Work Text:
You were coming to the valley, again. Harvey knew it was going to be a good weekend because he always worked very hard to make sure it was a good weekend; you took the train in once a month, had done for the past however long, and he had to make sure it was a good visit this month so you’d still come again the next.
House as clean as he’d ever get it, heating turned on, facial hair trimmed and cologned from neck to ankle, Harvey stepped into the winter cold and got a mouthful of his own musky perfume. Probably put too much on.
“‘Right, Doc?” Shane called over the town centre. Harvey raised his eyebrows, skin already pinking, as he closed the clinic door. “Picking up your friend?”
“You seem bemused by the word ‘friend’, Shane,” Harvey replied as dryly as possible, hoping to give Shane nothing to work with, because apparently Shane knew everything in the bright light of ten on a Saturday.
“I don’t shave to see my friends,” Shane cooed. “Is she coming, though?”
Of course you were. Harvey was pink through the cheeks and it wasn’t exactly that cold; there was cream in his hair, something you’d taught him, that he never bothered to do when you weren’t around. He stuffed his hands in his pockets.
“Yes,” It might have been easier to lie. It would insinuate there was something to cover up. “I’m picking her up at the train station.”
“Good friend to come and see you all the time.”
“She is, yes,”
“She shave too?”
“Goodbye, Shane.”
Harvey swore into the wind as he turned away, Shane’s cackle loud and raucous as it rang through the town. Honestly, Harvey couldn’t feel like he totally minded. At the root of Shane’s teasing was a complete truth, and at the very least, Shane was sober enough to notice it. Nobody else bothered to pay much attention to Harvey anyway. Apart from you.
The train pulled into the station with a screech, and Harvey, alone on the platform, waited for you to be the only person to get off.
Bright Saturday was a gift; you remained a nicer present.
He smiled- and he saw you smile- and then his heart was in his throat, forgetting how to smile, his expression feeling clunky and unimportant next to your affectionate gaze.
“Hi,” you breathed, your voice like honey, sweeter than he ever remembered.
His hand found the strap of your shoulder bag and he was pulling it off as though it were his knightly duty to relieve you of it. It was heavier than normal. Thank fuck. Thank God.
“Did you shave again?” you asked, eyebrows raised.
“Of course I did.”
“I quite like you messy,” you shrugged. Your hand found the soft down of his jumper, and you let it stay there, flirting in almost a facade of it, putting it on in heaps because you knew you were allowed. “I’m very grateful for that boring conference in Zuzu city. It was a lot easier to get to you.”
“I know,” Harvey purred. His breath misted out, over your nose, and he swallowed with the steady knowledge that you were here again. Not just for one night. For three. Three whole nights of you, just you, you in his bed and his arms and his shower, an excuse to cook and an excuse to keep the heating on.
You stepped back before he could decide whether or not to kiss you on the nose, and smiled, almost awkward about things.
“Can we go home?” you asked.
“Of course,” Harvey put his hand to the small of your back, taking you away from the train station in as cavalier, a close a manner as he could, because he wasn’t allowed to hold your hand and it was something he’d made his mind up on months ago. “Desperate whore,”
You spurted out with laughter, pushing him in mock protest, and Harvey was so glad you were here. He was weighed down with your presence, as if finally grounded with a purpose, with a weight he liked to carry.
There was a small space for your things in Harvey’s apartment. Your overnight bag belonged at the foot of his bed; your toiletry bag was always placed in the same position on his sink, nothing overspilling, just waterproof canvas bright against the tile. Your shoes were next to his, coat hung up, in the way casual friends make space on shorter visits.
Harvey placed your mug (the one you always used, you claimed like the shape of it) down in front of you at his kitchen table, without asking how you liked your tea. You gazed up at him in the way that made him remember he had a pulse.
“How’s your difficult patient?” you asked, Harvey recognising civility in your voice. The sun shone in through the window behind him and he could see every glimmer where you’d placed glitter just to entice him.
“Clocked that I was coming to get you within a second of me leaving the house. How are yours?”
“Let’s not talk about work,” you grimaced, and Harvey let that slide, because your hand reached over to his on the table and started tracing patterns over his knuckles idly. If you lived a little closer he might have caught your fingers and placed a kiss.
“You did ask first.”
“Shut me up,”
“If we fuck now, what do we after dinner?”
“Fuck again,” you smiled, lips curling deliciously.
Harvey considered taking you where you were. Pulling you up from your seat, fucking you ragged bent over the counter, teeth marks in your shoulder. Barely undressing you, leaving the real treats until later.
He blinked into your gaze and felt comfortable in the power he always seemed to hold over you.
“Finish your tea,” he told you.
A blush graced your cheeks. He’d hold off for now; five minutes, maybe. He had to pace himself- he did get you for the whole weekend, an uncommon pleasure.
Once your visits were established, a relationship of sorts started, you’d never seemed to talk about the terms again.
Harvey felt guilty leaving the valley too frequently as the first line of emergency aid. You had a shitty car on the verge of breaking down and a long journey would tempt fate. So, you took a six hour train ride to see him, dates agreed upon via fleeting, flirty phone calls, whenever you felt that you needed to blow off a little steam.
He didn’t ever ask because it was asking a lot of you. Sometimes he’d call to tell you when he was free, when good days to visit were, and it was as good as a request.
At first, visits were a lot more infrequent. Occasionally there’d be a phone call. Advice as a seasoned doctor, or something short and flirty. You’d text him the photos if you bought new underwear.
Nowadays, though, visits were once a month (he couldn’t remember when that started; just that his body clock now took four week intervals to turn around and miss you), and recently you’d been throwing in surprise trips where you could (a medical conference in Zuzu city turned into an impromptu night of marking the territory between thin hotel walls).
With the coming of winter- and perhaps with the growing frequency at which you saw each other- came more of your phone calls. Friendly, civil. Upset about work. Harvey soothed you as best as he could through your car speaker after long shifts and every time you hung up he wondered what it meant for you to hold back your tears from him but to call him upset anyway.
He thought about you a lot, after those phone calls.
He always thought about you, though.
Candles flickered in the bathroom, rose-scented steam threatening to put them out. His bath wasn’t big enough for both of you and you pressed your bare chest against his, smiling, drawing patterns against the bubbles against his chest hair.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever slept with,” Harvey told you, watching your eyes glimmer in the candlelight. Pupils dilated. A blush formed. Your lips curled up and then scrunched, face too pleased to fully frown.
“You have to say that,” you complained.
“I really don’t. I know you don’t believe it.”
“Just- look at you!” you protested, moving in a large slosh of water and bubbles. Harvey raised his glass of wine and kept his other hand flat on your back. “I simply can’t be. I don’t believe a handsome, educated, emotionally available man like you would stay single for so long. Either everyone else is blind or there’s something seriously wrong with you.”
You settled against his chest again, feeling something harden against your stomach as you pressed your breasts against him.
“How are you not married with a small litter of children?”
“I am very afraid of that answer, to be honest,”
You laughed, and he smiled, and you tilted your chin so he could place the wine glass against your lips. In the brief silence that swallowing allowed, you gazed up into his eyes. The wine met butterflies in your stomach and you ignored them in favour of handling the growing hardness stabbing your abdomen.
“Are you going to play with it or take care of it?” Harvey raised his eyebrows.
“Play,” you smirked.
Harvey took a sip of wine, jaw perfect and eyes condescending.
“Is that so?”
There was no need to rush things. The sun had set early and you’d muddled your way through most of each other’s clothes, hands wandering, tongues hot, until it was time for dinner.
You felt nauseous immediately after. Light cuddling was incited, wrapped around each other by the TV, and it was more domestic than you normally afforded each other. You came here for sex. It took so long to get here and so long to go back, tied by infrequent trains, that the small time you had scattered over the course of a few weeks meant your clothes were normally on the floor by the time you’d walked in the door and you stayed in his bed until a few minutes before you had to leave.
Now you didn’t feel so good.
“Do you have any ondansetron?” you asked idly, head lolling against the couch. His arms were around you, one stroking your abdomen in a way that you’d usually like.
“Well not up here,”
“Can you get me some?”
“Technically I’m not meant to give it to you unless I prescribe it,” he sighed, the large heaving of his chest pushing against you. You felt your hair catch in his light stubble as he tilted his head downwards at you. “In the context of me being your doctor, too, which I do like to avoid in my amorous affairs. How long have you felt nauseous for?”
“Oh, you’re such a doctor,” you moaned. “Do you have any mints?”
Harvey remained quiet.
“Ginger, then, like a tea, or…”
There was quiet again, and movement behind you.
“Don’t tell anyone I’ve given you medicine,”
“Who would I tell?” you laughed, enjoying the view of Harvey’s ass as he took himself away from the couch and down to the clinic.
This weekend was meant to be perfect.
You’d been snowed down at work, the descending temperatures making children all sorts of ill, and you’d never wanted to be a PICU nurse but it had been the only job going at the hospital when you’d moved. You thought you’d get used to the stress. You thought you’d be good at it.
Then again, you’d thought Harvey was worth taking a risk on, and now you were thinking about him when you were going on dates and failing to connect with people. You cringed over his toilet bowl with your head flush against the seat.
Antiemetics had not been helpful. Throwing up all of Harvey’s delicious home-cooked meal had not been helpful, either. You felt nauseous, weak and clammy, and stupid, and annoyed , because you’d managed to move your shifts so you had a big chunk of time off and here you were throwing up in a toilet.
The big light felt harsh over your body. Your undergarments were all silk and lace, flush against waxed, moisturised skin, and you were wiping smears of foundation off your forehead everytime you whimpered against a flopped forearm.
Finally, a break from work, finally you’d get to wake up against his chest and stay there for as long as you wanted, work out how long he’d let you stay there. And you were throwing up. In his toilet.
The door creaked open, and you let out a small whine, eyes shut over the toilet bowl.
“Was it my cooking?” Harvey asked.
“I’d be better after throwing it up if it was,” you gulped. “I don’t feel very well.”
“You don’t look very well. Would you like some water?”
“Yes please. That’s rude,”
You heard him let out a short puff of laughter, and the floorboards go again, and only then did you risk opening your eyes, head tilted so you could watch the darkness of the doorway.
What did he see when he looked at you? You’d met a man you might have liked to fall in love with, so bone-crushingly far away, that the only options were to give up or honour the only thing that was worth travelling that far for. You did not travel to look after sick people. You travelled to get fucked, because you liked the taste of his name, because you liked it when he told you how to breathe. You did not travel to be looked after.
Harvey returned, crouching by you, with a glass of water and an arm outstretched to rub along your spine. You wanted to tell him not to do that. You looked into his eyes instead of saying anything and hoped that he’d somehow know that you didn’t want him to do that; that he’d somehow understand why.
“Can I put you to bed?” Harvey asked.
“Depends what you mean by that,”
“I’m not really asking,” he smirked, auburn eyes soft. “Let me put you to bed.”
He was rubbing up your back, soft, firm, and your eyes were fluttering closed, breath soft in your stomach.
Sometime after the fifth vomit you stopped counting them. You’d sit upright with innate fear and wretch over an old bowl, choke against bile because there was nothing left to give, and slump with a whimper back against a pillow.
You tried to sleep. Harvey played with your scalp, scratching sweetly, and traced the hairs out of your face.
You didn’t sleep.
He was sat upright next to you, reading light on, when you vomited again.
“I can name the exact bitchchild that gave this to me,” you said, eyes stinging, the ferocity of if enough to make you cry.
“You’re finally a real paediatric nurse. You hate children.”
“I hate when children try to stop breathing,” you murmured. It was exhausting being sick. Dangerous to be so weak, so limp, between his sheets, and inhale nothing but his cologne, laundry powder you didn’t use.
He clambered out of bed and refreshed your sick bowl.
You were in and out of sleep for a while, trying to make jokes, trying to ignore the fact that his hand was in your hair and that he talked to you in low, soothing tones.
Unfortunately, the man you were fucking was a doctor, and it made sense that he was good at looking after sick people.
The room was dark when you were awake again, and choking, and your nose stung and your eyes were stinging and you’d never felt so nauseous, never felt so stupid.
The bed was rocking with movement and it never occurred to you that Harvey would try to sleep beside you; you assumed he’d retire to the living room, stay away from your germs.
“I’m sorry,” you whined, into the darkness.
You felt, rather than saw, him in front of you, and remained collapsed and sad in the bed. His voice came out of the darkness. Close. Low. In a tone that didn’t feel like his doctor voice.
“I don’t know why.”
“I’m ruining the weekend,”
“Not exactly your fault,”
“I’m still sorry.”
It was a mistake to say and you didn’t know how you knew that. You felt the energy shift in the room, sure somehow that you’d said something wrong, knowledge innate and nauseating, and you blinked up only to find his dark figure leaving with the sick bowl.
You wanted to know what he was thinking. You wanted to know if you’d still get a next visit.
It had been in the back of your mind for a little while- when things started to get really good- that one day this would have to stop. Someone would meet someone else; you’d postpone all this in favour of a real date; routine would fall apart without fanfare, punctuation.
Tonight you were sick and it was forcing a care, a domesticity out of him, that he hadn’t agreed to, and you tried not to think about how he was probably in the bathroom realising this wasn’t what he wanted. You tried not to be sick again.
Morning broke and you were feeling better. You were still feeling stupid. You just kept your eyes open, too exhausted to sleep, surveying the features of his room that you wanted to remember. The cracks in his skirting boards, the uneven way the ceiling met the wall; intimate knowledge you could bare like a trophy.
Harvey put a hand to your shoulder- you didn’t realise he was out of bed- and you stared up at him the same way you were taking in everything else.
“Do you want a tea?” he asked.
God, you were going to miss him.
“If I don’t feel better in a few hours, can I stay the night again?”
It wasn’t particularly sunny today. The curtains were open and the light was grey as it rolled past clouds, the whole room dim and a little cool where the heating had been off all night.
Harvey looked attractive in a tee, pleasantly taut across his chest and biceps, and you didn’t know what you wanted him to do but you couldn’t feel anything apart from nausea, and you were so tired nothing mattered.
“Do you want tea?” Harvey asked again, soft and low.
“Yes, please,”
You were in and out of sleep all day, not throwing up but not in the mood to eat. The most romantic thing that happened was the bout of dizziness hitting you as you got up to use the toilet. Harvey caught you, tucked a hair behind your ear, and murmured in a tone that made you melt that he was putting you to bed again.
He tucked you beneath his sheets and you fell asleep with soft breath, thinking about his collection of cable knit jumpers, that you hardly saw him wear, but he always pulled out of nowhere to give to you when you were cold. To fuck you in, when you were cold.
“Do you want to romantically feed each other toast?” you asked, snuggled under Harvey’s blankets. You felt well enough to sit up for ten minute periods at a time, and the sun was setting again, golden hour congratulating you for a full ten hours since your last vomit. “I’ll lick Marmite off your jaw,”
“You will do nothing except get better. And tease me, probably,” Harvey was wandering around, not really dressed. You’d both napped where you could get it; he’d been careful around you all day, doing things quietly as far away as he could get so as not to disturb you.
“What do you think my blood sugar is right now?”
“Awful. I won’t do anything if I check it, though.”
Harvey wandered downstairs to the clinic anyway, and you watched him with plain patience, as he satiated your curiosity for no reason other than he was nice. You pulled a lancet to the pad of your finger and let him collect the small droplet of blood on the end.
He was shuffling away, and you were rubbing the colour away with the pad of your thumb, the crimson turning to thin ochre against your skin.
Harvey was in front of you again and he was frowning.
“What is it?”
“Low.”
“What is-” he pushed a sugar cube through your lips and you were laughing, stomach dropping a little, because he said he wouldn’t do anything and now he was a doctor and you occupied a space in his bed that you didn’t deserve to. “How low?”
Harvey showed you the blood sugar machine and you raised an eyebrow at it, sugar dissolving pleasantly through your mouth.
He was just a doctor. And it’s not like he could turn it off just because you wanted him to. You knew well enough that healthcare jobs seeped into your bones, thick in the marrow; you fell asleep to hallucinations of machines beeping and remembered children’s names months after they passed, and at a certain point you’ve seen too much to ever truly stop worrying.
Harvey had drawn you a bath so you dissolved in that for a little while; he pointed you towards an old tee of his on the radiator and you changed into that instead of the significantly skimpier pyjamas you’d brought with you. They were comfortable on your skin, and there was that washing powder again, the kind you didn’t use. There were tartan bottoms on the radiator too but you left them off to maintain some air of flirting, wearing his tee shirt and nothing else, even though you obviously weren’t having sex tonight because you’d put what remained undigested of your toast into the toilet bowl.
Harvey raised his eyebrows at you as you clambered into bed, fully aware you were flashing from the way the cool air met your ass.
“Are you always half-naked, or is it just when I’m around?”
“You should see me do my food shop,”
Harvey was smirking at you, his soft smile with dark eyes, and you felt too relaxed, lethargic, being in bed, to not fall sleep again.
One of your friends moved in with her long term-boyfriend and you weren’t convinced that you’d go to the party at all. She lived quite far away now but she felt worth the send-off. You got dressed up because you liked the excuse to, and then you were spending an evening trying to find excuses to stay in the corner with the most attractive man you may have ever seen in your life.
You worked up the courage to ask his name. Then how he knows your friend- though he doesn’t- he knows the brother of your friend’s partner, and apparently he’s only really here to humour someone else’s worry that he doesn’t get out much.
“What kind of Doctor are you?” you asked, feeling your eyes shift to a gaze curated to lure him in.
“Technically, GP. I’ve been known to dabble in emergency medicine when people come in limping from their accidents.”
“All scooters and horses,” you nodded.
“And trampolines,”
“I fucking hate trampolines,” you cooed. When his eyes crawled over you- dark and slow, slow enough that you’d notice his full sweep of your body- you leaned against the wall next to you just for support. You’d thought the new house would be warmer and there were goosebumps over your arms now.
“Nurse?”
“Paediatric. PICU.”
“That’s tough,”
You nodded, surprised by the weight by which he held your gaze. The fluttering left your body for just long enough to feel the gentle solidarity he regarded you with.
“Yeah,” you said, chest suddenly heavy. “You know, it is.”
There was a break in conversation because the room was moving, there was some sort of something, raucous noise, and you were dragged away by a friend and then desperate to seek cover with Harvey in the corner of the room again. You couldn’t find him. Under light of a new lamp, that you were debating whether to pull the tag off or not, he came back up to you, hand to the small of your back just to announce his presence and incite electricity over your spine.
“If you tell me something else about you we don’t have to talk about work,” Harvey said, smirk roguish and cavalier.
“What if I want to talk about work? What if that’s the highlight of my life?”
“Then I can tell you’re newly qualified.”
Conversation was easy and you wanted it to be easier. If you lost him you came back to him. You hadn’t planned to stay that long and then you were sat on the floor in a small cavern between two sofas, and he was grunting as he sat down next to you.
“Are you single?” you asked, when enough drinks had loosened your tongue, and the evening was winding down, people leaving, the whole house calmer.
He raised his eyebrows, face a delicious picture of surprise, of flattered appraisal.
“Are you?”
“Y-yes,”
“Yes. Isn’t that nice,”
“And you live- you live in a small town, you said,”
“Barely a hamlet, you won’t have heard of it.” And you hadn’t heard of it. But he’d heard of your city, nodding solemnly, face a more serene picture. The practised doctor disappointment.
You looked up at him, where he gazed into the space of a living room neither of you owned.
“Do you- drive,” you struggled. He was smiling sadly down at you.
“I can. I don’t have a car. It’s so remote there’s actually no point, nobody’s going anywhere because we’re self sufficient.”
“Oh.”
“There’s a train.”
“From where to where?”
“A station, a- it’s-”
And he was taking your phone, fumbling into the maps app, and you both stared down at the six hour travel time with a bad schedule.
“Oh,” you said.
He didn’t say anything, so you looked up, and he was just- looking at you. The way men look at you when they want to kiss you. Something else in his eyes, resolute; the knowledge that he won’t.
“You’re really far away,” you blinked.
“I am.” He took a deep breath, chest rising, heavy with the fall. “Yes, I am. It’s horrendous, isn’t it?”
“Awful. Aren’t you- sorry. Wh- no, I-”
He raised his eyebrows and it was making it harder to form a sentence.
“I just, it’s really far, ”
“I know. It’s quaint, though. Worth a visit if you’re near Pelican City.”
It’s worth a visit. You were tired, you thought you’d have gone home hours ago, and you were drunk on his cologne. You took a chance, reaching out for the hand in his lap to trace patterns along his dorsal. He tilted his head, looking down carefully.
“I’m never really there unless someone gives me a reason,” you said.
“Is coffee a reason?”
Tired eyebrows, something strained across his voice, as though he already knew your answer. Coffee was not a reason for a twelve hour round trip. He was busy at his job, you were busy at yours, and a guy that gave you butterflies when he stood too close lived too far away to know.
“I might need something a bit more substantial than coffee. I’d go for cake,”
“Or dinner.”
“Dinner and cake,”
It was pointless, you knew that, and you felt like he knew that too, because what could you possibly be to each other, what could grow and bloom with the constraints of being that far away?
“Are you going back tonight?” you asked, gulping carefully. Your fingers were still making patterns across his hand. He moved it, placed his palm in the centre of your lap, cupping inner thigh, and with the light pressure you forgot how to speak.
You looked up, aware your eyes were wide, that you were losing some semblance of power in the conversation.
“I’ve not actually been interested in someone in such a long time and I think I’d like to honour the small part of me that wants to be stupid.”
His hand squeezed your thigh. Your heart was going to stop. Harvey looked down at you, lips curling upwards.
“I was going to apologise to my friend for this calling this a “fucking stupid” idea, coming to this party, but I quite like the sound of it.”
The comment took a moment to ring through your bones with any real certainty.
Harvey caught your face in a hand, connecting your lips with careful intensity. One hot breath exchanged, two; you were aware of your tongue slipping, trying to meet his, and the smile threatening to break you apart.
You pulled your head backwards, reeling with the caught breath.
“I’ll probably never see you again, will I?” you breathed.
“Probably not,”
You were on his lips again, forgetting you were at a friends house, forgetting every moral, every predetermined guideline you set your life to.
“But I’m staying- in a hotel,” Harvey managed, between your lips.
“Makes sense,”
“You’re welcome to come back with me,”
“O-kay,”
Kissing, tongues, heat and sexual chemistry, an explosion of feelings you hadn’t had in such a long time, his hand caressing your neck, his breath in your lungs.
Harvey broke away with firmness, and stood, and his hand was outstretched and you were well aware that you were going to sleep with him and leave a little piece of your heart wherever it was you lay, because he might have been perfect for you, bar the fundamental flaw.
“When you leave-”
“-I can leave. I was going to leave hours ago, I can go,”
Harvey smirked and you were lost.
“Get your coat.”
Morning broke again. You lay your head against sick-smelling pillows, overly aware of just how terrible you felt having not eaten properly in days, not drunk properly in days.
Light was soft over Harvey’s apartment. You let an arm hang over the edge of the bedsheet, and then idly started smoothing out the wrinkles, hands dipping over the cotton at the sides. You didn’t know if he was awake. Judging by the warmth of the bed, you assumed he lay next to you.
“I forget you served,” you said aloud to the room.
“I forget that I’ve told you that. What made you think of it?”
You could feel him turning over to look at you- a rummage of bedsheets, pulling at the duvet- and you knew you’d have to turn to face him because if you didn’t he’d ask but you weren’t sure you wanted him to look at you, smell your morning breath.
“You do military corners on the bedsheet.”
“There’s no other way to make a bed.”
“Hospital corners,”
You rolled over anyway, gave in, connected to his soft gaze. He looked so young in the mornings. You evaluated the age lines at the corner of his eyes and wondered how much more experience he had with being in love in the few years he held over you.
“You could get a fitted bedsheet,” you murmured.
The house was still, and you were so guilty for having been here, for having been sick here, and you were terrified he was going to ask you to go home a night early because you wanted to stay, you wanted to be with him, and your stomach just felt thin.
“They always ping off the corners. Military corners stay put.”
And you were looking at him, and he was looking at you, and your breath tasted horrible in your mouth. You wanted to stay. You knew that for every moment you stayed here, him looking after you, you made it harder to leave; this might just be the last time you visited because you couldn’t keep doing this to yourself.
Harvey blinked at you, strong features soft, and you saw something irrevocable change in his eyes. Indefinable, almost terrifying.
“You’re allowed to say you served, you know,” you continued in your thin murmur.
“It doesn’t count.”
“It’s not your fault you trained as an army doctor in the however long we weren’t involved in any wars. You would have seen warfare.”
“Luckily, I didnt,” Harvey sighed forlornly. You watched the bedsheet rise and fall with the movement of his chest. “Do you feel like eating, today?”
“I feel like trying. You don’t have to be my doctor.”
“I’m not your doctor.”
You might have kissed him had morning breath not flooded your senses. You’d never spent this long with him. You’d actually been asleep for most of it.
“If you’re just the HCA, can you make me a cup of tea?”
And he smiled. It made you nauseous- the sweetness of his features turned you, changed you, made your blooming feelings for him inescapable and dominating. It’s not that you weren’t used to him dominating you. There was never any other way to make bedsheets, never any other way to have sex.
But Harvey was smiling at you and you were going to fall in love with him (you’d been falling in love with him since the moment you met him) and you couldn’t afford it, so you looked away, at anything else in the room, and hoped he didn’t notice your fluster.
Harvey had met you with disappointment already on his mind. In the haze of a house party, dark, cigarette smoke blowing in from outside, you were the most beautiful woman in the room. And you were coming over, talking to him, flirting obviously, and he was giddy because he might have had a chance.
And you lived a six hour train away, so he didn’t.
He hardly eats dairy because it disagrees with him; medical training was expensive but if he enlisted the government would take care of it. Harvey was sensible , he did things because they made sense, and apparently pulling your underwear off in a hotel room the day he met you was the most logical conclusion to finding the genuine, human connection he’d been looking for, in someone he could never have a long term relationship with.
He found you endearing. Intelligent enough to hold a conversation, mature enough to sit in silence, with a dry sense of humour. Not to mention every other physical aspect he had complete reverence for.
And if you’d been a little closer in age it actually might have been more of a problem- were you older, you’d be more settled, but he knew you didn’t like your job and he knew, as well, that the way you lived now wasn’t sustainable.
He’d been thinking for a while that he might have really wanted to make something of you. That he wanted you to call him on the way home, sniffling, and he’d draw you a bath, make you tea, not just fuck the thinking out of you the next time he saw you.
At his last lapse in judgement, he’d invited you down and let you wander the market fair. Shane saw your face, held a raised-eyebrow conversation with that you’d rebutted. It hadn’t been a date. Shane seemed to think it was a date. But you were just two friends, one exploring the other’s city, before Harvey had tied you to his bed, battling the jealousy of other men’s eyes.
When Harvey looked at you now, your half-lidded smile in the early morning haze, he knew- with the resolute, innate knowledge that you know anything- that he’d never stop wanting this.
The visits had been more frequent so perhaps a long-term relationship was feasible. You were eager to visit so perhaps a long-term relationship was something you wanted. He was convincing himself it was possible and you rebuffed him at every turn and he liked to think he knew enough about your childhood from fleeting anecdotes to say he understood why , and all he wanted to do was love you anyway, shake your shoulders and make you let him love you.
Harvey watched your eyes close again, hair askew on the pillow. There was nothing in him now that would change.
In the warmth of his house, in the early morning, Harvey loved you, and he wanted you, and he might never be able to save himself from that.
The day passed quickly. You were awake for all of it, wandering around in a fresh shirt of Harvey’s, thick socks, one of his jumpers, assflesh bare in protest of still trying to let this be a romantic weekend.
He made you toast, so you leant, dizzied at the sink, to wash the plate, while he wasn’t looking. He made you dinner and declared that you wouldn’t clean up. Nobody would. He’d leave it marinating in its own filth.
And the morning came, another night of heavy sleep, your health slowly coming back to you, and you were washing up last night’s dinner and this morning’s breakfast in nothing but his jumper and socks.
You had to leave today. You were working tomorrow. The job you hated in a city so far away, so much more crowded.
“I can’t stop you from doing that, can I?” Harvey asked dryly. His voice carried over the kitchen, the steam of the shower he’d just left kissing the back of your knees.
“Nope, but you can slap my ass while I’m doing it if you want,”
He connected his palm to your cheek, grabbed it, pulled himself to your neck to lay ticklish kisses along your carotid. You reflexively pushed your head against his, and something within you was settling, fluttering, refusing to land.
He still liked you. He still wanted you, after you’d spend the last few days vomiting into an old mixing bowl. You could be drunk on his affection.
“I have to tell you something,” Harvey purred, hands at your hips, body behind yours in a way that might have been romantic, might have been wary that you could fall at any moment.
“Sure,”
“I’m afraid that you’ll be cynical and tell me I only think it because you’re wearing my jumper with no underwear on.”
“Well, we’ll see,” you laughed, tipping the water out of the washing up bowl. It was another bright day, his kitchen so full of affection.
“But you have to understand that I think it when you’re wearing anything else at all.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
You turned around, and got caught under his eyes, heart stalled in your throat and stomach bare and empty.
Harvey looked down at you with reverence. The same look as yesterday morning; you were starting to recognise it. At the very least, it tasted the same in the back of your mind, your breath restless and light.
“I don’t want to be your doctor.”
“Oh,” you nodded, lips puckering. “O-kay,”
“I haven’t been- taking care of you, as a doctor, the past few days. And I’ve actually enjoyed it. I kept looking over at you in bed and I didn’t think about your fluid levels… that’s a lie, I did, I actually consider having to cannulate you if it kept on- but- I’m trying to say, shush,”
You shut your mouth, your interruption remaining unspoken. The morning light was easy over his features; still, the intensity with which he looked at you, held your hips, was buckling your knees.
“What I’m trying to say, and making an awful job of, is that you make me human. You make me a man. When I’m with you, I’m capable, and human, and I don’t think I’ll ever do anything as important as touching you in the ways that you like. Do you understand?”
You might have done. Your train was in three hours.
“I-”
“-don’t say it,” you choked. “Don’t tell me that, Harvey,”
The hurt in his face was unbearable. A flicker of pain, shot through like an arrow, marring his eyes. You still weren’t well and you couldn’t have him hold you up- you leant backwards into the counter, arms out to clutch his biceps.
“I have to go to work tomorrow. I have to get on a train and- and what, it takes six hours to get to you, if I want to touch you again? It’s not fair to say this to me, Harvey, it’s not fair, ”
“Driving-”
“-and my shitty car has only ever broken down on me on the freeway and you know I can’t afford to buy one that could handle it,”
“Maybe you don’t need a car,” Harvey purred, voice far too low, far too stable. It rang with certainty against the cupboards, echoed against your rising pitch.
“Don’t do this to me, Harvey, don’t say this,” you were shaking, fingers digging into his biceps, screaming against your insides. All you’d ever wanted. The things that kept you up at night, in the voice that soothed you to orgasm. “What am I meant to say? What am I- I can’t commute - don’t, don’t,”
He dug into your hips, not backing down, eyes as resolute as you’d ever seen them. You were losing breath, losing sense.
“Harvey, don’t,”
“I just want to take care of you,” he berated. “Would you let me take care of you?”
“You do take care of me,”
“Not like that,” His head was dipping, nose brushing against yours, and you felt like he wasn’t taking you seriously because you were on the verge of tears in his small kitchen and he remained close enough that you could taste his aftershave.
Involuntarily, your chin tilted upwards. Every beat of your heart betrayed you, the syllables of his name woven into your being in a way that terrified you. Easy morning in his clothes. He was going to win this conversation and you had to put up a fight against it.
“I love you,” he told you, and you couldn’t unhear it, knew you’d echo it around in your mind forever and ever, and always regret how you were going to reply to it.
You remained breathing softly, lips a hair's width from his. You couldn’t reply. You couldn’t afford it.
“Why won’t you let me love you?” Harvey asked, some agitation seeping into his tone.
You blinked up, eyes stinging.
“I- I don’t know,”
“Do you trust me?”
Harvey pulled away, to look at you properly. You stared up into his auburn eyes. The answer was on your tongue before you felt it, deep in your heart, travelling from your fingertips into his biceps where you still clutched onto him.
“Yes,”
“Do you want this?”
“ Yes ,”
“Do you love me?”
“Of course I do,”
Bright sunlight in his small kitchen. The smell of washing-up liquid and his cologne. Nothing but his clothes, his apartment, his touch, keeping you together; nothing but his voice tearing you apart. You’d been unstable for a long time and it never occurred to you that maybe disassembly was the only way to move forward.
You swallowed the lump in the throat and the fear in your lungs. Harvey only smiled down at you softly.
“Then what’s the problem?” he purred.
“It's too hard. I'll get hurt. I’ve got work , tomorrow,”
“Don’t go. It’s all in your head already, you just want me to tell you to do it so you’ve got permission. I’m in love with you.”
You stared up with wide eyes, and let your gaze drop guiltily to his lips.
“...Don’t go,”
Harvey kissed you. He kissed you and you let him kiss you. You stopped worrying about your morning breath, your instability, the rota for tomorrow and the cold apartment you’d return to.
He kissed you and it tasted like tea- no urgency, no desperation. Just his warm tongue, responsible, affectionate, moving with deep and earnest sensibility. Hands on your hips. Sweet breaks of lips that made you realise just how much it felt like home to exchange breath with him.
“I don’t want to go,” you murmured.
“So stay,”
“For- forever?”
“If you’d like to,” Harvey nodded seriously. It touched your heart in a way that only made it recognisable you’d not been touched there before.
“I love you,” you managed, frowning up at him earnestly. “I’ve not said that yet, have I? I do love you. I think it’s killing me,”
“Can it kill me?”
You were kissing again, deeper, more urgent, but nothing so hopelessly un-whimsical as the kisses you shared in a desperate attempt to meet each other for a few fervent hours. You were kissing again and you had time. You were kissing again and it meant something. It had always meant something, to kiss him.
Pressed against a counter, his hands clutching at your hips, you let Harvey rock through you with the earnestness of a man who wanted to know what he was doing, if he didn’t know already. You melted against his steady body and waited for the natural slowing of movement before you spoke again.
“I should brush my teeth,” you said, because you didn’t know what else you were meant to say.
“You should put some trousers on is what you should do,” Harvey rebutted. “Are you staying?”
“I think so. It seems like it.” You searched his eyes, needy for intention. “Are we in love?”
Harvey smiled, and you could have been buried under his affectionate gaze, never so important as you were under his eyes, never so loved. You felt his heart beating next to your own and it echoed your own desire.
“I think so,” he smirked. “It seems like it,”