Prompt by annahatcher: Darvey and Machel out in Seattle for the first time aka the first night Rachel can really watch Darvey TOGETHER. Preferably her POV.

A/N: I had already written a 'Machel and Darvey out together' prompt as part of this challenge so I took it in a slightly different direction.

"Okay, you need to calm down."

Harvey and Donna are visiting Seattle. They're preparing to move, making decisions about which part of town they want to live in and looking at apartments and wandering through furniture stores while discussing the best way to move Harvey's records and Donna's art.

They're staying with Mike and Rachel, who proudly show off their adopted city with all the fervour of the recently converted, and even Harvey begrudgingly admits there is something charming to the city and the people that he enjoys 'and would enjoy a lot more if it would stop fucking raining all the time'.

Mike's been in New York recently, to help save the firm, and he's seen Harvey and Donna together and had a chance to get used to the both normal and deeply unusual sight of watching them, together, walking a few metres ahead of them, Donna with her hand wrapped around his, and Harvey leaning into her so they can share some secret joke and giggle into each other's eyes.

Rachel hasn't had the same chance, and has spent most of the last 48 hours alternatively making wordless noises in the back of her throat or fluttering her thoughts at Mike about how cute they are and how sweet Harvey is and how happy Donna looks, and that's when Mike tells her she needs to calm down.

She doesn't. Rachel has loved Donna almost since she met her, and Donna has loved Harvey since well before that, and Rachel and Donna are fast friends, the kind of friends that carry each other's hopes and joys but also their hurts.

Rachel had carried some of Donna's hurt and heartache for Harvey for years and knew the gut punch of 'no' and 'that isn't us' and 'we're just friends'. Rachel knew how much it took from Donna to watch Scottie and then Paula squander chance after chance with him, and watch Harvey self destruct as well, because god knows he was as flawed in those relationships as the people he chose.

Secretly, Rachel thought that maybe he was choosing people he could self destruct with because he'd always known it was Donna and there was something in him preventing him from choosing someone who would actually be something.

She'd always hoped, but she's also watched Donna and Harvey circle around each other, both waiting for that one invisible signal that never seemed to come, and she'd also thought, realistically, Donna was too smart and Harvey was too damaged, and sometimes she just hoped Donna would be able to cut him out of her and move on with someone stable and healthy.

Stable and healthy weren't Harvey.

The problem was that everyone else wasn't Harvey either.

But something had happened in the year that her and Mike had moved to Seattle. Harvey and Donna were both… lighter. Harvey was easier, gentler, the creases around his eyes now more from laughter than anger, and Donna wasn't holding him on her shoulders anymore.

Harvey seems younger and Donna seems lighter and they've both figured it out, finally.

She watches them laugh, and kiss, and watches Donna slide her hand into the back pocket of Harvey's jeans as they walk, and she thinks, what a day to be a part of.

end