Chapter Text
They’re at Ivy’s place when she suggests it. Her apartment is actually closer to the hospital than his, and she doesn’t have to share the place with two final-year residents who don’t know how to take out the trash. Harvey staying the night here is a weekly occurrence these days. Sometimes she offers, occasionally he just falls asleep on the couch after they have dinner. She never kicks him out.
It’s been a bad year. In March the tidal wave of stress he’d been trying to ignore for years finally got the better of him, and he had something that he’s still not calling a nervous breakdown. He’s feeling better now—mostly—but he’s not ready to go back to patient-facing medicine yet. The hospital were nice about it, found him a job in their research department to tide him over, but he’s earning a fraction of what he was before and his med school loans are still taking a hefty bite out of his paycheck. He could go to his family for help, but he won’t. Pride is all he has left.
Pride, and Ivy. Harvey doesn’t know what he would have done without her these past few months. They were friends before he had his little episode—had been ever since Ivy joined the hospital staff three years ago, and the two of them had a run of shared patients—but they’re much closer now than they were before. Most of the people who Harvey used to consider his friends conspicuously disappeared when he crashed, but not her. She was the one who coaxed him to go outside every now and again, who showed up and made sure he was eating on the bad days, who never once made him feel like he was damaged goods. He still isn’t sure that he would have made it through to the other side without her.
It’s the usual routine tonight—Ivy cooks dinner, Harvey brings wine round after work. They watch an old movie, indulge in some light bitching about their hospital colleagues once the credits have rolled. Ivy’s bull terrier snoozes on the rug in front of the TV. It’s nice. A familiar comfort.
Ivy is wearing her old college sweater, sprawled across the couch with her feet in Harvey’s lap, when talk turns to his financial situation. Makes him anxious just thinking about it, but he has to confront it sooner or later and he’d rather talk to her about it than anyone else.
“How bad is it?” she asks, topping up their wine glasses.
“I mean I’m not about to be turfed onto the street,” he says. “But I’m thirty eight years old, Ivy. I don’t want to be living in some horrible little shared apartment when I’m forty. That’s just sad.”
“You won’t be,” she says. “Look, your situation now, that’s not forever.”
“But what if it is?”
“Then we’ll cross that bridge when you’re forty,” she says. “We’ll figure it out, Harv, I promise.”
He reaches out and squeezes her hand. He loves the way she says we, like it’s a forgone conclusion she’ll still be around and putting up with his shit in two years’ time.
“Thanks, Ivy. I appreciate that.”
“Of course,” she says, a smile crinkling her eyes. “That’s what I’m here for.”
“All of this doesn’t change the fact that I’m broke now, though,” he sighs, leaning back against the couch cushions. “I guess I could, I don’t know. Moonlight somewhere. Drive an Uber. Sell my body for cash.”
It was supposed to be a joke, but Ivy doesn’t laugh. She tilts her head to the side, as if considering something, her wine glass cupped in her palm.
“Huh.”
“What?”
“You know, that last one isn’t actually a bad idea.”
Harvey snorts. “Being an escort?”
“Not that, necessarily,” Ivy says. Her voice is worryingly level, like she’s actually giving this insane idea some serious thought. “Online, though. Video sites, camera stuff. Wouldn’t have to sleep with anyone if you didn’t want to. There’s a market for, uh. Solo performances.”
Harvey’s cheeks flare with heat, and he doesn’t know what’s making him blush harder—the fact that Ivy knows so much about these things, or that she thinks he could do it himself.
“I don’t think there’s much of a market for middle aged men who can’t open jars, Ivy.”
“Says who?”
“Well—look, I haven’t watched a lot of—but they’re all supermodels, aren’t they? They all—” Harvey stops himself before he can say ‘they all look like you’. “They’re all in good shape.”
“That’s just porn that straight dudes like,” Ivy says, making a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Trust me, Harv, the rest of us are bored of that shit. We want variety. I bet you’d go down a storm.”
He lets out a strangled little laugh. “Come on, Ivy. No one wants to watch me—do that.”
“Sure they do,” Ivy says. “Not everyone likes gym rats, babe. You’re plenty cute enough. Get yourself a decent camera setup and you’d be flying.”
Harvey takes a large swallow of wine, almost choking on it. She may actually be trying to kill him with all this. “I think sex workers are supposed to have more experience with—you know. Sex.”
Ivy shrugs. She knows he hasn’t got much history in that department, and she’s never been weird about it.
“I don’t think that matters,” she says. “Besides, I don’t think it takes a whole lot of skill to jerk off in front of a webcam.”
“Oh my God, Ivy.” He buries his face in his hands, laughing helplessly. “You can’t just say stuff like that.”
“Why not?” she says, reaching over to muss up his hair. “I’m trying to solve your cash flow problems over here. And you haven’t actually said no, have you?”
Harvey is surprised to realise that she’s right. He sits up, blinks. “I guess not.”
“Does that mean you’re considering it?”
“Means I’m desperate enough to.”
“I could help, you know,” she says, serious again. “We can look at some options, see what’s out there. Don’t need to commit to anything. Just… research.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Research?”
“Yeah.” Ivy grins. “And you’re the expert in that department, so I guess we’ll do a real good job.”
Harvey chuckles, shakes his head. His cheeks are still burning, but despite this ridiculous line of enquiry he doesn’t feel at all uncomfortable. Only Ivy could make performing sex acts on camera sound like a perfectly reasonable career move.
“Is there more wine?”
“Yeah,” she says, “there’s another bottle in the kitchen.”
“I think I’ll need that open before we do any research.”
“Alright.” Ivy downs the dregs in her glass and springs to her feet, grinning. “Deal.”
“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”
She winks at him, and something painful tugs in his chest. “Not a bit.”