Archive of Our Own ^beta

They were sitting across Harvey’s desk from each other, doing the annual review and purge of their records, when she finally mustered up the courage to ask.

“Hey, doctor?”

“I’m just Harvey when we’re not with patients, Maru, it’s all right,” he said (as he always did) without looking up from the sheaf of paperwork in front of him. His hair was even more tousled than usual today from all the times he’d raked his fingers through it. It was hopelessly endearing, a feeling she hastily squashed (as she always did) before it could put down any kind of roots.

“Well, the thing is, we kind of are with a patient.” He looked up at her, thick eyebrows knitted over the frames of his Buddy Holly glasses. “Me.”

Immediately, he set his papers aside and straightened into his signature active listening posture. “Is something wrong? What’s concerning you?”

She waved her hand dismissively, heat creeping up her neck. God, she wasn’t off to a promising start. Too late to turn back, though. “I’m perfectly fine. I’ve just been doing some reading about contraceptives, and I’ve decided I’d like an IUD. How could I get one?”

To his credit, Harvey didn’t flinch. The tips of his ears looked distinctly pink, and his hands fidgeted restlessly with his pen, but his Compassionately Neutral Physician demeanor remained firmly in place.

“Clearly you’ve done your research, not that I’m surprised,” he said, a hint of a smile making his mustache twitch at one corner. Her palms began to sweat under his praise—no. The radiator was just running hot again, that’s all, she thought squashingly. “An IUD is a safe, highly effective, easily reversible form of birth control. You’re still on your parents’ insurance, yes?”

“I am, yeah.” She still had about eighteen months before insurance became a problem. Hopefully she’d be on the clinic’s payroll full-time by then, with benefits—or even better, gainfully employed literally anywhere else but Pelican Town.

A horrible thought struck her, though: the bill. It would come to the house, and her dad would open it, and then she’d have to answer all sorts of questions about why she’d done this and why didn’t she tell him first and who was she—

“Your parents will not be notified,” Harvey added, reading her face.

“But the bill—“

“The procedure and implant should be fully covered. If you’d like, any paperwork for you can be sent here, to the clinic.” He folded his hands in front of him and looked at her a little harder, his green eyes soft but piercing behind his lenses. “I volunteered for the odd shift at a free women’s clinic in Zuzu before I moved here. It’s common that young women living at home have… privacy concerns regarding their health choices.”

She couldn’t help it, she snorted. “Privacy concerns is one way of putting it.”

He tilted his head, inviting her to continue. Active listening.

Squash.

“Be honest, D—Harvey, you know my dad. He’s super weird about a lot of stuff.”

He nodded mildly. “Weird to everyone, or only you?”

“Just me.” She hesitated. “Well, I don’t know if that’s true, actually. But you’re right that I don’t want him to know, because I’m definitely not having that conversation with him.”

“He wouldn’t be amenable to discussing your reproductive health in a supportive way,” he said in a way that was less of a question and more of a sympathetic statement of fact.

She smiled tightly. “Understatement of the century, yeah.”

The mask wavered for a moment, or at least she thought it might have, as his expression did something tender and sad. Her heartbeat leaped into her mouth even as she reminded herself that she was probably just projecting.

“Well. You have two options,” he continued, brightening. “Option one, I can put you on the wait list for the clinic in Zuzu City. They’ll be equipped to handle your concerns, and the team there is very good, if you’re willing to wait a few months.”

“A few months?” she blurted.

He nodded. “They’re overburdened, as you may imagine.”

“What’s my other option?”

Harvey straightened the cuff of his button-up. “Alternatively, I could procure one and place it for you next week.”

The spreading heat up her neck fully engulfed her face. She whipped off her glasses and polished them intently on the edge of her uniform skirt, the cotton-poly fabric smearing the lenses all to hell as her fingers continued to work anyway.

She could wait a few months. There was no one in town she was fucking on a regular basis, now that Penny was going steady with the woman who owned the big farm up the road, and it wasn’t like contraception had been a concern with her anyway. She was definitely never trying it with Sam again, sweet as he was—the vindictive thrill of fucking Seb’s best friend hadn’t been enough to compensate for both her terror that the condom would break and his stunning inability to find her clit. That, and her hair had reeked of Axe 2-in-1 for the rest of the day just from spending fifteen minutes on his pillow. Barf.

But then again, who knew what could happen? More tourists were coming to the valley each season, now that the town had improved so much. Maybe she’d meet someone. Maybe their eyes would find each other from across the night market, and she’d lead them giddily into the woods by the beach, and they’d kiss, and she'd offer to show them the stars from her telescope if they wanted to go somewhere more private...

Her glasses were a nearly impenetrable smear of grease and dust, and she still owed him an answer. At the crux of it: was the urgency really worth the mortification of letting Harvey do this for her? Was holding off for a few months so dire?

Abruptly, she thought of her mother swaying listlessly in her father's arms as the jukebox at the Stardrop plinked out the same slow songs it had for decades. Of her parents' anniversary, not quite nine months before her birthday. Of Sebastian's lifelong refusal to be her brother out of a resentment he wouldn't name.

Yes. The IUD had to happen, and it had to happen now. Before the cycle got its hooks in her.

“I mean. Would you be comfortable with that?” she coughed hesitantly.

“Maru.”

She could tell from the low, pleading command in his voice that he wanted her to look at him. She took a deep breath through her nose and raised her head, intentionally leaving her glasses off so she could at least hide behind her astigmatism.

The Harvey-shaped blob across the desk looked sincere. “I will always be comfortable providing the care you deserve. If you would prefer to see someone not quite so enmeshed into your pers— professional life, I understand completely, but you never need to worry about me. This is my job, and it is entirely separate from our relationship outside of the patient-doctor contract.”

There was no squashing the absolutely mortifying way her insides melted at the quiet conviction underpinning his gentle lecture. I will always be comfortable providing the care you deserve hit her like a hammer to the temple, followed with the secondary impact of hearing the words our relationship in his soft, wonderful voice.

Something had to be deeply wrong with her. There had to be a pathology for a persistent erotic fixation on one’s boss. Or doctor. Or both.

Yes, she thought with a paradoxical wave of relief: a pathology. Something she could look up in the DSM 5 and receive a logical, concrete answer to the research question what the fuck is my problem. She set a portion of her brain to work on outlining the folder on her iPad where her research notes would go. Encrypted, of course.

"Thanks, Harvey," she said, breathier than she would have liked but ultimately very normally. A normal expression of gratitude for a normal boss/doctor combo. "If it's really okay, I'd prefer that. Less waiting, for one, and I don't have to fabricate an alibi to visit Zuzu."

Thank god her glasses were still in her hand, because she got the distinct impression Harvey was looking at her with a combination of emotions she wasn't prepared to process.

"I would be happy to help," he said. "We'll need to do a preliminary appointment a few days in advance. Would it be convenient for you to stay behind after your shift on Tuesday?"

She nodded. The Harvey blob moved to clack on his computer keyboard.

"Perfect. I just scheduled you," he said. "I can finish up these records over the weekend; you're free to head on home."

Normally, she protested when he tried to scoot her away to shoulder more of the admin work himself, but she was out of her chair and slipping away to the waiting room in an instant. "Thanks, Harvey! Goodnight!"

"Goodnight," he replied, distantly, as she shouldered the clinic door open and half-sprinted into the dim, snowy afternoon. She didn't pause as she stuffed her arms into her winter coat, passing Penny with the kids on her jog past the community center to the trail home. Vincent called out to her, something adorable and kid-like no doubt, but his voice was dulled to a mumble by the soft snow and the creaking of ice underfoot.

Coming up on her family's sprawling cabin, she hopped the fence surrounding her personal patio and slipped in through her private door. She wasn't supposed to; Dad always wanted to see her when she got home so he knew she'd returned safely. Not for the first time recently, the thought made her bristle. She shucked her nurse's uniform and threw it into her laundry basket, slipped into her comfiest sweatshirt, and set a timer on her phone for thirty minutes. She'd join everyone else in the kitchen for dinner—after she'd had time to decompress. She really, really needed to decompress.

If "decompression" meant gasping her boss's name into her pillow. Twice. Which it certainly didn't.

Tuesday snuck up on her like an ambush predator, and her research hadn't yet yielded any satisfying answers to what the fuck is my problem? Her iPad held a densely populated folder of notes under subheadings like "Freudian transference" (obviously a fit, but she was too skeptical of psychoanalysis to take it seriously), "Personality disorder" (unlikely), and "Father issues" (likely in a way that made her contemplate flinging herself into the lake, but unscientific). Most of what she'd read referenced a pattern of repeated behaviors, as well, which she couldn't pretend to have. Nothing like this had happened during her undergrad. She'd never had to jog home and shamefacedly bring herself to orgasm—twice—after spending time with her Physics 205 professor, even though he'd been objectively hot.

At least she'd been able to draft up a list of questions and topics of discussion for her appointment. Having an outline soothed her jangled nerves. There was a roadmap to this interaction, a script she could follow to ensure beyond all doubt that she got exactly what she wanted. She slipped her tablet into her shoulder bag, zipped her parka over her nurse's uniform (with snow pants underneath), and headed down the mountain to town with determination in her breast. The snow fell thick and fast, piling into deep drifts and blocking the path in some places, but she scrambled onward.

"Morning!" she called as the bell over the clinic door rang with her arrival. Harvey didn't answer, but the light in his office shone into the hallway. He was either on a call or absorbed in charting. Fine with her. She stomped the snow off her overshoes, shucked her layers, and hustled behind the counter. Their PCR centrifuge needed balancing pretty urgently if they were going to keep up with the flood of flu and Covid tests that winter always brought, so she settled in with her tool kit and set about taking it apart.

Harvey did finally emerge when a snow-crusted Clint showed up for his appointment around 10, so he was alive, at least. He shot her a smile and a goofy little salute, which she returned with an eye roll. Great. Normal.

They worked past each other for much of the day, totally absorbed in their respective tasks. The centrifuge needed more than just a rebalance, as it turned out, so she spent her morning and part of her afternoon running diagnostics and calibrating components until it ran smoothly again. A family of tourists showed up, all walk-ins, with flu symptoms. Thankfully, the children were small enough that Harvey could see them as a group.

As soon as they were out of the waiting room, she fished out the can of disinfectant from under the front desk and sprayed everything in reach. More than any week of her life so far, she really, really could not get sick. Not until after her insertion. Then, she could get every strain of flu at once for all she cared.

Mid-spray, she was suddenly struck with the image of exactly what that procedure would look like, her legs spread and Harvey between them concentrating with absolute focus—

cringing, she set the disinfectant back in the drawer and slammed it shut. She would not, could not be horny about this. It was the unsexiest procedure imaginable. It would hurt. And, god! Poor Harvey didn't deserve to have his earnest practice of medicine perverted by her and whatever the living hell was wrong with her.

The memory of his hands, his strong fingers and sure, dextrous way of using them to count vials and stitch wounds and palpate lymph nodes, pressed to the front of her mind with an unwelcome rush of heat.

She grabbed a packet of smelling salts from the first aid kit, ripped it open, and shoved it under her nose. Ammonia, sharp and pungent, flooded her body with adrenaline. She choked back a gag. A few deep breaths later, she was back to work on packing up the centrifuge and cleaning her myriad tools before putting them away.

She could control this, she thought forcefully as she scrubbed an alcohol wipe over her allen wrench set. Willpower. Presence of mind. Today's consultation would only take what, ten minutes? And then the insertion itself only another fifteen, give or take. That was only twenty-five minutes of focus. She could do that. She was a scientist, for fuck's sake. She'd run experiments that lasted hours. She'd tracked the trajectory of planets for entire nights at a time. Twenty-five minutes with Harvey was a perfectly surmountable means to achieve her ends, surely.

"Maru?"

She shrieked, spinning with wide eyes to find an equally wide-eyed Harvey frozen across the front desk from her. His mouth parted, then closed again, as they stared at each other for a brief moment of panic.

She planted a hand on her sternum and willed her breathing to regulate. "Sorry! Sorry. I was, uh, absorbed in something."

"I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," he replied, his ears practically glowing red through the mop of his hair. He paused, eyebrows furrowing. "Is that—does it smell like ammonia in here?"

"I cleaned the windows ," she lied quickly. She whipped off her stupid nurse's hat and fumbled to pull her iPad out of her bag, her list of questions prepared. "Anyway, it's past closing, isn't it? Are you ready? I'm ready."

He nodded, the lines on his forehead softening again. Redirect successful. "Wonderful. Just, uh, follow me, then. We'll use the big room; I haven't had a chance to sanitize the exam room just yet, don't want you catching the flu," he trailed off as they walked down the short hall to the back room, where the beds she'd made last week still sat unperturbed and hospital-cornered. He flipped a switch and brought the fluorescent lights buzzing to life.

She turned to walk over to the closest hospital bed, ready to perch comfortably on it so she could take notes. In her line of sight, though, was Harvey. He was hunched over the sink (she really needed to raise that countertop; he wasn't tall enough to warrant crouching like that) scrubbing his hands with his shirtsleeves rucked up his forearms, the cuffs of his button-up straining against the tight fit. The rich texture of his hair and the soft planes of his frame, compact but solid with broad shoulders and a comfortable thickness around his middle, were all so unavoidably clear in the bright light. A feeling she hadn't experienced since she'd caught the Perseid meteor shower fluttered in her chest. He hummed to himself, the same little nonsense tune as always, as he flicked the water off his hands and toweled them dry.

"Okay, let's get started, if you're comf—oh," he said, turning to find her rooted to the same spot by the light switch. The shame of being caught made her skin flash hot. "I'm so sorry. Please, have a seat over here, if that's all right," he said, drawing the room's solitary stool up to the side of the closest bed. She hurried over, mumbling a halfhearted deflection, and sat stiffly on the edge. If she kept herself busy enough with notetaking, she wouldn't have to look at him.

Ten minutes. The clock starts now, she reminded herself. Just get through this appointment, and then get through one more, and her future would be hers to control. She smoothed the stiff edge of her white uniform skirt over her knees. I can do this.

"So!" she started briskly, whipping her stylus out of its elastic loop. "What do you need from me?"

Harvey sank onto his rolling stool with a sigh. "Just a little history, mostly—honestly, I could ask you the same thing. What information are you looking to gather?

He gestured at her notetaking setup. Ah, perfect. She tapped the first item on her list. "Well, for starters—do you have any concrete information about the benefits of hormonal versus copper? Most sources claim that one is more effective than the other, but I find the margin of difference to be nearly statistically insignificant."

He folded his hands on his knee in thought, just inches from where her own legs dangled. It took everything she had to keep her eyes trained on his face.

"Hmm. I mean, they are both more than ninety-nine percent effective. I'd agree with you that any difference in efficacy is marginal. Instead, I'd advise choosing based on what you know about your own body. Do you have any experience with oral contraceptives?"

She nodded, flicking to her notes in another tab. "Yes, I took them for a while when I was in college—not for, uh sex. I had acne," she finished lamely. With a pang, she realized she'd just repeated the same excuse she'd given her dad when she'd come home for Christmas and accidentally left her pill pack in the bathroom. Her fingers tightened on her stylus.

Harvey wheeled over to the countertop to fetch his clipboard. "So, a few years ago. And that was okay? Any troublesome side effects?"

"Not really. Not that I can remember, anyway, so it couldn't have been anything dire."

He made a few notes, a smile tugging at the corner of his mustache. "Nothing… dire…" he read aloud as he wrote. She laughed, tension fractionally leaking out of her chest.

"That's the medical terminology, right?" she joked tentatively.

"Yep. Got it in one," he smirked, shaking his head. "Right. The hormonal IUDs would all have a much, much lower dose and a more localized effect than the pill, so I think you'd likely tolerate any of them well. On the other hand, how are your cycles? Painful, irregular, anything like that?"

She thought for a moment, reflecting on the electric hot pad permanently plugged in next to her bed. "Painful, I guess? Just for the first few days."

The crease between his brows reappeared. "Does the pain prevent you from doing activities, studying, or working?"

"Sometimes?" she admitted, cringing as he took notes. He was her doctor, she reminded herself; not a cute guy at a bar. He needed to know. "It's mostly just uncomfortable, though. Nothing that interferes with my activities of daily living."

He looked up at her, the worry on his face mixed with something akin to pride. "Your ADLs—now that is medical terminlogy! I shouldn't be surprised; I know you do your own reading."

She suddenly became very interested fixing a note on her iPad, blushing furiously. "I've heard you use it enough. I've been here for like, more than a year now."

"Gosh, has it only been a year?" he mused. Harvey had shallow dimples near his mouth, she noticed. Only when he smiled. "I already can't remember how I got along without you."

She scoffed.

"Really, I mean it," he insisted, grinning as he continued to write.

She risked a smile back at him. "Thanks. It sucked to move home after I graduated, obviously, but I like working here. It's kept me sane."

His eyes flicked to hers, unguarded and bright. "Good. Honestly, that's… I'm so glad to hear that. I like having you here." He cleared his throat. "At the clinic, I mean. You've been a huge asset to the clinic."

Of course. Her stupid heart crumpled like a can in a recycling machine. "Yeah. At the clinic."

There was a beat of silence, as though they'd both forgotten their lines and were waiting for their cue from offstage.

"Anything else?" she managed through the foggy lightness in her head.

He inhaled sharply. "Um," he looked down at his clipboard again, brisk and clinical. "Any other emotional or psychological changes related to your cycle?"

"No."

"Great. In that case, any option of implant should work for you, although I will advise that the copper IUD is associated with greater menstrual pain and heavier periods, while hormonal options often allow people to skip periods altogether." He flipped to the next page of the packet on his clipboard, and Maru realized she had failed to take a singlular fucking note so far.

She scribbled they all work fine, get hormonal for no periods next to her first agenda item.

"I think I like the sound of the hormonal," she ventured.

Harvey nodded and made a note of his own. "Most people do, in my experience. Feel free to keep thinking on it, though—I had to go to the big pharmacy in Zuzu over the weekend anyway, and I picked up one of each while I was there. So, you'll have a choice on the day of the appointment."

"Wait, really?" she blurted. "That's—wow, Harvey, thank you."

He dismissed her praise with a gesture. "It's just good care."

A bewildered smile tugged at her mouth in response even as her frantic heart slammed against her ribs. He'd gone out of his way to give her a choice. She'd had so few of those since she'd moved home.

Just a few more minutes, she thought desperately, squeezing her thighs together.

A glance at her iPad confirmed she was hopelessly off-script. Fuck it. She clicked it off and dropped it and the stylus to the scratchy bedspread beside her. "I think that's everything for me. What's next?"

He raised his eyebrows. "No more questions? It's important that you're totally comfortable, Maru; I truly don't mind."

"Nope," she lied, leaning back slightly on her palms to show how cool and unaffected she was by all of this. The only totally comfortable option for her would be to just buy the damn thing off the dark web and insert it herself, at this point, but they were already here.

"Okay. Your last checkup and blood panel was fairly recent, so I just have to administer a—uh, brief sexual health inventory and we'll be done for the day," he said, flipping to the back of his packet.

"Question away," she said with an immediate pang of embarassment. Question away? Did she think she was being interviewed for Hopeless Underemployed Scientists Monthly or something?

Thankfully, Harvey charged ahead. "Are you informed and aware that intrauterine devices prevent pregnancy for up to ten years, unless they are removed?"

"I have never wanted children, and I am certain I never will," she recited from the sanitized, heavily condensed story she'd composed to define her intentions. "I intend to pursue voluntary salpingectomy in my thirties, once I've saved the necessary funds. In the meantime, an IUD is a safe, reliable option of preventing pregnancy."

Harvey's lip twitched in amusement as he recorded her answer. "I'll check yes, then. Once again, I implore you to consider medical school. You'd make a superb doctor."

She laughed nervously. "If all the exam questions are this easy, maybe."

"Oh, you're more than up to the challenge. Next: are you sexually active?" he read aloud.

Her palms prickled with sweat. "Yes."

He checked something on his sheet. "Have you had more than one partner in the last year?"

"Uh," she fumbled, counting backwards. The last time with Penny had been around three months ago, and Sam had been, god—March? "Y- yeah. Just two, though."

Harvey shifted his grip on his clipboard. "Do you have sex with men, women, or both? Mm, that's awfully archaic," he grumbled. "Let me rephrase. What genders have your sexual partners been?"

She swallowed. "One man and one woman."

Harvey whipped up to look at her for a single frank moment, his mouth slightly open. Even further embarassment swept through her under his surprised gaze.

"It's not a big deal," she protested meekly. It wasn't. People weren't generally taken off-guard by the fact that she was queer; she usually wore overalls for fuck's sake—

"No!" The bright red had returned to the tips of his ears. "No, I apologize. Responding that way was highly inappropriate, I don't know what got into me, it's just—" he stammered.

"I mean, if that's how you feel, don't—"

"I'm bisexual." His mouth worked tensely, as though the words had left a sour taste in his mouth. "Don't, uh, don't tell anyone."

Now it was Maru's turn to stare. Harvey swallowed heavily and looked down at his clipboard again, clearly ready to move on.

"Me too," she replied, as nonchalantly as she could manage.

He exhaled through his nose, slowly, before continuing. A trick to activate his vagus nerve. His shoulders relaxed by a few degrees, and when his eyes finally met hers again, enormous and improbably green, the anxiety in them had mostly receded.

"Again, I apologize, this isn't at all professional. It was just… nice, I suppose, to discover I'm not the only one here, and I allowed my personal feelings to interrupt the appointment. Your appointment," he confessed. "It won't happen again."

Maru snorted. "You're not even close to the only one here."

Hope, disbelief, skepticism, then hope again flashed across his face. "No?"

"In Pelican Town?" She leveled him with a look over her glasses. "You've seen Elliott."

Harvey barked a surprised laugh, clapping a hand over his mouth and pitching backward in his chair. Pride glowed bright in her chest. The rough, unpolished joy of his real laugh was something she'd rarely experienced, but now here it was, for her and her alone.

"Penny's literally shacking up with the farmer, Harvey, like—" she pressed, incredulous and teasing. "These people are all your patients! No way you didn't know any of this."

"I didn't," he insisted, wiping under his eyes with a finger. "I can't just ask for a comprehensive sexual history at everyone's annuals; can you imagine the uproar? It's hard enough to get people in the door as it is."

She couldn't argue with him on that point. Sympathy tightened her chest thinking about how lonely Harvey must have been all this time, if he had really kept himself this alienated from the community. There was definitely a story there, and it didn't seem like a happy one. "Well, we're here and we're queer, I guess, and that includes you. Surprise. Anyway, is that all?"

"Just a couple more, yes, sorry," he sniffed, collecting himself once more. "Have you ever been told by a doctor or nurse that you had a sexually transmitted disease?"

"No."

"Have you abstained from sexual intercourse since your last menstrual period?"

"Yes."

"Great. Done. You got an A." He got up with a sigh and tucked his clipboard under his arm. "That's all for today—although to be completely honest, I'd do the placement for you right now if it weren't so late."

Late.

Maru's heart stopped. Had she told dad that she'd be late? She couldn't remember. Possibly. Hopefully. She scrambled to retrieve her silenced phone and unlock it, panic like a knife in her sternum. Four missed calls.

"Shit," she hissed, mashing the "call back" button with a shaking thumb.

"Maru?" Harvey was approaching her on cautious feet, but she held up a hand. Demetrius picked up on the second ring.

"Hi, dad," she said in her sweetest voice. Harvey's brow knitted. She turned to face away from him.

A heavy, exasperated sigh of relief greeted her, and her stomach dropped. "Maru. Do you have any idea—your mother and I have been worried sick, I was about to call the wilderness rescue—"

"Why?" she said, innocent and soft. "You know I'm working late at the clinic tonight. It's records week."

Records day was last week, but it was close enough not to feel like a lie.

"I did not know that," her father thundered. "Are you still there?"

"Yes, of course I am," she responded placatingly. "I'm just about to leave, okay? I'll see you in twenty."

Another sigh this time. This one, at least, sounded patronizing. Her heart lightened a little—she'd avoided the full guilt trip. "Oh, pumpkin, no. The snowstorm is much too dangerous for travel, especially in the dark. That's why we were so worried; we thought you'd gotten lost or frozen on the way home."

"Snowstorm?" she squeaked. She heard Harvey's loafers shuffle closer.

"Yes, snowstorm. Did you get absorbed in one of your projects?" he asked.

"I fixed our PCR centrifuge," she admitted. Dad chuckled indulgently. She was so in the clear.

"That's a clever girl. I know how up-in-the-clouds you get when you're working on something. No wonder you didn't realize the snow had gotten so bad."

She giggled. "You're probably right. So," and she let an Oscar-worthy quaver edge into her voice, "what should I do?"

There was a beat of thought on his end. "Hand the phone to Harvey."

She spun around. Harvey was just feet from her, obviously eavesdropping. She pinned her phone to her shirt, muffling it. "Play along," she whispered.

Harvey, still the picture of concern, shot her a thumbs up. She picked up the phone again. "Okay, here he is!" she chirped.

Instead of handing him the phone, she held it up to him and hit speakerphone. After a moment or two of silence, Harvey inhaled sharply. "Hello. Am I speaking to Demetrius?"

"You are," her father's voice replied, tinny from the speaker but no less pompous. "It seems as though Maru has been kept late today."

"Yes, she's been helping me with our annual mandated purge of patient records," he replied smoothly, maintaining eye contact with her across the glossy surface of the phone. She smiled at him gratefully through a tight jaw.

Dad harrumphed. "Well. I don't suppose, then, you're aware that the mountain path has completely snowed over."

Both of their eyebrows shot into their hairlines. "I was not, no," Harvey replied. "Goodness, that's quite the blizzard."

"It is," dad said petulantly. "So you see what you've done, then—my little girl has no way home."

Maru made a gesture like she was shooting herself in the head. Harvey turned away from the phone for a moment to collect himself, his cheeks pink with mirth.

"I do indeed. I apologize, Demetrius, I would never want to endanger Maru's wellbeing," he said gravely. "If the path is impassable—"

"It is," dad interrupted, snippy.

"—then may I suggest Maru spends the night here, in the infirmary? We have no patients at the moment, so she would have the place to herself."

The muffled voice of her mother echoed in the background. It sounded agreeable.

"Just a moment, Robin," dad huffed. "How am I to know that she would really have the place to herself, Harvey?"

She wished, with a fervor bordering on religious, that she had succumbed to frostbite and hypothermia on the walk home instead of letting her dad talk to Harvey like he was a teenage boyfriend and not a full medical doctor who was also her boss. She gripped her entire face in her free hand and cast her head downwards. Hypothetical answers to what the fuck is my problem were starting to solidify.

"I'm not sure what you mean," Harvey said, his voice calm and puzzled. "If security is a concern, however, I can assure you that Maru is capable of locking any door in the clinic if she chooses."

Dad exhaled, clearly irritated. "Fine. But I want her home early tomorrow. I'll arrange for the farmer down the road to pick her up in her truck."

"I will leave it to Maru to set her own schedule," he cheerfully replied in a tone that brooked no argument. She looked up, shocked, at Harvey's fixed smile and flinty eyes. "Rest assured she will be perfectly welcome here in the meantime. Good night, Demetrius."

"Ah—hm. Good night, doctor." dad grumbled, conceding. He hung up. The line went dead.

Maru's mouth went completely dry. Was Harvey glowing, or just backlit by the lamp over the sink? He turned the full force of his gaze onto her, and she could have melted through the floor. No one had ever been so beautiful as he was now.

"How old are you?" he asked, taut.

"Huh?" She shook back to herself. "I'm twenty-four. Twenty-five in June."

Harvey's jaw worked. "When I was your age, I'd been a paramedic for five years and a medical student for two," he said. "And you are much more capable than I ever was. Brighter, more promising, astronomically more driven. That you've had to move home due to the abysmal state of the economy is one injustice, but to have to live under the pretense that you're somehow still a child—that you can't form a thought for yourself when you're so obviously brilliant—"

He cut himself off as he rubbed a hand down his face. Maru, stunned, finally lowered her phone from where she'd held it between them. The air in the room grew heavy. Neither of them moved.

"Do you really think so?" she asked breathlessly. He was always quick to praise her for specific things—an insightful question, a task well done—but never like this. Not her, intrinsically.

His gaze snapped back to her with a heat she could feel on her skin. "Maru."

There it was again, the pleading edge when he said her name, but this time there was a sharper edge to it, a barely-restrained recklessness Harvey was obviously wrestling to subdue. She tried to convince herself, as always, that she'd just imagined it—wishful thinking—but then she watched, heart pounding, as his gaze traced a path from her eyes down to her mouth.

The floor dropped out from underneath her. She swallowed around a dry tongue. Harvey, so good, so principled, was staring at her lips with a parted mouth and a potent mix of shame and desire rolling off of him like pheremones. Her ironclad will crumbled into ash.

"So you agree," she asked slowly, "that I'm capable. I should do what I want."

"Absolutely," he said. She took a step closer to him, just a small one.

"Anything I want?" she pressed.

Harvey's eyes finally widened in recognition. His mouth opened wordlessly, then shut again. After a beat of silence, then another, panic began its icy creep through her veins.

Fuck. Fuck. She'd taken her eyes off the prize for a moment and let her stupid horny crush trick her into demolishing all hope of getting what she needed—not to mention, all hope of continuing to work for Harvey. Her entire future, jeopardized. She turned away, preparing to gather her things and call Abigail to see if she could sleep over. Alternatively, she could just walk into the night and lie down in a snow bank to gently freeze to death. Both seemed equally logical next steps.

A warm, strong hand closed over her wrist.

"I'm eleven years older than you," he said from behind her. His voice felt strange, simultaneously dreamlike and unbearably real. She didn't dare exhale. "I'm your doctor. I'm your employer."

"I know," she winced. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—"

A few footsteps, and Harvey appeared in front of her, her wrist still gently in his grip. His thumb drifted across the slight protrusion of her scaphoid bone, up her radial artery where her rabbit pulse fluttered under his touch, into the soft pad of her palm. The familiar verdure of his eyes was nearly gone. The enormity and hunger of his pupils knocked away what little remaining breath she had.

"I am also," he continued, shaking his head, "an irredemably bad man."

She curled her hand around his thumb the best she could, willing him to stay there. "Why would you ever say that?"

He looked at her with enough grief to break her heart. She shuffled toward him, her other hand tentatively reaching for his, and he tangled their fingers together. His skin flashed feverishly warm against hers.

"I absolutely cannot be a good man." She opened her mouth to protest, but he shook his head, his chest stuttering. "Not when my every thought about you is so…massively inappropriate. Not when I want you so badly that I can't make it through a medical appointment without—Maru, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"

Every thought in her magnificent, finely-tuned brain evaporated at once. She lunged forward and sealed her mouth to his. Harvey gasped like he'd been shot, but she wrenched her hands free to cup his jaw and lean farther into the kiss, determined to commit every part of him to memory. She cataloged the lingering taste of coffee in his mouth, the familiar waft of his green apple shampoo, the brush of his five o'clock shadow against her chin. If she never had this again, at least she could recall it in vivid detail.

Harvey grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her off of him, panting, his glasses knocked askew.

"Push me away," he pleaded.

She knitted her eyebrows. "What?"

"Tell me this is wrong," he pressed, his eyes wild. His trembling hand slid up, along the plane of her collarbone, to curve tenderly around the back of her neck. She instinctually leaned into the touch. "Tell me I'm taking advantage, tell me I'm disgusting, tell me anything to remind me why I don't get to have this, because I don't have the strength to stop."

Fuck, her heart. A sharp ache of sadness crackled through her chest. She smoothed her thumbs along the jut of his cheekbones under his flushed skin. He closed his eyes, pained.

"Harvey," she crooned. His breath left him in a shudder. "Look at me, Harvey."

Reluctantly, he blinked his eyes open again. She leaned closer, just a few inches from him, her head tilted back to keep holding his gaze. He wasn't a large man, but she was still markedly shorter than him. She'd never realized until now. She'd never let herself get close enough to tell.

"Do you think, for a second, that you could make me do anything?"

He stared back at her, hard. She stared back just as firmly.

"I… no," he sighed.

"Right. So, relax."

He hesitated, then turned his head to let himself kiss the palm of her hand, his eyes slipping closed and his brow furrowing with the intention of it. Her nerve endings burst into sparks under the warmth of his lips.

"Oh," she breathed. "Harvey." He leaned in again, then again, before finally turning back to her. She threaded her fingertips into his thick hair, shocked to find how soft it was.

"I'm supposed to be better than this," he whispered, his expression glassy and wrecked.

She shook her head. "I don't want you to be better than this. Well," she amended. "I need you to do my insertion. Then I don't want you to be better than this."

He straightened, his eyes unclouding as his thoughts caught up to him. "You want this done tonight? Still? By me?"

Insistent, she grabbed him by the shoulders. "Yes. Please. You have to."

"But we—"

"Okay, we kissed," she waved him off. "I don't care. We can do a lot more than kiss afterward."

He frowned. Panic spiked in her veins.

"Please, Harvey, please, it can't wait." His button-up crumpled in her grip.

His brow furrowed. "It can't?"

"No," she insisted, her voice close to breaking. Skepticism was still clear in the lines of his face. She deflated. "It's not just that I don't want a kid. I don't want to get stuck here. I can't get stuck here."

Gentle fingers slid to cover one of her hands where it rested on the curve of his deltoid. As soon as his eyes met hers, she knew he saw everything as plainly as if he were reading a book. His Compassionately Neutral Physician demeanor emerged again.

"Let me be clear: I would do this for you even if I never got to touch you again," he said, firm. "I'll ask you a final time. Are you sure?"

She exhaled through her nose, struggling to remain annoyed as elation burned bright in her chest. "Yes. Doctor."

Although he kept his face straight, an undeniable shiver rippled through him. Her skin tingled like she'd just grazed over a hidden live wire.

"Come with me," he said. She trailed behind him over to the big, triple-locked medication cabinet by the door and watched as he riffled through his key ring to unlatch them all.

Finally, the doors creaked open, revealing shelves and shelves of bottles and syringes and—wonder of wonders—two long, thin applicators with fresh prescription labels on their sterile packaging. Harvey collected one of them while his other hand scanned the bottles.

"There we are, ibuprofen—hold this, please," he mumbled, handing her the bulk jar of pills. "Any allergies to medication?"

"Nope."

He shot her a wink, then reached onto the highest shelf and retrieved a small orange bottle. "This is optional, but I always like to offer it."

She squinted until the label came into focus: clonazepam.

"Klonopin? Holy shit," she exclaimed, taking the offered bottle. "This has to be off-label."

He shrugged. "We give sedatives to men who have vasectomies without even thinking about it. This procedure is not especially different, in my view. I'd give you Percocet if you asked me for it."

"That's…" she trailed off as he closed and re-locked the cabinet, "incredibly fucking hot."

He paused to look at her. "What, the narcotics?"

"No, you—" she shot back, smacking him playfully in the arm with the pill bottles. "The progressive approach to pain management in women's healthcare. Obviously."

He laughed, bashful, and the fire inside her blazed even higher. "Well. It's hardly more than common sense, but, good? I suppose?"

Four ibuprofen, one Klonopin, and a paper cup of tap water later, she let him ease her back onto the hospital bed and set about removing her shoes, then her socks. Her attempts to help were batted away with a gentle "I've got it." When he finished, he awkwardly stood at the side of the bed, looking down at her with an unreadable expression.

She shimmied over a few inches. "Are you gonna come here, or do you need an invitation?"

"Well," he said, conflicted, "I can't get too comfortable—I'll need to move you in about thirty minutes, once the medication kicks in."

"Hey Siri," she said, without breaking eye contact, in the direction of her phone. "Set a timer for thirty minutes."

Starting a timer for thirty minutes, its tinny voice helpfully replied. Harvey paused for a moment longer, then sank onto the edge of the bed and kicked off his loafers. Maru grinned as he crawled up the bed to her, hovering above her with his elbow propped next to her head.

"We can… be close," he breathed, trying very hard to be serious as his eyes dialated, "but given how soon your procedure is, I wouldn't recommend—ah, it would probably be counterproductive, in a way—"

"We can't fuck," Maru finished for him. He let his head drop to her shoulder with a pained groan.

"In so many words," he agreed, voice tight.

The full, delicious weight of him covered her as he hesitated one last time, then finally surged to slide his mouth her over hers and wind his arm under the arch of her back. Harvey was kissing her. Harvey was kissing her. Harvey was clutching her to him with desperate hands and moaning when her teeth grazed his bottom lip and arranging her hair out of their way with gentle fingers.

Time spun apart. There was no sound in the universe except for their ragged breathing and the roar of her pulse. She slipped her tongue into his mouth as he opened for her, and the shocking intimacy of it made them both gasp. More, more skin, more touch, she needed more. Clumsily, she searched for the buttons of her white nurse's blouse.

"Here, let me," he breathed, pushing himself to lean back onto his knees. As he smoothed his broad hands up her waist, though, his words seemed to leave him completely. He held her by her ribcage for a long, stunned moment.

"Your uniform," he explained, his eyes dark and keen. "You're still in your…"

She looked down at herself, mildly surprised to remember that she was still in her nurse getup. The cheap, thick fabric looked even more hopelessly rumpled under the unforgiving flourescents.

She grimaced, an apology for how deeply unsexy this must be on her tongue, but Harvey removed his glasses and slid his hand down his face with a stifled moan. "Fuck, Maru."

Maru's jaw dropped, both at hearing him say anything coarser than "gosh" and the confirmation that he was, even just a little, more twisted than he appeared. Yes. Yes. There it was, another flash of the repressed freak she'd caught a glimpse of earlier. Her toes curled.

"You've fantasized about fucking me in this stupid outfit, haven't you?" she accused, delighted. He choked. "Oh, you have."

"That's—that's not entirely fair; I think about you in a lot of situations," he stammered.

She grinned, finding his hands and placing them over the button placket of her shirt. He dutifully started to work them open. "Yeah, and one of those situations is feeling up your much younger nurse in the exam room of your own medical practice. In the uniform you make her wear."

He wheezed, his fingers fumbling on the third button. "God."

"Am I wrong?" she teased, running her fingers through his hair to tousle it further.

"No," he conceded, shaky. "No, I'm a pervert."

"You really are," she hummed approvingly, craning to kiss his forehead. "Do you want to know something?"

He looked up at her, expression open even as his eyes remained unfocused. "Of course."

She found his own shirt buttons and started pulling them apart, exposing his pale, flushed chest and smattering of soft brown hair. "After I watch you work on people all day, I go home, and I lock myself in my room, and I come my brains out imagining what those beautiful fucking hands could do to me."

Those sweet, unfocused eyes went entirely black. "You don't."

"I do," she said, taking his chin in her hand. "Sometimes twice."

"In the same night?"

"One right after the other."

She felt him swallow. He started to say something, then failed. A bead of sweat formed along his carotid artery. With deliberate, careful movements, he peeled her free of her shirt, leaving her in just her bra and rucked-up skirt.

He held his hand up between them, watching her face with dawning confidence. Then he reached under her and, before she knew what was happening, undid the clasp of her bra with a single flick of his thumb. The ache between her legs throbbed.

She hid her rapidly-heating face in the crook of her elbow. His gentle laugh only made it worse.

"Like that?" he asked, smug, as he coaxed her arm down and slid her bra free.

"No, actually, I had no fucking idea you could do that," she huffed, mortified. She struggled to watch as he palmed her tits, barely able to process the realization of this particular fantasy. "I'm going to have to revise my mmph—"

Harvey descended on her again, ravenous, and they dissolved into a blur of desperate movement. She tugged him closer as he flattened her to the bed. He guided his thigh to press hard against her soaked underwear, then swallowed the breathy whine from her mouth while her hips rocked. She aligned herself under him just so the full, hard length of him under his khakis could rut against her stomach and balled her fists in his ruined shirt as he lost himself entirely.

She felt his hand skimming the waistband of her starched white skirt, searching for the zipper, and brushed it away.

"Leave it," she panted into his ear, wicked. "I want you to remember exactly who's giving it up to you."

His breath punched from him in disbelief even as his hips stuttered. "Fuck," he choked out.

"Mm. I'm gonna give you so much more than this when we're done," she teased, hitching her free leg around his waist to find even sweeter friction as they rocked faster. "You can have me whenever you want. Upstairs, in your office, I don't care—after today—"

"After I personally make sure you're absolutely never getting pregnant, you mean?" he rasped directly into her ear.

A set of neurons she didn't even know she had blazed to life and punched the breath straight from her chest. The constant chatter of her thoughts fell silent. Her mouth parted, speechless except for a whimper, as her eyes fluttered. Harvey huffed a triumphant laugh—had he figured out something she hadn't? Bastard—and hitched her leg higher.

"Don't worry. I'll do it for you. I'll make sure. I'll make it so safe for me to fuck you, is that what you want?" he breathed hot against her neck. She convulsed under him. Her body wasn't big enough to hold the sudden fucking need frying her circuits and cutting short her breath. That was what she wanted, that was exactly what she'd always wanted, and Harvey was going to give it all to her. In the corner of the room, her phone started to buzz and jingle, but the alarm glanced harmlessly off of her muffled thoughts.

He crushed their mouths together, long and hard and deep, and she let her eyes slip closed as every muscle in her body relaxed.

"I know. I know," he crooned, kissing the shell of her ear. "I've got you. I'll take care of it. You know I can."

"I do," she breathed. The sparkling, urgent pressure winding tight inside her was reaching a breaking point; sweat prickled on her scalp as her heart and lungs struggled to keep up with whatever Harvey had unearthed from the deepest part of her id. "You—fuck, Harvey, more—"

"I'll put you in that chair and fix everything for you. No more worrying your precious head. Just as soon as you come for me, sweetheart," he said, stumbling over the endearment. She smiled, glassy and beatific, and he breathed a sigh of relief. "Yeah? Come right on my thigh, sweetheart, there you are. That's it, that's it—"

Her fingertips dug into the meat of his shoulders as she completely fucking unraveled. Harvey groaned a stream of praise into her ear, his full weight firmly pinning her down so she could writhe through it without falling off of the narrow bed. Her limbs melted heavy into the mattress as the last tremors ebbed, her chest still heaving but her body loose-jointed and still.

Harvey pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead and looked over his shoulder. "Gosh, that alarm's been going for a little while—how do you feel?"

"Amazing," she grinned, dreamy. He pulled back to check her eyes for something, then hummed, kissing her forehead one more time before easing off of her and straightening her skirt.

"While I'd love to take credit, that'll be the clonazepam." She heard footsteps, then her alarm went silent. "I'm going to see if I can help you stand, okay? Try and sit up for me. Slowly."

As leaden and semi-solid as her arms felt, she slid them under her and managed to push herself to sitting. Harvey was right there in his hastily-rebuttoned shirt, ready to catch her. There was so much joy just in looking at him that her cheeks ached from smiling.

She noticed, though, that the obvious line of his erection still pressed against the front of his khakis, and her smile faded. That wasn't right. She reached for him, pressing her palm to his hard dick and groping him through the fabric, but he caught her hand and pulled her away.

"Later," he coughed, flustered. "It's okay. Let's take care of you."

"Okay," she shrugged, feeling remarkably agreeable. He kissed her on the cheek. His mustache tickled.

A sweater, much too big for her and smelling deliciously of his shampoo, was slipped over her naked torso. It was wonderful. Harvey looped his arm under her armpits and held her tightly as he helped her shuffle over to the exam chair behind one of the curtains, and that was wonderful too. She lifted her hips off of the crinkly paper cover for him so he could shimmy off her skirt and underwear. He thanked her. She thought she might combust.

"Even with medication, this is still going to be uncomfortable," Harvey explained as he guided her feet into the stirrups. "There's something I want you to do for me to make it easier, all right? Keep your mouth nice and relaxed the entire time. I'll be as quick as I can, but if you just focus on relaxing your mouth, then all your smooth muscle will stay relaxed."

She nodded up at the ceiling as a fact lazily swam up through her clouded thoughts. "Vagus nerve activation, right?"

He popped back into her line of sight and beamed at her. "Brilliant."

She hid her face in her hands. He chuckled.

He must have spent some time preparing and scrubbing up, but she wasn't especially aware of it. She knew, distantly, that benzodiazepines hit their highest potency after an hour, and she was hurtling toward that mark with a smile on her face and a song in her heart. The wheels of his stool squeaked as he wheeled it to the bottom of the chair and took his seat between her legs.

"I'm here. We're going to get started," his voice floated up to her. He had such a nice voice.

He huffed a laugh. "I'm very glad you think so."

Oh. Oh well.

"You're going to feel my hands. One will be on your outer labia, and one finger will go inside of you to apply some lidocaine gel to the cervix," he said, businesslike. That sounded amazing. She shuddered and spread her legs wider. He muttered something under his breath that might have been god help me.

Just as he'd said, one of his hands—in a rubber glove, she noticed with some disappointment—gently pulled her open while a finger slick with something cold and slippery pressed inside her. She gasped and gripped the armrests on the chair, torn between excitement and the odd feeling of him prodding, but the surge of euphoria low in her core quickly fizzled into nothing.

"Relax your mouth," he reminded her, audibly strained. She did. He withdrew his finger with a distinctly wet sound. "Good job, Maru. You're doing beautifully."

Any disappointment from being numbed burned away. She was doing a good job. She'd be the best patient ever.

The speculum was uncomfortable. She knew it would be. Harvey helped her breathe deeply and soothed her back into relaxation, then rewarded her with the briefest possible kiss to the inside of her knee. There was some crinkling of something being unwrapped, then the feeling of something thin and hard resting near her entrance.

"You're going to feel a pinch, then a cramp," he said, serious. "That is normal. If you feel anything more than that, you tell me immediately. Can you do that?"

She cleared her throat and did her best to gather her scattered, flattened presence of mind. "Yes."

Harvey exhaled. "Very good, Maru."

Her toes curled before she remembered she was supposed to be relaxing. Another kiss brushed her inner thigh. "Here we go," he said.

There was a pinch. She hissed through her teeth. There was a cramp, a deep, awful one that nearly made her bow off the chair, but she screwed her eyes shut and focused on keeping her lips parted and soft. Harvey said nothing, just made a sympathetic noise of apology as he worked.

The applicator disappeared from inside her. She gulped deep breaths of air, shaking with relief. Harvey's hand curled over her thigh.

"Just one more step, I have to clip your strings," he narrated, stress beginning to fray the edges of his professionalism. "You can do it, sweetheart, you can do it for me."

She willed herself to melt back into the chair. "I can do it."

"Yes you can. You''ll feel something inside you, but no pain." There was more unwrapping and the clink of metal, then something cold briefly dipping in and out of her. Finally, the speculum released and slid out of her, and Harvey was out of his seat and shucking his rubber gloves onto the floor. His hands, clammy with nerves, cupped her face as he kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her.

"You did so well, you were perfect," he reassured her. She smiled against him, even as pain radiated down her legs. "You were. And now you're done. You're all done, I promise. Oh, gosh, let me get your underwear—I have a pair of sweatpants you can wear, you must be cold—"

She clumsily grabbed the front of his shirt, determined to pull him back in for more of the absolutely delightful kissing they'd been doing, but something brushed her forearm as he stumbled. She turned her head to the side. Harvey looked away, mortified.

"You're still hard." She trailed her hand down the placket of his shirt, over his belt, to stroke him lazily through his pants. He whimpered. "You're really hard, god."

"I'm… " Harvey winced, laden with self-loathing. "Damn it. I'm so sorry."

She smirked up at him, wrinkling her nose. "Pervert."

He throbbed in her hand. They both groaned.

"You don't have to—you shouldn't," he protested as her fingers fumbled to unlatch his belt. She pulled his zipper down, undeterred.

After a moment of hesitation, he batted her hands away and reluctantly pushed his pants and underwear down just enough for him to take his cock in his hand. Not especially big or small, from the angle she had, but obviously well-groomed and flushed a very appealing deep pink at the tip. A smear of clear fluid shone on his skin.

"Harvey," she drawled. "Oh, that's pretty."

He kept his hand firmly around himself, but she still reached out to brush a finger around the head. He hissed, jerking away.

"You're sedated," he said, rough. "You can't know what you're doing."

She let her head flop back to the chair, looking up at him through lidded eyes. "Okay. You do it."

He inhaled sharply.

"You do it," she repeated, shrugging. "Jerk off."

"On you?" he spluttered. She smirked.

"If that's what you want." His face reddened. "Which it totally is."

"You can't consent," he mumbled, stroking himself once. "You're in pain, you're recovering, and you can't consent."

She held his gaze. His wrist worked again. Without blinking, she opened her mouth and let her tongue peek over her bottom lip.

A groan punched from deep in his stomach and he gripped the headrest of the chair as his hips and fist started thrusting desperately in tandem. He threw his head back, instantly lost in everything he'd been holding back all night. Satisfaction glowed warm inside her.

"Should I relax my mouth, doctor?" she asked, just to see him squirm. He did, spectacularly. His cock leaked over his fingers and he hissed a string of profanity as he gripped himself harder.

"I'm going to hell," he groaned under his breath. "I'm going straight to hell, I'm fucking irredemable—"

She went back to holding her tongue out, expectant and smug. Now that the floodgates were open, so to speak, the words just kept coming.

He looked down at her, eyes dark. "Fuck, though, you look so good. You're so gorgeous, I can't fucking believe you're in my sweater and nothing fucking else. I can't believe I get to fuck you; I can't believe I'm gonna know what you taste like, do you have any idea what it was like to be so close and not—fuck—"

His voice broke and his pace grew frantic. She whined, a breathy little noise of encouragement, and fumbled to rest her hand on the back of his thigh. She tried to tug him closer, get him near enough to pull the head of his dick into her mouth. Almost. She craned her neck, trying to reach him, but he gently tugged her back to the chair with a hand in her hair.

"You want this," he breathed, disbelieving. She nodded. He shuddered and his fingers tightened in her curls. Warm splashes of his come streaked across her open mouth, along her cheek, even the corner of her glasses. She swallowed and stuck her tongue out again, looking for more, which earned her a strangled groan and another weak pulse onto her bottom lip.

A perfect end to a perfect—if wildly fucking strange—night. Her luck was incomprehensible.

Harvey disappeared from her view, but she could hear the heavy tide of his breathing as he shuffled around the exam room. She unhooked her feet from the stirrups, sat up, and wriggled back into her carefully folded underpants, still heavy and loose-limbed but used to it by now. At least partially decent, she looked up to see him walking over to her from the sink with an armful of supplies. She smiled, and the riot of nerves and trepidation in his expression smoothed.

"Are you okay?" he asked worriedly. She snorted.

"Harvey." He deposited his supplies on a nearby cart and took out a sterile wipe. "I just got literally everything I wanted in the space of like, two hours."

He ducked his head, bashful, before taking her chin in his hand and carefully cleaning her face. "Well. As long as you're not feeling, uh, regretful." He paused to dab away the dot of come on her glasses. "Which would be understandable, just please tell me if so."

Of course he was overthinking it; he was too smart to just take what was obviously in front of him. She leaned forward and pulled him into a kiss. A soft one, with no greater purpose than to kiss him. After a moment, he sighed and melted into it.

"Do you want to buy the bouquet, or should I?" she asked lightly.

His face transformed, lit from within by shock and joy and something even more tender that she was too high and exhausted and cramp-ridden to unpack at the moment. She knew, though, it was mutual. Terrifyingly so.

"We'll talk about it tomorrow," he said, trying and failing to keep his composure. "After coffee and breakfast. For now, I'd like to take you upstairs and put you under a hot pad and a thick quilt, if you're amenable."

"I am so fucking amenable," she grumbled. He laughed and rubbed her back sympathetically.

Harvey eased her off of the chair, one arm cradling her to his side, and patiently helped her climb the steps into the warm glow of his apartment. She stopped him on the top stair to kiss him again. Finally, deep in her bones, she knew she was safe.