Title: Tomorrow's Song
Pairing: Harvey/Donna, Donna.
Rating: PG-13.
Summary: For the
donna-harvey comment ficathon, cause hiatus makes me crazy.
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Tomorrow's Song
- Ólafur Arnalds
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She remembers the way they used to linger in halls, watching first year associates escape their cages well after midnight. They'd see Louis traipse down the hall, hands awkwardly twitching against his always plaid suit. And they'd wait until the only light on their floor came from a single corner, the gentle hum of a vacuum in the distance, a lonely janitor cleaning up the day's messes.
It was fresh then. It was a thrill, a shiver running under the arch of her foot up behind her knees. It made her weak, they way he used to look at her in those dusty early mornings. Adoration, she had accused him once, feeling particularly brave.
Scotch that wasn't too smooth leaving a trail of fire down her throat.
The ache of her fingers after sorting and reorganizing his vinyl obsession.
The way he was so certain she didn't have anywhere else to be, brazen enough to not care if she did.
She misses one in the morning takeout, red toenails wedged into the cushions of his still fresh black leather. She misses two in the morning musings over the benefits of getting some young blood into the pitching rotation of the Evil Empire, and the great injustices that seemed to befall their favorite team. She misses three in the morning lucidity and delusion, coming in waves, crashing into one another, collapsing.
It was where she found true self, albeit the office significantly smaller, cramped with Harvey's amassing collection of memorabilia. One-thirty-four was where she realized that maybe there was a love there deeper than utility and ease. Four-forty-eight was gasping in a very un-Donna-like response to the taste of his tongue, tart with victory champagne, and the realization that she'd like to explore that option in other settings. Eleven-fifty-one, Saturday, was when she learned of the sway of trumpets, the blaring of clarinets, and the crisp crawl of cellos over a non-linear melody that she will never forget.
It's easy to remember them, then.
They were non-spoken stories, and hushed whispers of weekends without glass walls. They were alienating wills battling for closure.
They were the end of an era.
The new page has words she doesn't recognize, letters she hates, and stings when it slices into her latterly fragile flesh. She's bruised in this chapter, the healing process a suitable villain.
“It's getting late,” she hears. She hates that he thinks he can tell her what to do, she hates that she's largely obedient.
The sun has yet to fall from the sky, burning orange through his walls. Her lunch hasn't settled and if she left now she could still catch a class with her favorite yoga instructor.
“Please,” he trickles, making her nauseous.
There's a forever of tomorrows, a bouquet of late nights awaiting her, at home. There's whiskey and old jazz and styrofoam littering the refrigerator shelves.
She affords a glimpse outside his office, toward her desk, a plucky twenty-something brunette ignoring the inbox on her right, before shifting the infant in her arms, complying. Soft pale blue fabric tangles around her arm. They're bleeding themselves, dripping onto the new rug in the nursery, staining the hardwood entry of their condo.
It was the compromise he'd demanded, she'd dreaded.
Her head lolls against the cool wall of the elevator, the sickeningly sweet taste of deprivation slithering down her throat, the irritatingly pungent smell of concession coiling around her neck, strangling.