Harvey gets up from the couch, checking the time on his watch. "Hey, how much longer do you need? We're gonna be late," he calls out as he strolls into his bedroom, only to find Donna in her underwear, the blue dress she was previously wearing lying rumpled on the floor. He frowns immediately, "Why are you not dressed? Unless you're trying to proposition me, then I wouldn't mind being late, but somehow that doesn't seem to be the case..."

Donna shoots daggers at him over her shoulder as she rifles through the dresses she keeps in his closet. "I'm trying to figure out what to wear," she says, audibly annoyed.

"What's wrong with the dress you had on ten minutes ago?" he gestures to the discarded garment exasperatedly.

"It didn't feel right," she humphs.

"Okay... Then what about any of the other dresses you own?" he presses on, at a loss as to what's happening right now.

"They also don't feel right, nothing feels right," she complains, tone becoming increasingly aggravated until she buries her face into the sea of fabric in front of her and groans loudly.

He's seen Donna be unsure of what to wear once or twice before, but never like this. He doesn't understand her aggravation when everything she ever puts on looks incredible on her, and they're just going to his brother's for lunch with him and the kids anyway, it's not like it's the Met Gala, certainly nothing that merits this uncharacteristic little tantrum she's throwing.

"Donna, why are you stressing this much? Marcus doesn't know shit about fashion, he's even worse than Mike," Harvey flaps his arms, completely confused.

His girlfriend rolls her eyes theatrically at him. "It's not about fashion, Harvey, it's- Ugh, never mind, just shut up and go wait for me in the living room, I'll be out in a minute," she huffs and shakes her head, pushing all her dresses to one side and beginning to check them out one by one again.

He has half a mind to do what she just told him to, but then he remembers all the times she patiently coaxed him out of his hard shell and helped him work through whatever issue was plaguing him at the time, and he figures it's only fair he does the same for her now. So he walks up to her cautiously, takes her by the waist and gently turns her to face him. "Hey, what's going on?"

Donna sighs heavily, looking down at her fidgeting fingers. She's conflicted on whether to be honest with him, because she feels pretty foolish for how she's feeling right now. She's not an insecure person at all, least of all regarding her appearance, and yet here she is, on the verge of tears, because she can't find the right dress for a simple family lunch.

She doesn't really want to open up, but she knows she's acting strangely and she doesn't want to alienate Harvey, so she sighs again and looks up at him. "It's just... This is the first time I'm meeting Marcus," she says, voice tiny, and her shy gaze immediately slips down to his collar.

Harvey frowns. "What are you talking about? You've met Marcus lots of times."

She resists the urge to roll her eyes at his obtuseness. "Yeah, but that's different, that was before...," she picks on a nonexistent piece of lint on his jacket, "This is the first time since we got together, I want to make a good impression."

She knows it's stupid. Harvey is right, she has met Marcus before, and even his kids once, so it's not like any of this is new for anyone. And it's certainly not a dress that's going to change anything for better or worse.

But this feels high-stakes. She knows how private and protective Harvey is of his family, and, while she knows she's technically already a part of it - has been since before they got together, even -, she doesn't take this moment lightly at all. This is his brother and his niece and nephew, three-fourths of the only proper family he has left, and being fully accepted into it would be an honor of a lifetime, because she knows how hard Harvey had to fight to get back to a place of love and lightness with his family and the last thing she wants to do is get in the way of that in any way.

Besides, he's never introduced another girlfriend to them before, not like this, not officially. She knows Marcus ran into Scottie once, back when Harvey had just started at the firm and they both visited New York at the same time, but Harvey has never taken a woman home, not since high school, at least. And meeting Marcus thirteen years ago when she was still just a secretary and there had been no declarations and no promises and no baring their chests and souls to each other is not the same as what they'll do today. She's worried it'll be awkward, or that the ease they developed on the handful of times they met all those years ago won't translate now that Harvey and her are together.

"Donna, you already made a good impression," Harvey replies gently, pulling her from her spiral as his fingers squeeze her waist. "Marcus has been waiting for this since the first time he met you. You have no idea how much my dad and him got on my case about getting my head out of my ass and making a move every time they talked to you. Hell, even my mom already knew about you because of him. So yeah, it may be different but it's not that different," he shrugs a shoulder, ducking his head to meet her eyes.

She lets him, drawing reassurance from his steady gaze and taking a moment to internalize the words he just said, and a fuzzy warm feeling takes hold of her insides. "Really?" she asks quietly, still a bit unsure.

"Yes. Besides, you've met some of my old girlfriends, the bar was pretty low before," he smirks and she snorts, rolling her eyes at his good-natured, self-deprecating teasing.

"You don't need to worry about making a good impression, he already loves you, okay?" he insists, his smirk softening into a tender smile, his eyes affectionate.

She's filled to the brim with love for this ridiculous, impossible man and the incredible way he has of making everything feel like it's going to be okay.

"Okay," she finally nods, still feeling a little raw but ready to face this challenge of sorts head-on.

"Now, can you please put that dress, or any other dress, back on so we can go? Unless you want to revisit the proposition idea," he smirks again, waggling his brows.

Donna bursts into laughter. "Shut up," she pushes him away playfully and he chuckles, making to leave the room so she can get ready, but she stops him with a 'hey'. He turns back to her and she pulls him in by the back of the neck, giving him a soft, chaste kiss. "Thank you," she tells him earnestly, looking deep into his eyes. He just smiles, squeezing her waist again and going back to the living room.

.

.

Donna's hands are shaking as Harvey knocks on his brother's door. She doesn't understand how he can possibly be this calm, because even though they've known each other for over a decade, have met their respective families, and even though she's met several of her ex-boyfriends' relatives before as well, this is different. Harvey isn't just any boyfriend; meeting his family with fresh eyes in this new phase feels momentous, because deep down she knows she's meeting the people who will become her own family pretty soon. And, as fond as she's always been of Marcus, he wasn't actually her family, not before now.

The man opens the door with a beaming smile. "What's up, dickhead?"

Harvey grins, "What's up, loser?"

They embrace tightly, but Marcus doesn't miss a moment of ribbing his brother. "Can't believe it took you getting a new girlfriend to finally come see me properly."

"Well, couldn't put it off it anymore," Harvey ribs him back and they part, Marcus immediately turning to her.

"Hey," he greets her warmly and she smiles back nervously.

"Hey, Marcus," she replies and he envelops her in his arms, holding her close and rubbing her back.

"Finally," he says quietly, just for her to hear, and it could be more of his ribbing of his brother, but his earnest tone makes it sound genuine, like he really was hoping for this for a long time, just like Harvey said, and the gesture shakes her, making her eyes well up a little bit.

She chuckles as they pull back, "Took us a while but we finally saw the light."

"And thank God for that," Marcus grins, "I just wish Dad were still around because he owes me fifty bucks now."

Donna erupts into laughter, watching Harvey fondly as he snickers along, looking down, no doubt thinking of Gordon. She takes his hand and squeezes it reassuringly.

"Come on in, Haley and Tom are in the kitchen probably stealing half our food," Marcus ushers them inside.

The kids are impressively grown up, almost unrecognizable from that time their whole family came to New York during their spring break, and she's not surprised that they only vaguely remember her existence but it doesn't matter, because it doesn't take her long at all to strike up conversation with them because Tom is rehearsing for his school play and Haley is starting to think about colleges and Donna has a lot to say on both topics while Harvey and Marcus mostly just watch, sharing beers and occasionally trading comments about life updates.

As much as Harvey has always been a family man, despite his whole issue with his mother, he had never been one to fantasize about bringing his girlfriend to meet his family, about big holiday lunches and family Christmas Eves and watching the kids' recitals and baseball games as a hypothetical wife squeezed his hand. He had never pictured any of that because he simply never thought he even could have any of that. Being open and vulnerable and committed enough to foster a successful long-term relationship had never seemed like something he was wired to do, and so he just convinced himself he didn't want that, as a way to make up for those shortcomings.

But as he watches the entirely unsurprising way in which Donna manages to weave herself seamlessly into his blood family, joking around with his brother and quickly becoming his niece and nephew's favorite family member, he realizes that all of that - the big holiday lunches and family Christmas Eves and Tom's play and Haley's graduation - will start mattering so much more now that she's by his side. Because he can finally share these moments with her, same as he's been sharing every other moment of his life with her for the past decade, and he hadn't realized how much he'd hoped to be able to share these moments with someone and how much he'd wanted to share even more of his life with her than he already did.

His family wasn't lacking, at least not since he'd made things right with Lily. But Donna makes it whole in a way he can barely comprehend, but that he feels in his bones with an intensity he had never experienced.

And right this second, as he's being made fun of by two teenagers, his younger brother and his girlfriend, he understands what Donna meant this morning. Not about her needing to make a good impression, because she didn't, and even if she did he suspects she has never made a bad impression in her life. But about things being different now. She's been part of is family for a long time now, but he used to think of his family as two halves: the blood half, one he'd been tied to and couldn't escape as much as he sometimes had tried to, and the chosen half, the one he clung to so tightly to make up for the other half's shortcomings and the pain it had caused him.

Donna is both now. Chosen, because as inescapable as she's always been, he's been choosing her every day for the past fifteen years. But blood too, because she runs as deep within his body and soul as his brother and his parents, and because she's the one he wants to bring into the fabric of his history and his being, mix into his genes, and he wants her to be as inseparable from him as his own flesh is.

As he watches her here, in his old family home, he thinks they're starting to get there.