived peace for what seems like hours. Time ticks from the kitchen clock, slow and heavy. It’s only been twenty minutes since she found him on the stairs. Her busy hands and quiet companion have done little in the way of making her forget. She can still feel Harvey’s firm thumbprints over the curves of her hipbones, etching unspoken promises and unspeakable desire. Possibilities pool in the base of her spine, lingering snippets of what could have been, and heat claws at her skin, climbing up her neck until she can feel it in the roots of her hair.
Ryan hums low in his throat, and Donna is ridiculously afraid it’s because of the color blooming on her cheeks. She finds herself standing tall and silent by the gleaming counter, a faded green dishrag caught between her palm and the cool ceramic. She must look absurd in Versace and Louboutins, playing the Stepford wife after midnight on a Friday. Pursing her lips, she slides the dishrag to the far right of the ceramic counter and folds it into a neat, obsessive-compulsive square. He studies her movements carefully, and she’s suddenly not sure what to make of him, his boyish countenance and his silence.
“So…” she begins and clicks past him into her bedroom. She feels his eyes on her until she’s inside, leaving the door slightly ajar like their staggered, quiet conversation could survive the distance and barrier of walls. Her feet tingle as she steps out of her heels. The yellow dress slides down her body without fuss, and she thinks of Harvey’s fist clenched around the delicate chiffon. Her mouth feels dry, empty, and God maybe she should have stayed. Every reckless instinct she possesses taunts her. Staying would have been easy, and she could still taste how much she wanted it, how mind-blowingly good it had been that other time, how that made it worth it - almost. She slips into a pair of sleep-shorts and a loose heather gray shirt before walking barefoot into the living room, too distracted for a moment to notice the way the wineglass freezes en route to Ryan’s lips. But his stare - steady and heated - finds her and sets her on edge.
This all suddenly feels like a terrible mistake. The whole night flashes before her eyes as a series of incredibly bad decisions.
She clears her throat, drawing Ryan’s eyes back to hers.
He smiles, and his handsome face melts into a disarming mask of dimples and creased jade eyes. “Brown University,” he says, eyeing the faded print on her t-shirt. “I didn’t know that.”
Donna manages to fashion her lips into what could pass for a smile. It’s a passing acknowledgement, but the last thing she wants to do tonight is play a game of twenty-one-questions with Ryan Drake. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks him because his excuse for showing up at her doorstep past midnight is a terrible day.
“About Brown University?” he asks innocently, still armed with his endearing smile.
“You’re having a terrible day,” she reminds him patiently, and she thinks that smile has a lot to do with why she hasn’t snapped at him yet. “Well?” she prods impatiently
He rolls in his lips like she has him cornered, and he’s already used up what ammunition he has. Or maybe it’s like he tastes something bitter and sharp. She’s not quite sure what any of this means. He unfurls his large frame and leans forward to place the wine glass on the table. “I got fired,” he says suddenly and catches her wandering gaze.
She pauses long enough to make their eye contact unsettling. “I’m sorry. What happened?”
Shoulders bunched in a self-effacing shrug, he releases a long, tired breath. “I was…”
The knock at her door is rude and loud - unexpected. It slices into his unspoken words unapologetically. Their eyes snap to the entrance, hers worried and his surprised. They’re both still as death as if suspended by the day’s events, vastly different for each of them. There’s another knock, more insistent this time. Her gaze darts back to Ryan’s, and he smiles at her lopsidedly, devoid of judgment, oddly knowing.
“You should probably get that,” he suggests gently.
She nods - secretly glad for the instruction - and strides to the door with purpose. Her heart races past her footsteps, slamming into her ribcage in a misguided attempt to shatter her bones. She swallows thickly before reaching for the round knob and pulling the door open - no frills or fuss. As predictable as it is, her heart all but stops when she finds Harvey staring back at her with everything on the line and fiercely guarded molten eyes. Always fraught with contradictions. Always a harbinger of ambivalence. They stare at each other, and it becomes alarmingly difficult to breathe. She tracks the pattern of his shallow breaths and mimics the steady rise and fall of his chest because for some bizarre reason her life depends on it.
“How did you get in here?” She barely hears her own voice over the clamor inside her head. It feels easiest to settle the logistics of his presence because the implications are too daunting, too vast - too much.
“Ray,” he says by way of explanation. There’s a quiet calm about him - the measured spaces of his words, his steady gaze - that makes her ache.
“Of course,” she mutters and then, “you shouldn’t be here,” quickly like she’s only just realized it herself. Part of her vehemently wishes the words would send him back down the hallway and far away from her corner of Manhattan. She doesn’t confess to any other part.
Harvey doesn’t react. He works his jaw for a good ten seconds, chewing on words he can’t seem to find. Sounds and letters and meanings have frustrated him because he can’t quite fashion them into what he wants. They keep failing him. Funny, lawyers are supposed to be clever with words. She wants to twist her mouth with humor, cut with sharp words like they can make light of this too.
But he’s not smiling or amused. His gaze burns golden under the harsh neon lights, and everything is stuck inside her. His pale blue shirt is open at the collar, the sleeves unceremoniously rolled up his strong forearms into his elbows. His hair is meshed at odd angles, askew with finger trails - his and hers. He looks completely undone. When he reaches for her, she wants to bolt. The sure warmth of his fingers on the inside of her wrist keeps her in place. She could run, but she doesn’t. She lets her pulse thunder under his fingertips, and it’s all she really needs to tell him. He pulls her forward into the hallway, and she has a brief thought about Ryan, but then his lips find the corner of her mouth and she can’t even remember her own name. All this longing, this desperate wanting reaches a deafening crescendo. Everything is pounding or maybe it’s the sound of her blood sliding hotly through her veins. He touches her delicately, hands that are barely there, teasing and evoking and burning. They ease her into him without really guiding her, subtle maneuvers that drive her body into his instinctively, and he’s breathing down her neck. She makes a sound in the back of her throat, something needy and unlike her. It’s too loud in the quiet hallway, and it draws his mouth to hers. When he kisses her, it’s soft and slow and all she wants is fast and hard and everything in between. He presses her to the wall, his tongue buried in her mouth, circling, searching, collecting her taste like he wants to make her part of him. The contours of his body harden against hers, and she feels desire coil in her belly, agonizingly sweet and hot, achingly slow. Her hands slide across his shoulders, moving restlessly over the agile heat of him.
He doesn’t pull back even as his mouth releases hers, and he presses hot, wet kisses from her jaw to the base of her neck. She squirms against him, her fingers tightening in his hair, and he rocks his hips against her once as his fist curls in her red hair. Somehow the wide collar of her shirt slips down her shoulder, and his lips find a dusting of freckles to nip at as his lower body presses into her again. She gasps for breath because something seems to be incinerating all of the oxygen in her hallway. Harvey lifts his head and presses a delicate nipping kiss to her parted lips. One of his hands skates over her collarbone, fingertips sliding down, taking her loose collar on a trip. She feels his other hand cupping her jaw, his thumb tilting her chin up, and she opens her eyes to find him staring at her, his pupils enormous and black, his eyelashes unfairly long. His fingers comb down the space between her collarbone and the swell of her breast. She lifts herself onto her tiptoes, bringing his hand lower and their bodies closer, and tugs his bottom lip into her mouth. It’s all the invitation he needs. There’s a rumble inside his chest, something low and sexy, and somehow the hand that was on her chin is on the very bare skin at the back of her thigh, lifting her leg, and she’s being kissed hard.
“Donna? Are you okay?” Ryan’s concerned voice sounds far inside her apartment. It barely registers in her brain until Harvey’s body goes completely still against hers.
He pulls away and narrows his gaze on her like he’s about to unleash a torrent of his once-elusive words, but she presses three fingers against his swollen lips.
“Yeah, Ryan, I’m fine. It’s my neighbor,” she calls back, desperately trying to sound normal. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she promises and slides past Harvey to soundly shut the door to her apartment. She thanks her lucky stars that Ryan didn’t decide to come out and look for her. When she turns back to face Harvey, her body is still humming with awareness, buzzing like a livewire, but he looks livid, anger draped around his arousal like an iron shield.
He glares at her, the set of his jaw firm and unrelenting. “There’s a man inside your apartment,” he states the obvious with unchecked disdain, and the way his eyes go completely cold around his dilated pupils makes her heart hurt.
“Yes,” she says softly, searching his stony expression for any sign of warmth. “A friend,” she emphasizes and hates that she has to spell it out for him because every insecurity he’s ever had rears its grotesque head.
“A friend?” he echoes incredulously, and his eyes glint with something violent. “It’s one past midnight.” The heavy accusation in his voice has him writing her off as a cheater, a new and improved version of his mother, one that he didn’t see coming. She’s his very own sucker punch.
Donna connects the dots as he steps back, but she keeps her cool even as contempt crawls into his demeanor like an unwanted visitor. “He’s just a friend. He’s here to talk. He was downstairs when I got here.”
He laughs, and it’s inappropriately loud. She physically aches for him. “I’m not stupid, Donna,” he hisses.
He actually really is, but Donna is hard-pressed to tell him. She purses her lips and pulls up the shoulder of her loose-necked gray t-shirt. “You need to leave,” she says calmly because she knows it’s for the best. This has to be the end of their impromptu whirlwind of an affair.
Harvey doesn’t budge, and she knows it’s because he believes her. She’s never lied to him before, and he’s always been rational to a fault. Still, he feels obligated to push, to accuse and pull the truth from her. “How long have you been seeing him?” he presses on doggedly.
She glowers at him, fighting the urge to slap him. “I met him three weeks ago, Harvey. I’m not seeing him. You need to leave now,” she repeats.
He laughs out of the corner of his mouth, but this time it’s only a hiss of a sound, ugly and bare. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. “Things sure happen fast in Donna Paulsen’s world,” he says bitterly.
“You’re drunk. You should go,” she urges him quietly.
“I’m not drunk,” he snaps. “I’m not drunk.” He collects himself long enough to think about it, and he’s maybe a little tipsy but definitely not drunk. “So you’ve been seeing this guy for three weeks? Why didn’t you tell me? You knew what I was trying to do,” he says accusingly.
She sighs and closes her eyes, resigned to having this conversation. “I’m not seeing anyone,” she mutters for the umpteenth time. “And I have no idea what the hell you’re trying to do besides make a scene.”
Something in his posture relaxes like he’s finally convinced that she hasn’t been sleeping with Ryan Drake while he’s been trying to sleep with her. He touches her arm, the palm of his hand warm against her humming skin. “I need us - you - to not pretend for one night,” he murmurs, and she can see the frustration lurking behind his words. He’s been reining it in for so long, it’s almost bursting at the seams.
She tries to step away from his touch, but there’s nowhere to go. “Already did that, not going there again.”
The sigh he breathes out is slow and weary. “Donna, we had sex,” he says matter-of-factly, staring her right in the eyes as his darken in remembrance. “It was incredible. There,” he says, his voice several decibels lower, painfully intimate. He looks like he’s singlehandedly cleared the elephant out of the room. “Why won’t you talk to me about it? Tell me the truth.”
She shrugs, steeling herself against the earnest expression on his handsome face. “There is no truth. There’s nothing to say,” she replies, curt and businesslike in her dismissal.
He lets her go, and she mourns the loss of his warmth. “Only lies,” he mutters and nods as if he’s known that all along.
She thinks she’s known that too, but it irks her that he just seems to be understanding it now. “Do you want to know the truth?” she asks before she can stop herself because she can’t imagine leaving things on lies.
His eyes find hers again, and they flicker with something that looks too much like hope. “Yes.”
“Let’s say I let you in. I let you in and we have sex again.” His eyes flash bright and wanting at the suggestion, and she curbs the surging response inside her. “How long is it going to be before we screw this up? A day? A month? A year? You’ll go for a celebratory dinner with Jessica and take a waitress home. Or you’ll be up against Scottie in court and you’ll settle the case in your bedroom. You don’t want to commit to anything, Harvey, and I’m not doing half-measures. I’m not going to be your secretary and occasional fuck-buddy. I want more. I deserve more. So, please don’t put me through this. I am this close to letting you in, knowing that it would be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.” She pauses to draw in a deep tremulous breath, hates that he starts shimmering behind the curtain of tears gathering in her eyes. She blinks them back stubbornly. She is not going to cry. “Please - I’m begging you - please leave.”
He looks gutted as he stares at her in complete silence, his words once again lost. It takes him three minutes to straighten to his full height and take a step back with resolve. “Goodbye Donna,” he says at last, and it’s all finally - finally - over.
Her short, toneless, “goodnight,” abruptly severs the closing scene. She turns around and walks back into her apartment, the door clicking shut with finality behind her.
All she wants to do is collapse, but she smiles and puts on a masquerade for Ryan Drake.
Author: snowflake912
Pairing: Harvey/Donna
Rating: T
Part: 5/10
Words: 2,865
Summary: Time, she thinks, needs to be redefined. She rearranges the pieces of their history, and at least ten combinations make sense. This one doesn't.
Disclaimer: I still don't own them or anything really.
Note: Hello, lovely LJers! This took a lot longer than I intended for. Real life has been busy with finals, new jobs, travel and the whatnot. Thank you for your comments on the last installment and for continuing to ask about this story. You rock! We're halfway there, 5 more parts to go! There's only one more "flashback" chapter left. It's going to be set in July 2007, and yes it's the ever-so-elusive other time. Sequencing remains unclear at the moment. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks for reading!
5. Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
“I know you got plenty to offer baby,
But I guess I've taken quite enough.
While I'm some stain there on your bed sheet,
You're my diamond in the rough.”
(Candy - Paolo Nutini)
August 2007 -
There’s something boyish and mussed about Ryan Drake.
Donna wonders if it’s his casually tousled golden hair or his ripped jeans and tattered Converse shoes. He looks like an overgrown child, pensively occupying a corner of her couch, the stem of her wine glass lost between his calloused fingers. His green eyes are vibrant as they patiently follow her to the kitchen and back. He sits with the ankle of his right leg casually draped over his left knee, comfortably loose against her blue cushions.
She watches him surreptitiously, out of the corners of her eyes, and she occupies herself with menial tasks that clatter softly into the silence, not quite loud enough to shake either of them. They coexist in this contrived peace for what seems like hours. Time ticks from the kitchen clock, slow and heavy. It’s only been twenty minutes since she found him on the stairs. Her busy hands and quiet companion have done little in the way of making her forget. She can still feel Harvey’s firm thumbprints over the curves of her hipbones, etching unspoken promises and unspeakable desire. Possibilities pool in the base of her spine, lingering snippets of what could have been, and heat claws at her skin, climbing up her neck until she can feel it in the roots of her hair.
Ryan hums low in his throat, and Donna is ridiculously afraid it’s because of the color blooming on her cheeks. She finds herself standing tall and silent by the gleaming counter, a faded green dishrag caught between her palm and the cool ceramic. She must look absurd in Versace and Louboutins, playing the Stepford wife after midnight on a Friday. Pursing her lips, she slides the dishrag to the far right of the ceramic counter and folds it into a neat, obsessive-compulsive square. He studies her movements carefully, and she’s suddenly not sure what to make of him, his boyish countenance and his silence.
“So…” she begins and clicks past him into her bedroom. She feels his eyes on her until she’s inside, leaving the door slightly ajar like their staggered, quiet conversation could survive the distance and barrier of walls. Her feet tingle as she steps out of her heels. The yellow dress slides down her body without fuss, and she thinks of Harvey’s fist clenched around the delicate chiffon. Her mouth feels dry, empty, and God maybe she should have stayed. Every reckless instinct she possesses taunts her. Staying would have been easy, and she could still taste how much she wanted it, how mind-blowingly good it had been that other time, how that made it worth it - almost. She slips into a pair of sleep-shorts and a loose heather gray shirt before walking barefoot into the living room, too distracted for a moment to notice the way the wineglass freezes en route to Ryan’s lips. But his stare - steady and heated - finds her and sets her on edge.
This all suddenly feels like a terrible mistake. The whole night flashes before her eyes as a series of incredibly bad decisions.
She clears her throat, drawing Ryan’s eyes back to hers.
He smiles, and his handsome face melts into a disarming mask of dimples and creased jade eyes. “Brown University,” he says, eyeing the faded print on her t-shirt. “I didn’t know that.”
Donna manages to fashion her lips into what could pass for a smile. It’s a passing acknowledgement, but the last thing she wants to do tonight is play a game of twenty-one-questions with Ryan Drake. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks him because his excuse for showing up at her doorstep past midnight is a terrible day.
“About Brown University?” he asks innocently, still armed with his endearing smile.
“You’re having a terrible day,” she reminds him patiently, and she thinks that smile has a lot to do with why she hasn’t snapped at him yet. “Well?” she prods impatiently
He rolls in his lips like she has him cornered, and he’s already used up what ammunition he has. Or maybe it’s like he tastes something bitter and sharp. She’s not quite sure what any of this means. He unfurls his large frame and leans forward to place the wine glass on the table. “I got fired,” he says suddenly and catches her wandering gaze.
She pauses long enough to make their eye contact unsettling. “I’m sorry. What happened?”
Shoulders bunched in a self-effacing shrug, he releases a long, tired breath. “I was…”
The knock at her door is rude and loud - unexpected. It slices into his unspoken words unapologetically. Their eyes snap to the entrance, hers worried and his surprised. They’re both still as death as if suspended by the day’s events, vastly different for each of them. There’s another knock, more insistent this time. Her gaze darts back to Ryan’s, and he smiles at her lopsidedly, devoid of judgment, oddly knowing.
“You should probably get that,” he suggests gently.
She nods - secretly glad for the instruction - and strides to the door with purpose. Her heart races past her footsteps, slamming into her ribcage in a misguided attempt to shatter her bones. She swallows thickly before reaching for the round knob and pulling the door open - no frills or fuss. As predictable as it is, her heart all but stops when she finds Harvey staring back at her with everything on the line and fiercely guarded molten eyes. Always fraught with contradictions. Always a harbinger of ambivalence. They stare at each other, and it becomes alarmingly difficult to breathe. She tracks the pattern of his shallow breaths and mimics the steady rise and fall of his chest because for some bizarre reason her life depends on it.
“How did you get in here?” She barely hears her own voice over the clamor inside her head. It feels easiest to settle the logistics of his presence because the implications are too daunting, too vast - too much.
“Ray,” he says by way of explanation. There’s a quiet calm about him - the measured spaces of his words, his steady gaze - that makes her ache.
“Of course,” she mutters and then, “you shouldn’t be here,” quickly like she’s only just realized it herself. Part of her vehemently wishes the words would send him back down the hallway and far away from her corner of Manhattan. She doesn’t confess to any other part.
Harvey doesn’t react. He works his jaw for a good ten seconds, chewing on words he can’t seem to find. Sounds and letters and meanings have frustrated him because he can’t quite fashion them into what he wants. They keep failing him. Funny, lawyers are supposed to be clever with words. She wants to twist her mouth with humor, cut with sharp words like they can make light of this too.
But he’s not smiling or amused. His gaze burns golden under the harsh neon lights, and everything is stuck inside her. His pale blue shirt is open at the collar, the sleeves unceremoniously rolled up his strong forearms into his elbows. His hair is meshed at odd angles, askew with finger trails - his and hers. He looks completely undone. When he reaches for her, she wants to bolt. The sure warmth of his fingers on the inside of her wrist keeps her in place. She could run, but she doesn’t. She lets her pulse thunder under his fingertips, and it’s all she really needs to tell him. He pulls her forward into the hallway, and she has a brief thought about Ryan, but then his lips find the corner of her mouth and she can’t even remember her own name. All this longing, this desperate wanting reaches a deafening crescendo. Everything is pounding or maybe it’s the sound of her blood sliding hotly through her veins. He touches her delicately, hands that are barely there, teasing and evoking and burning. They ease her into him without really guiding her, subtle maneuvers that drive her body into his instinctively, and he’s breathing down her neck. She makes a sound in the back of her throat, something needy and unlike her. It’s too loud in the quiet hallway, and it draws his mouth to hers. When he kisses her, it’s soft and slow and all she wants is fast and hard and everything in between. He presses her to the wall, his tongue buried in her mouth, circling, searching, collecting her taste like he wants to make her part of him. The contours of his body harden against hers, and she feels desire coil in her belly, agonizingly sweet and hot, achingly slow. Her hands slide across his shoulders, moving restlessly over the agile heat of him.
He doesn’t pull back even as his mouth releases hers, and he presses hot, wet kisses from her jaw to the base of her neck. She squirms against him, her fingers tightening in his hair, and he rocks his hips against her once as his fist curls in her red hair. Somehow the wide collar of her shirt slips down her shoulder, and his lips find a dusting of freckles to nip at as his lower body presses into her again. She gasps for breath because something seems to be incinerating all of the oxygen in her hallway. Harvey lifts his head and presses a delicate nipping kiss to her parted lips. One of his hands skates over her collarbone, fingertips sliding down, taking her loose collar on a trip. She feels his other hand cupping her jaw, his thumb tilting her chin up, and she opens her eyes to find him staring at her, his pupils enormous and black, his eyelashes unfairly long. His fingers comb down the space between her collarbone and the swell of her breast. She lifts herself onto her tiptoes, bringing his hand lower and their bodies closer, and tugs his bottom lip into her mouth. It’s all the invitation he needs. There’s a rumble inside his chest, something low and sexy, and somehow the hand that was on her chin is on the very bare skin at the back of her thigh, lifting her leg, and she’s being kissed hard.
“Donna? Are you okay?” Ryan’s concerned voice sounds far inside her apartment. It barely registers in her brain until Harvey’s body goes completely still against hers.
He pulls away and narrows his gaze on her like he’s about to unleash a torrent of his once-elusive words, but she presses three fingers against his swollen lips.
“Yeah, Ryan, I’m fine. It’s my neighbor,” she calls back, desperately trying to sound normal. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she promises and slides past Harvey to soundly shut the door to her apartment. She thanks her lucky stars that Ryan didn’t decide to come out and look for her. When she turns back to face Harvey, her body is still humming with awareness, buzzing like a livewire, but he looks livid, anger draped around his arousal like an iron shield.
He glares at her, the set of his jaw firm and unrelenting. “There’s a man inside your apartment,” he states the obvious with unchecked disdain, and the way his eyes go completely cold around his dilated pupils makes her heart hurt.
“Yes,” she says softly, searching his stony expression for any sign of warmth. “A friend,” she emphasizes and hates that she has to spell it out for him because every insecurity he’s ever had rears its grotesque head.
“A friend?” he echoes incredulously, and his eyes glint with something violent. “It’s one past midnight.” The heavy accusation in his voice has him writing her off as a cheater, a new and improved version of his mother, one that he didn’t see coming. She’s his very own sucker punch.
Donna connects the dots as he steps back, but she keeps her cool even as contempt crawls into his demeanor like an unwanted visitor. “He’s just a friend. He’s here to talk. He was downstairs when I got here.”
He laughs, and it’s inappropriately loud. She physically aches for him. “I’m not stupid, Donna,” he hisses.
He actually really is, but Donna is hard-pressed to tell him. She purses her lips and pulls up the shoulder of her loose-necked gray t-shirt. “You need to leave,” she says calmly because she knows it’s for the best. This has to be the end of their impromptu whirlwind of an affair.
Harvey doesn’t budge, and she knows it’s because he believes her. She’s never lied to him before, and he’s always been rational to a fault. Still, he feels obligated to push, to accuse and pull the truth from her. “How long have you been seeing him?” he presses on doggedly.
She glowers at him, fighting the urge to slap him. “I met him three weeks ago, Harvey. I’m not seeing him. You need to leave now,” she repeats.
He laughs out of the corner of his mouth, but this time it’s only a hiss of a sound, ugly and bare. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. “Things sure happen fast in Donna Paulsen’s world,” he says bitterly.
“You’re drunk. You should go,” she urges him quietly.
“I’m not drunk,” he snaps. “I’m not drunk.” He collects himself long enough to think about it, and he’s maybe a little tipsy but definitely not drunk. “So you’ve been seeing this guy for three weeks? Why didn’t you tell me? You knew what I was trying to do,” he says accusingly.
She sighs and closes her eyes, resigned to having this conversation. “I’m not seeing anyone,” she mutters for the umpteenth time. “And I have no idea what the hell you’re trying to do besides make a scene.”
Something in his posture relaxes like he’s finally convinced that she hasn’t been sleeping with Ryan Drake while he’s been trying to sleep with her. He touches her arm, the palm of his hand warm against her humming skin. “I need us - you - to not pretend for one night,” he murmurs, and she can see the frustration lurking behind his words. He’s been reining it in for so long, it’s almost bursting at the seams.
She tries to step away from his touch, but there’s nowhere to go. “Already did that, not going there again.”
The sigh he breathes out is slow and weary. “Donna, we had sex,” he says matter-of-factly, staring her right in the eyes as his darken in remembrance. “It was incredible. There,” he says, his voice several decibels lower, painfully intimate. He looks like he’s singlehandedly cleared the elephant out of the room. “Why won’t you talk to me about it? Tell me the truth.”
She shrugs, steeling herself against the earnest expression on his handsome face. “There is no truth. There’s nothing to say,” she replies, curt and businesslike in her dismissal.
He lets her go, and she mourns the loss of his warmth. “Only lies,” he mutters and nods as if he’s known that all along.
She thinks she’s known that too, but it irks her that he just seems to be understanding it now. “Do you want to know the truth?” she asks before she can stop herself because she can’t imagine leaving things on lies.
His eyes find hers again, and they flicker with something that looks too much like hope. “Yes.”
“Let’s say I let you in. I let you in and we have sex again.” His eyes flash bright and wanting at the suggestion, and she curbs the surging response inside her. “How long is it going to be before we screw this up? A day? A month? A year? You’ll go for a celebratory dinner with Jessica and take a waitress home. Or you’ll be up against Scottie in court and you’ll settle the case in your bedroom. You don’t want to commit to anything, Harvey, and I’m not doing half-measures. I’m not going to be your secretary and occasional fuck-buddy. I want more. I deserve more. So, please don’t put me through this. I am this close to letting you in, knowing that it would be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.” She pauses to draw in a deep tremulous breath, hates that he starts shimmering behind the curtain of tears gathering in her eyes. She blinks them back stubbornly. She is not going to cry. “Please - I’m begging you - please leave.”
He looks gutted as he stares at her in complete silence, his words once again lost. It takes him three minutes to straighten to his full height and take a step back with resolve. “Goodbye Donna,” he says at last, and it’s all finally - finally - over.
Her short, toneless, “goodnight,” abruptly severs the closing scene. She turns around and walks back into her apartment, the door clicking shut with finality behind her.
All she wants to do is collapse, but she smiles and puts on a masquerade for Ryan Drake.