Her heart is pounding, knotted and twisted around her ribcage as she pushes through the revolving door into the Carlyle. She's wearing the best thing she had in her closet, more for her own confidence than anything else, and she's pretty sure anyone with eyes could probably read the conflict on her face.

She's going to meet Mark. He's married, and she doesn't cheat. But she's going anyway.

In any other moment, it would never happen. Because this isn't her. She's confident, and sure of herself, and she certainly doesn't need to get involved with married men for kicks, or self esteem, or, god forbid, for something long term. She's not that person, because she deserves someone who wants her and only her, and she doesn't betray other women.

At least that's who she used to be. She's not so sure anymore. Because Harvey's with Paula, and she had no idea, and she thinks maybe she's losing her edge. And if that's the case, then maybe she's not who she thinks she is. Maybe she's no longer the person who can look into Harvey's face and read his week and his stress in his tie or his haircut. Maybe she's no longer the person who knows what he needs before he needs it. Maybe she's not the person to come to his rescue and surrogate herself for the family he pretends doesn't exist and the confidants he doesn't have, because he thinks caring is weakness. Maybe she doesn't know him better than he knows himself. Maybe he doesn't need her as much as she thinks he does and he says he does.

Maybe he's outgrown her.

And if he's outgrown her, then what the fuck is she doing, and none of the lines and standards she's drawn for herself matter, because she's not who she drew herself to be anyway.

And then, she thinks, the other problem is all the time she's lost, all the days she's spent helping him and the nights lost hoping for him.

Maybe, she thinks. Just maybe the last fourteen years have been one huge mistake. It's a thought that creeps in every now and then, has always slunk into her thoughts when he's seeing someone else, or when whoever she's seeing breaks it off with her because they've had to share her with Harvey one too many times.

She's got good reasons for thinking it, for thinking that he's a mistake and so are the fourteen years she's spent with him. He's oblivious, and he's got a handful of serious women and a parade of not so serious women brushing through his life. The serious ones bug her more than the not-so-serious ones - Harvey's always preferred loneliness to loss, so anyone serious means something significant for him, and that means it's also something significant for her. So when it's Scottie or Zoe or Paula, she tells herself, okay, it's done, once and for all, and you need to move on. She is not, she reminds herself, some high schooler who can't figure out how to move past a crush.

But then he'll catch her in the corridor and look her up and down in the way he does where he thinks she doesn't notice, and he'll make a joke to cover his tracks, and everything she's pushed away comes flooding back. And then whoever she's seeing turns into a shadow that she accommodates for however many more weeks or months it takes for them to figure out her heart and head are elsewhere. They're all pleasant, and handsome, smart, good in bed. Donna has a good taste in men, and she's intelligent and beautiful and so she gets to date men who everyone keeps telling her are catches.

But they aren't Harvey.

And Harvey is with Paula.

So, she thinks, fuck it.

She pushes out of the taxi, and through the revolving doors, casting her eyes around for the elevators. She moves quickly, because the faster she moves the less time she has to think.

The last thing she wants to do, she knows, as the elevator doors close behind her, is think.

She deliberately doesn't think about Mark's wife, or Harvey's girlfriend, or about how she's actively deciding to do something she promised herself she'd never do, and what all of that says about her. She doesn't think about the fact she's not really feeling lust as much as she's feeling sick, but both feelings make her stomach churn so she's pretending one is the other. She doesn't think about how far away she is from who she's always been.

Luckily it only takes a moment before they chime open again, just long enough for her to press her thumbs into her palms to still the tremor in her hands, and she steps down the corridor to room 508.

She lifts her hand to knock, and tries very hard not to notice the shaking in her fingers and the way her wrist twitches, making her body feel thin and timid.

"Donna?"

It's him.

It's his voice, interrupting her singular focus and stuttering her momentum into stillness.

Harvey.

She turns her head, and he's there, hands slack by his sides, confused and inquisitive at the fate or fluke of them finding each other in the same corridor of the same hotel after midnight on a Thursday. There's a light, easy curiosity to him, which just twists her further up because how can he not know how awful a moment it is that he's just stumbled into.

"Harvey," she says, automatically, and she hates the tremor in her voice and that she feels like she's been caught, because she's an adult and she's capable of making her own decisions. Those decisions shouldn't make her feel like she's been cornered and caught red-handed.

And yet.

"What are you doing here?" he asks, the edge of a smile tugging at his mouth, like it's a good thing he's found her here.

He's not in a suit. He's wearing a simple black button down and a jacket.

"You're not working," she says, deflecting, and she smoothes over the shake in her voice by running her thumb over the phone in her hand before dropping it into her pocket.

"I wasn't meant to be. Anniversary dinner. Got called away. Big client in town, big problem with a big deal we're meant to be talking about tomorrow, all the usual panic, you know how it goes." He waves his hand dismissively as he trails off. He's already annoyed by the whole evening. It's the thing he hates most about Jessica having left, how all the after-hours panic from important clients falls on his shoulders.

He quirks a smile at her. "And you? Hot date?" he asks, obliviously dropping into their usual flirtatious humour, and he follows up with "look at you, you look fantastic," but it only lasts for a moment before he realises she's not amused and she's not reciprocating; she's terrified and wide-eyed, and his smile slips into a frown.

She opens her mouth, tries to form words, but nothing comes out.

"Donna, " he says again. "What's going on?" He looks at the door she hasn't knocked on, says, "are you okay? Do you need help?"

"I'm okay," she says, but it sounds like a question, and she feels her eyes wide and unblinking, and Harvey's oblivious, but not that oblivious.

Before he can ask again, the door in front of her swings open, and it's Mark, and Donna thinks, shit.

"Donna," Mark says, his eyebrows raised and surprise in his tone.

"Mark," Donna says, but she's still staring at Harvey.

Harvey glances between Mark and Donna, and neither of them clarify, but Harvey, even as committed to being as oblivious as he is, is not an idiot, and he's acutely tuned into the mechanics of infidelity. He puts together the hotel and the time and the way Donna is looking stricken at him, and he cocks his head and looks at her and says, "Donna," in that surprised and disappointed tone he uses when she shreds documents or tells him that she's leaving him and that she loves him.

"Harvey, you should go," Donna says, but it doesn't sound like go, it sounds like help. Because she's dug herself far, far too deep into this moment and she doesn't know how to escape from it, and Mark in front of her in reality and not in concept has punched home that she doesn't want this.

Harvey glances between Mark and Donna again, then says, "okay," slowly, like he's negotiating a hostage release. He holds out his hand, palm up, to her. "Let's go."

Her heart tugs gratefully towards him, towards a way out of this fucked up night, but some vestige of fourteen years wasted makes her glance at Mark.

Mark says, "Donna. Come in," and he steps back to pull the door wide to her.

"I -"

"Donna," Harvey interrupts, and he twitches his outstretched fingers towards her. "Come on. Let's go."

Mark looks at both of them, a combination of irony and frustration. "I should have guessed he'd end up here as well," he said. "I should have known you're still joined at the hip. Come on, Donna. You can go if you want. But make a decision for you for once instead of letting him do it for you."

"Are you still married?" Harvey asks, his gaze flicking to Mark.

"That's none of your business."

Harvey knows an evasive answer when he hears one. "I'll take that as a yes. Donna. Come with me. This isn't you."

"She's a grown goddamn woman, not a child, Harvey," Mark says. "It's her choice to make."

Harvey looks at Donna and she looks back at him. The problem is that Mark, like so many others, doesn't understand that her silence isn't acquiescence. It's her and him, talking, as clearly as if they were speaking out loud. They could tangle words around themselves, but after this long, words are clumsy and inadequate. They don't need to talk. They just don't. His eyes and the curve of his mouth say everything, and so does hers. And in the silence, she's saying help and I don't know what to do.

Harvey clenches his jaw, looks at Mark. He shakes his head. He already knows what Donna's going to say before she says it.

Donna says, "I'm sorry, Mark. I can't do this."

"Of course not. You wouldn't want to do anything that your 'boss' wouldn't want." It's ugly from him, and despite everything, Donna thinks, Mark isn't an ugly person. Not really. He's as frustrated and confused as she is by whatever it is that exists between her and Harvey. He doesn't understand the thing that sits unspoken in the air between them and that they can't explain or articulate but that seems to drive every choice and word that happens between them. Neither do Harvey and Donna. It's baffling and confronting and even more so when you're standing on the outside of it.

"Mark." Harvey's voice is low and there's a warning in it for Mark to choose his next words very carefully. He flexes his fingers in and out of a fist against his palm.

"Has he fucked you yet? Or are you still hovering around him like a teenager hoping he'll notice you staring at him one day?"

"Mark, if you say one more goddamn word, I swear to god I will beat the fucking shit out of you."

"You know what, Donna, you do whatever you want. Or whatever Harvey wants. It seems like they're still the same thing anyway." Mark slams the door.

Harvey looks at Donna, his chest cracking up against his throat, adrenaline punching through his lungs. But before he can say anything, she shoulders past him, wordless, her mouth set in a thin, furious line. She stalks down the corridor to get on the elevator, and punches the door shut while he calls after her.

When the doors open to the ground floor, he's waiting, because of course he is, of course he managed to take five flights down the stairwell in time to beat her to the lobby.

"Leave me alone, Harvey." Embarrassment has turned her quiet desperation for help into fury, at herself mostly, but it's coming out in anger at him. She's torn between fleeing the building all together and turning heel to go back to Mark just to prove a point that Mark is wrong, that Donna can make her own decisions and doesn't need Harvey to make them or accept them or validate her.

She can feel her whole body shaking under her coat, from adrenaline and panic and fear that she's twisted into rage.

"Donna," Harvey says, low and gentle and understanding. She hates the compassion in his voice.

"Get out." She thinks distantly that she's being unfair, but she's also just done with everything, and why does he always manage to show up right when he needs to and when she wishes he wouldn't. How is he so entangled in her DNA that it feels like fate itself is hurling him into her path. She just wants to make one goddamn decision that isn't soaked in him.

"No." He's not being combative, but he is being stubborn.

"Don't," she says. "I don't want to hear it. I can handle myself and my choices, Harvey."

"I know you can. I'm still not going to leave you alone." He shrugs minutely. "I just … I don't think this is what you want for yourself."

"Go away," she snaps. "Go. This isn't your decision."

He doesn't. He's in front of her, close enough to stop her avoiding him, and it's also close enough that the spark that always flares up when they're that close punches into the atmosphere.

She tries anyway, because she's still furious at herself and at him, and she attempts to get around him, shouldering past him on her way to … somewhere. He reaches out instinctively, grabs her wrist, saying her name as he does, and his grip is gentle but his pull is firm as he tugs her to a stop.

His fingers on her skin feel like the heat of the sun.

There's a reason they never touch anymore. The spark flares up into a full supernova, and their eyes lock, and gravity between them suddenly gets heavy.

Good god, how can it shift so quickly between them that she can suddenly only think about kissing him and Mark can go to hell.

He stares, swallows past the spark. It's physical, what they are, and it makes him tense, and rigid, makes his back ramrod straight and his movements and words careful, like he doesn't think he can trust himself. He squeezes her wrist, and it kicks her right in the gut.

"Donna," he murmurs, "I promise you, you do not want to do this."

"But you do." She doesn't say with me, but they both know.

He stalls. Her words pull his chest up in a scattered breath.

"This isn't about me," he says, his voice suddenly thin.

She doesn't say anything, glaring at him in pure defiance, and even though it's ridiculous to be throwing her frustration and rage at him it feels good to take some form of control for the first time in this whole mess of a god awful evening.

She turns her wrist against his, takes him in hand, thinks about how easy it would be to pull him against her, but instead she pulls him across the floor into a corner at the back of the lobby, next to a conference room entrance gone unused this late at night, because they're both too old to have a domestic in public like teenagers.

"Listen. I called him, to reconnect," she says. "We met up for lunch. He told me he's married and that they're struggling. And then he called and he asked me to come here and meet him. He asked me. And I wanted to. So I came."

"But…" Harvey shrugs elaborately. "Why?"

She stares hard and doesn't answer. There's a broken heartedness in her eyes she can see reflected in his, and he's never been able to resist that hurt that sits deep in her. "Donna," he says, almost a whisper, "what the hell is going on," and she knows he can't resist it now either.

Because they both know what's throwing her. Or rather, who's throwing her.

Harvey.

His history with her. His humour. His boldness. The recklessness with which he hurls his loyalty towards her. His laugh, and his sense of humour, and the way he teases her. The way he glances up at her and silently asks her what she thinks. The way he values her - not with presents and compliments but with the way he lets her steer him and his work and his conscience. The way he never says what he's thinking but the way he always says it so that she knows anyway, with his eyes and his nods and his smile.

The way he loves her so loudly in the silence of it all.

It's so much out of her hands. There's no way falling into Mark's bed could change it.

So finally, she sighs into the silence. "You're right," she says. "This isn't me. This is crazy. I'll go home."

"Do you want me to take you? I can get Ray here in a couple of minutes." He's still got his fingers circled a little too solidly around her wrist from where she'd let him go and he still seemed to need the contact.

She shakes her head. "Thank you. No. I'll be okay."

He nods. "Look, if you want to talk. About anything…"

"I will. If I need to."

It's a lie. They both know it. Because it's too hard, thinking about sharing things with him.

He doesn't take his eyes off her. "Good night, Donna."

"Good night."

He drops her wrist, though the supernova doesn't fizzle out, and starts to walk away.

"Harvey?"

"Yeah." He stops and turns to face her. He's got his hands in his pockets, and he looks … she can't quite place the right word. Haunted, maybe. Like tonight is something he hates, but that he's desperately grateful he stumbled into anyway.

She steps forward, closing the gap between them "What if it was about you?"

"It's not."

She steps in again, close enough that the spark fizzles back between them again like static. "But what if it was," she murmurs.

He turns his body towards her, and there's something unreadable, even to her, in his eyes. He slips his hand up, thumb brushing over her cheek, and tangles her hair between his fingers. As goosebumps flash up the back of her spine, he cradles the back of her head, solid and fitting against her like it was designed to be that way.

"You know I can't answer that," he says, his voice mostly breath.

"Why?"

"Because then it would be real."

And then there's a moment. Because his voice has scuttled against his vocal chords, the way he talks when he's mad or turned on or both. Because he's close, radiating tense energy and leftover adrenaline from not hitting Mark, and she can feel the slight tremble in the thumb brushing her cheek. Because his fingers are in her hair, and his palm is warm against the curve of her neck, and it's familiar because the other time is never far from their memories despite the lie they both play at, but it's also different because there's many, many years layered on top of that night they both pretend they don't remember.

Years of late night dinners eaten hunched over the table in his office, and her looking up just in time to catch him purposefully glancing away from her. Years of him calling her at midnight, one too many whiskies deep, to ask her things that have no business being asked by a boss to a secretary. Years of marriage proposals, all jokes, but maybe with an uncomfortable level of truth hiding under the laughter. Years of them, as partners and friends and confidants, doing everything couples do except for the only thing they agreed to never do. Every moment, literally every moment, would have fit perfectly under the banner of relationship if only one of them had said or done something.

Every moment flares up right then, and Donna wonders distantly if the push of him in her gut is what people mean when they talk about life flashing before their eyes, because he's flashing in front of hers, every moment rolling through her stomach and kicking her chest.

He's close. He's so close, and she swears he's leaning into her. She can smell his cologne, smell the faint trace of fabric softener on his shirt and whatever product he mussed through his hair when he was getting ready for whatever he'd thought his evening was going to be.

His eyes are deep and blown black, locked on hers in a silent conversation they've been having for too long, they've been having it since way before this moment, and he's not blinking, and neither is she, and she isn't sure the last time either of them blinked.

She wants to reach up and push his tousled fringe back from his forehead.

She wants to kiss him. More accurately, she wants him to kiss her. She wants to pull his scent onto her and press her over him. It's a need, a lustful need for ownership and for something more concrete than unspoken conversations that says he's mine.

There's a certain irony that stings in Donna's gut in her desperate, unrealistic hope that Harvey will stop her making a mistake with Mark by making the same mistake with her. But he's not wearing a suit, and she thinks maybe because he's wearing different clothes that means he's not in his armour and he's not thinking about law, about right and wrong, and maybe he's just Harvey. Harvey in a suit would never slip.

But maybe Harvey without his armour just might.

He pushes out a slow breath through open lips, and it's not a kiss, but another inch and it would be. Just an inch. If she leaned forward, pressed up on her toes, or if he leant in and down just a little, it wouldn't be his slack breath and slowly flexing chest sparking in the smallest space between them. It wouldn't be fourteen years of dinners and glances and missed opportunities.

If he leaned forward, or if she did, it would be his mouth sliding against hers, and his body lengthened against her coat and skin, and his fingers still in her hair but tugging gently. She still knows his kisses from the way they replay, unbidden in her head at 3am, loose and lithe and confident. It would be his lip between hers, nudging her mouth open. It would be the slow press of her tongue against his teeth, long moments of the rhythmic and mesmerising movement of his mouth against hers until breath came hard, and then she'd pull away a little, her teeth nudging along his chin, up to the curve of his jaw to press her cheek against his, and her breath in his ear would murmur out, let's get a room.

If he'd just lean forward, it would be all that. She knows it.

And then it would be him pressing her into the side of the elevator, his hands cinching her against him, because she knows him and how he's always only just holding everything back from her, and if they broke that door open, it wouldn't be gentle. He'd pull her along the corridor, and into whatever suite they had available, and it wouldn't be slow kisses and teasing while he slips her clothing away piece by piece. It would not be languid and long and romantic. That's beyond them anyway.

It would be enough to fuel both the next 12 hours, and the next 5 years of damp, gasped, self fulfilled fantasies for both of them.

It would be lightning.

It would be Harvey scraping teeth over her collarbone while he gets her and him down to just skin, moments after the door clicks shut, shucking his buttondown over his head and cracking open her coat. It would be Harvey, all tension and muscle, slipping his pants and underwear off in the same movement that he drags the long zipper on the side of her dress down to let it pool on the floor, and then hiking her up and over his hips, huffing into her mouth to ask if she's wet enough and only just waiting for her shallow nod against his check before testing knees and arms and gravity to press inside her with a hollow gasp. It would be Harvey holding her up, hands cupping her ass and bruising her against the door for leverage so he could push a rough rhythm against her, punching moans and air out of her lungs with each stroke. It would be Harvey, stretching her, delicious and painful. Harvey, worrying his teeth up the length of her neck. Harvey, dashing bruises against her hips and wrists with his grip.

And then after the first time she would fall apart with his name wrenched across her vocal chords, it would be Harvey pulling her into bed or into the shower or just onto the floor because it's closest, and taking her in again, all the release she's looking for in Mark and he's looking for with her found in each other.

It would be perfect, all consuming and mind numbing. It would shatter them both, rearrange their DNA and the very concept of what love and sex could be. It would be mindless but it would be every thought they've had of each other for a decade, and it would start off something they've both wished for, and -

- and it would also destroy every last goddamned thing for both of them.

They both know it. It would ruin them. She can see it in his eyes, and he can see it in hers.

And yet, most of her still screams out towards him. He would be worth the wreckage, she thinks.

He swallows.

"D - Donna. I…" It's a stammer, and he never stammers. And then, like he's hunted by the same fantasy she is, he whispers, "we can't."

No matter how hard she tries, here she is, circling the same feelings and the same conversation and the same fucking hollow want again.

Because of course it would be Harvey.

It should be Harvey.

He walks away.

end

A/N: Thanks to Marina ( DarveyRMarried) for the prompt which sparked off this piece!

Thanks also to Aditi ( mayxpaulsen) for the encouragement, beta and proof reading.

Thanks to you for reading, and extra special thanks to you who leave a comment or review. Even if you hated it, let me know! The best part of all of fandom is the community, after all.