Full Stop Chapter 1, a suits fanfic

*CHAPTER 1 RE-BETA'D AS OF 03.02.16* - Thought this could do with a major refresh. Wrote it during Season 2 back when I couldn't even spot my own mistakes!

Summary: Up until this point she could have lied to herself that it was the same between them as it had always been. *POST ASTERISK, SEASON 2* (Could also work for Season 5)

Thanks to everyone who fed this story.

Full Stop By Atheniandream

Up until this point she could have lied to herself that it was the same between them as it had always been,

Before.

It had become so easy, all perfectly timed moments, looks, gestures all working in motion, designed to make them the perfect team. That fire within the building, an impenetrable force within Pearson Hardman's steel clad walls. They were the stuff of urban legend in this sprawl of a city and she'd thought, even after everything that they'd been through, that they could still click back to before.

They were both wrong.

It came first at her being more sensitive over his attitude to Mike missing work. To the kid being absent from his side.

"You could call him, Harvey."

Before, she would have never probed or appealed to his sensitive nature, instead, passing it off merely as him being a jackass, she'd have taken the battering ram road and jackhammered her way into his frame of mind, telling him to get his head out of his ass and show that he cared.

He'd not known what to do with the gear change and had head butted her to 'just get anyone'.

The second time, it was quieter, this nagging feeling that she had been on Hardman's list, a weakness that had to be picked at gradually to break it down in calculated waves only to rebuild a certainty in it's place.

It still chilled her blood, the moment when she had finally put all the pieces together.

The raw intent of a man.

She'd only ever thought of herself as a strength for Harvey, there to pick up the pieces, to always be the second if not first wave of defence. The 'filter to his day' and the special winning hand he had up his sleeve.

But the moment she and Rachel had gotten five minutes to themselves to catch up, as the ground gradually settled back in, another cog cranked in their seemingly workable engine.

"So, how are you and Harvey after..?"

"We're fine." Donna nodded.

"Really? Because you just,"

Rachel was confronted with a cold glare of her friend as she sipped on her wine, all too willingly avoiding such a sensitive question.

"You two just seem...different...since you got back."

Looking into the clarifying eyes of the friendly Paralegal, Donna was momentarily floored. So, she wasn't the only one to notice. This was, in effect, very bad. She kept her eyes on her drink and waited for the floodgates to open. Rachel could be like that after a drink, sometimes. She was never the type to keep things in for very long.

"I just, he missed you, Donna." She shrugged. "Mike said he was a mess whilst you were gone, worse than his usual self. I walked by a couple of times and… he was just staring at your desk… he looked so...lost. He *really* really missed you. More than I think he'd realized. "

"I've been there for over ten years, Rachel, he can't pick up his dry cleaning without me." She tried to justify. But Rachel was right. They were different.

Everything felt a little backwards.

"Things change." The young woman replied.

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The third, was a certain pink elephant that had to be addressed.

Harvey had spent the day in and out of the conference room on a new merger that teetered on the edge of falling to pieces. She'd avoided trying to confront him all day, but the nagging scratchy feeling in her stomach was still eating at her with a vengeance.

She leant against the sofa, face prepped, casual, and trying for 'blaze'.

"So... how is your girlfriend?" He asked.

"Donna..." He warned.

"What? I'm just, taking an interest… in your life." Her awkward poise betrayed her much needed cool exterior. This amused him, as he put down his pen and leant back in his chair. "How is… Zoe?" She continued. "Ticking all your…boxes?"

"Okay, get it all out of your system." He said.

"What?"

"Out with it. I haven't got all day." He remarked.

"I just," She reasoned, "Find that..you dating a woman who watched me get ripped to pieces on the fake stand and be accused of being 'in love with you', puts me in a strangely awkward position every time she turns up at your office forcing me to make small-talk,"

"Okay," He tried to iron out the smile forming in his dead panned expression.

"Or when answering the phone, or arranging your meetings around her,"

"Right," He nodded, his cheek twitching.

"I just. I don't like it." She said, her voice clipping.

"Zoe knows how I feel about her, Donna. And she knows that you were cornered on the stand." He reasoned. "It's really a non-issue."

Frustration flared up in her head. "Not for me! Harvey, I. Don't want *that* hanging around the office."

"That?" His eyebrows shot to his hairline

"The memory!" She clarified, babbling. "Of that whole…moment…in time."

"Maybe you should talk to her about it?" He offered, before his eyes flicked to the papers in front of him.

Any remaining good mood was beginning to recede now and his proposal caused her to balk. The idea of having to confront a woman, who not only was witness to one of the most embarrassing two weeks of her life, but also now had an annoyingly personal position within her Boss's life niggled at her more than she thought it should have.

"No, I just, needed for you, as my Boss, to be, aware of the personal nature of the situation at hand."

"I'm aware."

His attention finally returned to his work, leaving her standing for what felt longer than nessesary.

"Well, good." She huffed.

She didn't look up from her desk for the rest of the day.

SSSSSSSSSSSSS

The fourth was seeing them, together, out of work hours.

Intimate. Obvious.

She'd been walking about 20 minutes from her neighbourhood on a Sunday afternoon, the cold January air whipping around her jacket collar as she searched book bins outside the trendy thrift store. Her day had been spent in perfect silence away from a heavy work week, dipping in and out of coffee shops, stores and wandering through the quieter streets to soothe her oddly heavy head.

She stopped dead in her tracks, holding 'A Novices Guide to Cupcakes' leaning out of a side bin to a second hand book store.

Her fingers stopped at the index, her eyes flashing across the small street.

She hadn't expected to see him so relaxed. She slapped the book shut, watching him pull her gently past a cafe.

She swallowed, her breath hitching.

The Fourth was the wake up call.

It wasn't often that she saw him outside, in casual attire, dressed in a Beige winter coat and jeans, looking relaxed, (happy?) his arms draped around the brunette that during her chats with Rachel, had come to be referred to as 'She who shall not be named'. She looked vibrant and sexy and she all but rolled her eyes at just how obvious the woman's body language was, and how Harvey, in his infantile experience with relationships had seemed none the wiser. They looked like something out of a catalogue, all comfortable beauty and ease. She squelched the awful bile lump rising in her throat and swallowed, thanking the heavens that they were so far across the street that they wouldn't be able to spot her, especially with her beacon-like hair covered in a hat.

She didn't buy the book.

And she never went back to that store.

SSSSSSSSSSSS

The fifth time, he had initiated it.

She'd walked into his office to pop a file on his desk and he'd just come out with it.

"She has a kid." He had told her.

"Really?"

"Yeah, her name's Adele she's…very young."

"Wow. A new one for Harvey Specter, you're dating a mom. You must be growing up." She teased.

"She's not her kid. She's her nice. But...she asked me if it was a problem. I said no." She could hear the ambiguity in his otherwise unreadable face.

"But..?" She pressed.

"I don't know, I just… kids. I, it's never been on the cards. And it's some other guy's kid." He reasoned, his face pinching with a befuddlement.

"Oh my god, don't tell me..." She interrupted, huffing. "You know, you really are like every other guy-" She said, the volume rising in her throat as she glared at him.

"No, listen." He placated her, disconnecting completely from his work. "It's a lot, too much, you know, to...have that responsibility? To raise another man's child? To...live up to the dream of someone who no matter how much the position of a father is filled, still isn't that person. I don't know if I can be all that." He admitted, frowning.

As she watched him search for meaning in what he'd said, she found a soft moment in herself to counteract his moment of self-reflection.

"Harvey," She sat in a chair opposite him, hands clasped and her hazel eyes locking his. "Whether or not you think you're ready to be a Dad to someone else's child, when and if you choose to do that, when you do decide to take that step… you'll be a wonderful father. Because unlike most, you care, and you're conscious of the mistakes that you suffered when you were young and will...most likely try like hell not to make them." She smirked warmly. "And I'm sure Zoe thinks the same." She shrugged.

He gave her an interested look then. One she couldn't read. And she knew all his looks.

Feeling stifled in the moment, she rose from the chair, straightening her skirt, turning, flipping her hair a little.

"She doesn't want any more children." She heard him say.

"Oh." She answered, her mouth popping into an 'o'. "Right, and...you do?" She asked.

She couldn't lay claim to the kind of man Harvey Specter was anymore. She could see him changing and growing and it burnt like a hot knife that she hadn't been the one to initiate it.

"I think I...do." He said quietly. Contemplatively.

She didn't want to delve anymore, to find out if he was in love with this woman that she'd been resisting the sight of. To find out if he really was changing and taking the slow path from his previous bachelor lifestyle would only complicate her already tangled personal opinions on his love life.

Maybe she was the only one who wasn't changing. Who wasn't...Growing. Living?

"Can I get you anything?" She welcomed the formality that re-entered her voice, posture returning to its old form.

"A Coffee." He smirked.

"Sure."

She smiled, trying to lift the corners of her mouth but faltering a little she started towards the staff room.

"Donna?" His words stopped her, as she turned.

"Yes Harvey?"

"Do you...want kids?"

Usually she would have joked about her body-clock, or him propositioning her, but instead she simply replied, "Yeah. I do. Someday." and tried to not linger on his reaction or the hint of sadness in her own voice.

Some things...

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I don't know where this is going, but HEY! I've got inspiration and that is awesome.

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