where you might not come back from

kissingonconey

Harvey reschedules court for a personal emergency. It's pretty unheard of with him, so the judge allows it. The whispers probably have to do with what Harvey's "personal" is.

"Secretly married, love child, mafia?" they joke.

But it's really him clinging to Donna's hand, lying pale against her hospital bed. The accident was so unexpected. They always are. But on her one personal day.

"Personal?" he'd joked. "What do you need personal for?"

She'd shifted, and he'd known it was actually serious.

"My dad is sick. He wants to die in his bed," she laughed, tears choking it, "so I thought I'd drive up and see him."

He was still. They're not in this position often, him comforting her. But she moved closer.

"You can have as much time off as you need," he said, and reached out to touch her hand. It was so tentative between them—her soft skin against his, she looked like she was going to burst into tears even harder, but she welcomed it, until she knew it was time to shy away, and she did.

He texted her in the morning: "I hope you're okay."

The call came around 9:30. He heard: "Donna Paulsen, emergency contact, car accident." He was out the door.

"Come on, Donna," he whispers now. "This is ridiculous. You need to go see your Dad. And I'll get Ray to drive you this time."

It's easier to hold her hand when she isn't watching. Her fingers link loosely in his, and his thumb runs over the side of her hand. She's always on top of things. And now, she's hanging in some balance, totally without control. And he can't even intervene this time.

He can deal with her gone from Pearson Hardman. Even from New York. But gone forever—he doesn't know what he'll do. The thought burns in his chest.

It is seventy-eight hours before she wakes. Harvey is forced to call Jessica and Mike. Mike calls Rachel. There is always someone sitting with Donna, but it's always Harvey from six to six in the morning.

"How did you even manage getting to stay here all night?" Mike asks at hour seventy-three-and-a-half, leaning against the doorway.

"I explained the situation to the nurses," Harvey says cryptically.

"Used your charm."

More like, told them she's my secretary who I need more than anything, and that I have to work all day, or else I'd be here with her, Harvey thinks. If that's charm.

"Alright," Mike says, "you have to get to work. Suit's in the car. I'll call you."

The second call most important call of the week comes at hour seventy-eight.

"Mike," Harvey says immediately.

"She's awake!" the kid exclaims into the phone.

Harvey leans back into the chair, the leather caressing him in a way that it hasn't for three days now. He has been ramrod straight until this moment. But there's a silence at the end of the line that alerts him.

"Mike. Can I talk to her?"

"Uh."

"What?"

"Uh. Donna, she...I think you should just get here, okay?"

"Mike."

"Well, she doesn't really know who I am."

Donna in his apartment, inspecting everything.

She's here because she moved once and now doesn't know that neighborhood and won't feel comfortable. He's not putting her out like that, not when he has spent the last few days chewing up a knuckle in fear for her life.

"Amnesia," the doctor said, "probably will go away. She's lost five years."

Five years. Harvey can't explain what that means to him. She lost his father's death, she lost their promotions, she lost Mike, she lost that one time in her apartment that they don't talk about, she lost him not fighting for her, she lost the I need you, she lost coming back to him.

Five years ago: 2007. She was the spine in his life's book, even then, but it was different. That was when they acknowledged how much they wanted to push each other against office walls and just fuck. Didn't do anything, but it was shallow then, and they could acknowledge it. Now—now it's more, it's him wanting to lay her on the bed and cover her body and her his name on her lips and then wake up with her I love you still on his. Now it's the matching in their life rhythms and the desperation they feel without each other. He knows she'd feel the same if only she could remember.

"So can you tell me what happened in those years?" she asks. "I mean, I still work for you, I guess?"

"You are my partner," he says, "in our conquering of this whole firm. Along with the kid you met, Mike Ross. He's my associate. I'm senior partner now."

"Louis must have loved that."

He nods. "Yeah."

"And we're still friends."

"Best friends," he reminds. "Despite anything and everything that's happened. You just can't live without me."

"Right," she breathes, but there's something in her that propels her forward, eyes trained on his face—his lips? Her hips move seductively. He wants to run his hand over them.

"Donna," Harvey warns.

"I almost died, right?"

"You were in a coma."

A tightening in his chest.

"You missed me." And her lust breaks into a smile. She thinks it's that simple.

"Dinner. What do you want?" he says.

He comes home the next night to Donna, dinner ready. He has to sit down immediately.

"How was work?" she asks.

"Temps suck."

"Sorry." She's not sorry at all. "I love this place. It's way better than my place. Or—my old place, I guess?"

"You helped pick it out, so you better like it."

She's getting the plates, and it's high, and suddenly she whimpers a little and grabs her ribs. He's up instantly, his hand covering hers.

"What is it?"

"It's my ribs, Harvey." She stares at him like he's crazy. "The doctor did say they'd been broken and were still healing."

"Go sit," he says, hand still pressed against her. "You should've been resting all day. What the hell were you thinking?"

There are bruises on her arms. Her face too. His large t-shirt hangs on her frame and he can see the horrific bruise that the seat belt left. He brushes his fingers against that and she hisses.

"See," he says.

She nods, and then: "Harvey—where was I going? I took a personal day."

He hadn't wanted to answer this. It had been bad enough calling Donna's dying father to give him the news. But he remembers: you keep things from me all the time. And he doesn't want to keep things from her anymore, not after all that.

"To see your parents. Your Dad is sick. He—it's close. To the end."

She hadn't cried at all so far, but now her eyes fill with tears. Harvey gathers her up immediately. She stiffens. Even in 2012 they don't have much physical contact, and certainly not in 2007. It's too tinged with sex in 2007. But she lets him hold her, and the tears sink into the skin of his neck. Her hair tangles in his fingers as he strokes her back.

"I'm sorry," he says.

For everything.

For betraying you.

For your accident.

For your father.

For your forgetting what we are now.

The car pulls into the Cortlandt driveway on Saturday morning. Donna's mother walks out onto the porch immediately, her face creased in worry for her lost daughter. Harvey touches Donna's knee slightly in support.

The whole car ride she worried her lip; he doesn't like it.

"Hi, baby," Mrs. Paulsen says, and wraps her arms around her daughter. Donna pulls away.

"You—your hair. It's different."

Her mother looks flustered. "It's been the same for years, darling. But anyway. Oh, and Harvey, so nice to see you! You don't come up nearly enough." Later she will pull him aside and add: "Thank you, Harvey, thank you so much for taking care of her."

He will say: "She's taken care of me for more than a decade, Mrs. Paulsen. I'm in practice of returning favors."

Mrs. Paulsen will wink.

Now, Mrs. Paulsen says: "There's pasta on the stove. But I suppose you'd like to see your father first, Donna?"

"Please," Donna replies.

Harvey trails behind. Mrs. Paulsen's hand sits on the curve of her daughter's shoulder. She's safe linked with her mother, but he watches. He's been watching since the memo, but now especially. He walks her to the store and keeps an eye on her when they do mundane tasks in the house and watches her because he can and she's not dead but she isn't herself.

He stands in the doorway as Donna creeps in.

"Hi, Daddy," she says.

He is like translucent paper on the bed, and Harvey can't imagine what a shock that might be for her. The old man can barely open his eyes. His breathing is worse than labored. He is dying. This is her last chance.

Donna's eyes travel over the old, frail man in the bed, and she clutches at him.

"I missed you," she says. "I'm glad to see you. I'm going to sit and eat lunch with you, okay?"

They give her the day with her father. Mrs. Paulsen and Harvey sit in each other's company.

"How is it? Her being this Donna?" Mrs. Paulsen asks him as they sit on the white couch.

Harvey studies the lilacs in front of him. Arranged prettily.

"I'm glad she's okay. But things are different."

"All that history, hm?"

"Something like that."

Regardless, he folds her into his arms when it's time for bed. Her shoulders are delicate against his. The palm of his hand is hot against her back, he knows. Their hips brush. He feels the spark, but he concentrates on her grief. He wants to be there for that.

Shit, he thinks in bed. He wants to care.

Eventually they have to make it Pearson Hardman. She keeps asking and he knows that it could trigger something for her. He just doesn't want to have to deal with the crowds or the questions. He doesn't want anyone to ask why she's staying with him after everything. He doesn't want her to see how he's changed at work.

It's Mike first.

"Hey, Harvey. I got the Sanderson files done this morning, so if you wanna take a look—oh, hi, uh, Donna. I'm Mike. Harvey's associate."

"Nice to meet you," she says politely.

Harvey misses her mothering eyes. And the knowing, mischievous spark that reveals Mike's non-Harvard-alum status.

They move on.

Louis is gracious as he would be with a client, no doubt glad she has forgotten about his harmful mock trial. He kisses her hand even, and Donna raises one imperious eyebrow. Jessica is the same, cordial, but professional.

Donna makes outdated jokes about them when they leave both offices.

And lastly: her desk.

"Oh," she says, and his spark of hope blossoms deep in his gut and rises, alarmingly heated.

"You remember?" he asks.

"Yeah. The filing system. By case that you use as precedent most often." Donna lets off that ridiculously self-satisfied laugh she has, but he doesn't join in.

"How is it," he begins, stepping closer to her, until her jeans' thigh presses against his, "that you can remember that and you can't remember me?"

"What are you talking about?" she asks, turning and letting her body really touch his. "I remember you. Harvey Spector, my boss."

"There are five years between then and now. If you knew—goddammit."

She would already know what it would be like to touch his bare skin and then leave him. She would know what it would be like for him to bare his soul to her. She would know what it would be like to be dropped and then picked up by him again.

He wants to know how she feels after all that—after all that truth that now defines them and makes them the people they are and makes them most real to each other. He wants all of that grief and sadness rocked into them because it is what they are.

It's not sex.

It's not lust.

It's Donna's heart, loyalty, and love that he wants. That he had feared he had lost in that hospital room.

But her proximity beckons him closer and closer, until he can see his breath move the hair on her head.

Her mouth is fantastic on his.

The minute they got into his apartment, she was on him, but he might have met her halfway.

She's pressed against the door now, leg curling around one of his, as one of his hands tangle into her hair. He grunts when she thrusts against him. But it's her lips, he can't get enough of it. The other hand travels down her body, thumb finding all the curves and indents. Her jaw clenches when it's sensitive, but he trails kisses down the opposite side of her body, and it turns into a sigh.

"Harvey," she groans after a minute. "Please."

"Keep begging," he says.

"It's the first time, Harvey. You can tease later." The sentence turns into a hot breath, but he's always pulling away at that.

Hands braced at each other side of her, but he won't touch now.

"What?" she asks confused. "Come on, Harvey, it's not fair."

"It's not our first time," he says. The first time was in her apartment, just a few months after his father's death. It's the thing that haunts him in the deepest nights, the should be's more than anything else. "You just can't remember."

And then he's kissing her again. But it's over before it can really get started because he pulls himself away harder and walks five—that's it, one, two, three, four, five—steps away.

"What the fuck, Harvey?"

An explosion has been building for some time. It erupts now.

"You don't fucking get it!" he yells, and she tries hard to hide her cringe. "If you knew what had happened in five years, you wouldn't be against that door. I—I care for you. But I feel more than you do, okay? Five years changed me. It changed us. I can't forget that."

"What are you saying?" she asks, peeling herself away from the door.

"You're five years behind. You've gotta catch up before this can work."

Her eyes are flicking around the room, settling on him in the end, though.

"Harvey, are you in love with me?"

Eventually she goes back to her apartment.

"Take my key," he says. "If you ever need anything."

She's not getting it back, although he suspects some things are coming back in pieces: why she arranged her furniture a certain way, the most comfortable routes home, her new favorite clothes.

Weeks later he wakes up to a woman in his bed.

It's her, spread-eagled on top of the covers.

"Donna?" Harvey shakes her awake. "Are you okay?"

He can't believe he didn't wake up when she came in.

"You must have been exhausted," she says, running a finger over his brow bone. "Not even a stir when I walked in." Shaking breath. "I have to tell you something."

He stares at her, drinking in the pale skin, the hair flowing over her shoulders, the tentative shrug of her lips. He has missed her.

"I remember," she says. "I remember. I kept finding these things in the apartment. Like that wine you bought me from Chile and some Harvard sweatshirt I have and notes on your depositions. My whole life was spread out in front of me and it was all through your shit. I remember."

"Donna," he says, and her name feels like cutting through a fog, "hey."

"I remember the memo and—Harvey, do you get it? I remember."

This is his Donna. He pulls her into his chest.

"Are you here to stay?"

Her hands are palming his back, and her sighs are brushing his neck.

He will kiss her hard later. He will pull her clothes off with reverence, and she will keep brushing closer to him, and he will touch her warm breasts and thrust hard. He will hear his name spill from her lips. He will fill her with everything—himself and his love.

But right now, he wants to hug her—and everything she is and everything she knows about him—close.