I had thoughts that I needed to work out and well, that turned into part of this.

Thank you to Heather (kalingswifts) for the beta, without her as my constant cheerleader, my writing would never see the light of day.

—

Her skin is warm against his, limbs tangled with her head nestled in the crook of his neck. At some point in the early (earlier) hours of the morning, they'd shifted. She's no longer spooning him the way he'd fallen asleep not long before, but they're intertwined just the same.

Without opening his eyes, Harvey can feel just how in sync they are; how balanced and equal they've made themselves and he thinks that they've always been this way, deep down. Two halves of one entity.

It scares him and at the same time he feels whole. It's a first and yet… it isn't. The feeling of wholeness with her and emptiness without isn't new but this, this is different. It's so much more; the realization that there has always been more behind that feeling.

He pulls back just slightly, eyes opening to the tangled mess of red more against his chest than on her pillow and his fingers move on their own accord, brushing the hair from her face and lingering by her chin. She's beautiful.

She is. Donna has always been beautiful in a way that takes his breath away, from her looks to her personality to the way that she gets him like no one ever has and he's sure no one ever will.

Laying in Harvey's arms like this though — sunrise pooling through the windows, the contrast of her hair against her skin, against his, against her sheets — his heart races and aches because hell, he really is an idiot for wasting so much time not being with her this way.

But he's here now.

He watches Donna's even breaths and traces the pattern of freckles on her skin that he'd seen both thirteen years and three hours earlier, memorizing them — her — for the rest of his life. He watches the way she responds to his touch even in sleep, cuddling closer as they hold each other. He watches the years play out in little details; a laugh line that hadn't been there the night they met, eyelashes he'd seen her bat a few thousand times, lips he'd kissed in her office.

Harvey thinks he could get lost in Donna Paulsen, well, forever.

He knows that for a long time, she thought he didn't see her. She thought that he looked at her one way when he could have looked at her another, and while there is some truth to that, behind the damaged, terrified facade of himself, Harvey has always looked at her this way.

He's seen her as someone he wanted since the moment they met, and then years or months or maybe even minutes later, someone he loved. More than likely the latter.

He used to blame her rules, but he knows now that his own were part of what held them back — his own insecurities, too.

Falling meant opening up to loss and failure. It meant giving something that he wasn't even sure he had to give. Love meant being good enough for her and he wasn't — or so Harvey told himself, but Donna never did.

He fell anyway — in every way — and even when he wasn't aware of it, his subconscious knew that it couldn't let her see but she's Donna. She knew. Of course she knew, or a small part of him hoped that she did while the rest prayed that of all the ways she could read him, she couldn't read this.

It was more of a metaphor than anything, Harvey thinks — the way she accused him of looking at her one way when he insisted it was another. It wasn't so much the way he looked at her that gave it away, although there was that too, but the way he acted and the things he did. Pushing and pulling Donna, wanting more but not being ready or willing or able to give it. Making himself believe that he didn't want her.

But in truth, he'd never looked at her in any way less than a want and even that, that small desire-only fueled handful of minutes erupted into something much more than he was capable of understanding the first time he heard her laugh.

So, yes, on one hand, she had been right. He spent years looking at her one way yet conveyed another, both mentally and physically, but on the other, she's wrong. Harvey doesn't see her without seeing the woman he wants, the woman he's in love with, because there has barely been a moment in all the time that he has known her that she hasn't been exactly that.

And once he let himself understand that, once he let himself see what was there all along, he broke her rules — already faulty — and tore his own apart because they were made irrelevant the moment he met her, the first time they shared scotch in the DA's office, and the night of the other time. By the afternoon of his hearing, they'd been hollow and empty and meaningless for years because she means everything.

He finally knows it.

With Donna asleep in his arms, completely entangled in each other, everything makes sense. Harvey feels — and not for the first time — that they've always been together in one way or another and he really, really likes this way. He really, really loves this way.

Donna is his constant, his everything, the one person that understands him and has stood by him for all that he is and all that he has. She has known the worst of him and the best of him, and while Harvey still believes that he'll never truly be good enough for her, he knows that he'll spend every day of the rest of his life as someone she deserves.

That's freeing. That's less trying to be something and more… being. Being openly in love with her.

She stirs in his arms then and he almost doesn't notice because he's lost in the feel of Donna around him but then their eyes meet, a small smile creeping up on her lips.

"Hi," Harvey whispers with a sheepish, almost shy look on his face. His fingers tangle in her hair and Donna moves impossibly closer.

"Hi," she replies in a matching tone, tilting her head so that the words brush against his mouth. "Were you watching me sleep? You know, Harvey, that's a little creepy."

He's grins at that and closes the barely there distance between them with a nod, to which Donna responds immediately. It's natural and instinctive, her hands threading through Harvey's hair and the way their lips and limbs seem to melt together.

It's overwhelming.

When they break for air, brown eyes meet hazel and Harvey's lost in the depth of them but found in her smile and it hits him even harder that everything really has changed. His perception of the word now belongs to Donna, but maybe it always has.

"What?"

"I want you."

"I can tell," Donna says matter-of-factly, noting their current position.

Despite the joke, the look on her face evolves into something much softer and he knows that she understands what he means. More. Everything. In-between. Just for good measure, Harvey kisses her again before his forehead falls to rest on her own.

"I have always wanted you, Donna."

—

As always, thank you for reading! Comments and criticism are always welcome.

You can find me at donnaandharvey on twitter.