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1.
“Mike,” Harvey breathes. “I’m stuck.”
He frowns, slightly lifting his head from the pillow as if it could help him understand. “Stuck?” he echoes, confused. It takes his genius brain a couple of seconds to find a correlation between Harvey and the word ‘stuck’. “Like… In a devil trap?”
“Yeah,” Harvey grunts, obviously displeased. Mike can’t help chuckling slightly, because he makes the most amusing and funny expressions whenever he gets trapped in one of those.
“Where?” Mike asks, sitting up and grabbing the first shirt he sets his eyes on. His arms feel heavy and he fights the urge to yawn loudly. God, he needs some coffee. Harvey is gonna have to buy him some coffee. “Is there anyone that can help?”
“I’m in front of my neighbour’s door and she’s not- What the hell?!”
“What’s going on?” Mike asks, frowning and quickly grabbing the keys to unlock the door. “Harvey?”
The first answer he gets is a – probably angry – groan. “Where did this bitch find holy water?” Harvey grunts. Mike feels his blood run cold and he’s out of the house in a matter of seconds, calling a cab. It’s not like holy water can kill him, but it hurts and if whoever is with Harvey knows how to exorcize a demon… Well, Mike isn’t actually sure what would happen, he hasn’t witnessed it before, but people say that the demon in question would go back to hell, and Mike bets that wouldn’t be fun.
“I’m coming, alright? Try not to get exorcized in the meantime.”
When Mike arrives at Harvey’s floor, breathless because the lift was too many stores up and he would have probably gone crazy had he waited, he finds a woman in her sixties or maybe even seventies pointing a crucifix at Harvey while reciting words in Latin. Before panic can actually set in, Mike realises that Harvey totally looks annoyed, not worried, so it’s probably a useless exorcism that she found on the Internet.
“About time,” Harvey grunts, as soon as Mike is within earshot.
The woman suddenly turns, and Mike has to say that he is a little bit frightened, because she looks unstable enough to shove that crucifix in his chest if he disagrees with her. Which he is about to do. God help him.
“Stay away, young man, I have to take care of the spawn of Satan!” she screams, and Mike wonders if the other neighbours are all out or just used to her craziness.
“For the seventh time: I’m not Lucifer’s offspring. I’m a demon,” Harvey rolls his eyes, his arms crossed and his expression annoyed as if he wasn’t trapped with burns on his neck, cheek and hands.
The woman is about to throw more holy water at him, but Mike catches her wrist in time and the splashes don’t reach Harvey.
“Ma’am, if you would just listen to me for a second-” Mike tries to say, but her eyes widen and she interrupts him, screaming “You must be one of them too!” before throwing a bunch of water at his face.
Mike, unprepared, ends up inhaling some of it, therefore embarrassing himself as he tries not to choke on it. He is 90% sure that Harvey is grinning teasingly at him, as if he wasn’t the one in trouble.
“Uhm, no, I’m human,” Mike says, as soon as he is able to breathe normally. “It’s just that I know this guy, and he is- really nice.” Well. No. Describing Harvey as ‘really nice’ is a big, big stretch, but it’ll do.
“Oh, boy,” she smiles sympathetically, reaching for his shoulder to show empathy. Mike takes a step back, but she reaches out anyway. “He has deceived you. Don’t let the devil lead you away from the path to our Lord, my dear!”
“I swear I’m gonna kill her,” Harvey mutters, because apparently he can be a fucking idiot.
“He’s not serious,” Mike tries to amend, with a big nervous smile, then he turns towards Harvey to shot him a glare. “Not helping, Harvey.”
Harvey shrugs. “Just knock her out and get me out of here.”
“I’m not gonna knock an old woman out!” Mike protests. It looks like Harvey is about to reply when two officers step out of the elevator.
Oh, thank God. Mike wants to scream.
“Is there a problem, ma’am?” One of them asks, while the other eyes the devil trap and Harvey suspiciously.
While the officers try to explain to the woman that no, even if he is a demon she can’t just exorcise or trap her neighbour unless he has deliberately tried to kill or possess her, Mike uses his key to break the circle and let Harvey out.
“You owe me coffee,” Mike states.
Harvey rolls his eyes, waving off the officer who asks if he wants to press charges – Mike can see that the officer doesn’t really think that something like Harvey should have a place in their society, but he does his job anyway and asks, which Mike supposes he can appreciate -, “Let’s get you your precious coffee, come on.”
( “I mean, I saved your life in there, the least you can do is admitting that you like me-”
“I’d hardly call an old screaming woman with a crucifix a deadly threat. Now get out of my office before I use your blood to repaint the walls.” )
2.
“It looks like it’s 1 am here,” Mike comments, dropping on Harvey’s couch as he gestures with his hands to indicate the empty corridors of Pearson Hardman. Literally the only other people, aside from him and Harvey, that are on that floor are Norma – and Mike suspects that the flu is scared of her or something – and a junior partner Mike doesn’t know the name of.
“Don’t think that this authorizes you to stop working,” Harvey warns, without lifting his eyes from the files in his hands.
Mike sighs, trying to ease the heaviness in his chest. His head has been tormenting him since that morning, but he didn’t have the time to check his temperature, he just figured that if his head doesn’t spin and he is functioning enough to work, he shouldn’t call in sick.
Except now, about three hours later, his headache has worsened in spite of the aspirin he has taken, he is feeling way too hot considering that they are in November and he just wants to sink into Harvey’s couch and sleep there for a week. It’s nice, to stay there in silence, to let his sore legs rest and to stop trying to make sense of some overly complicated patent. He has never had any trouble reading and registering words, but right now it’s like his brain is praying him to just stop and let him rest.
“Mike!” Harvey calls. It sounds like it’s not the first time he has been trying to get his attention.
Mike realises that he has closed his eyes, and he forces himself to look awake and alert. All he manages is to half-open his burning eyes, grunting something that is supposed to sound like “What?”.
Harvey looks at him, his expression dead serious as he stands up and approaches him. Mike sits up, in spite of the fact that the room starts spinning when he does.
Harvey unceremoniously smashes his palm against Mike’s forehead.
“I think it’s safe to assume that you got the flu too,” he comments, after a couple of seconds.
Mike mumbles in agreement. Since Harvey has acknowledged that he doesn’t feel well, there’s nothing wrong with laying down once again, is there?
Harvey looks at him for a couple of seconds with his arms hanging by his sides, before he sighs, moving a chair closer to the couch and sitting there. He places his hand on Mike’s forehead once again, and this time it’s so beautifully cold.
Mike emits an admittedly obscene sound, closing his eyes. “Oh, Jeez, I love you,” he mumbles. Before Harvey can react, he rolls over slightly, just to reach for Harvey’s other hand. If he was in his right mind, he probably wouldn’t dare, but Harvey is so cold and Mike’s feverish and tired and this somehow excuses everything, so he takes Harvey’s arm and starts hugging it, Harvey’s palm against his chest. He exhales, pleased.
“You are an idiot.”
( “Do you think you can marry me? I mean, you are really old and shit, what’s some decades of married life for you? I want your cold awesome hands every day every year.”
“I have no idea why I am not killing you right now.” )
3.
“Hey.”
Mike turns, smiling cordially at the man who is now sitting beside him, right where Harvey was about thirty seconds ago. The man orders a beer and he eyes Mike hesitantly, sighing heavily.
“Look, man, you don’t know me and I don’t know you, but there’s something you must know,” he says. His expression is serious and empathic. Mike wonders what exactly a complete stranger could have to say to him that is so serious and important.
“Alright…?” Mike prompts, leaning back slightly and wondering why Harvey can’t just hurry already. He went to the bathroom after a girl spilled something on his shirt, and Mike wishes he had joined him right now, because that guy is creeping him out: he looks rough, he smells like he drinks beer all the time instead of water and- is that a fucking gun?
“There’s no easy way to say this,” he says. Mike has no idea what he is supposed to do. Maybe the guy is just a cop undercover. Maybe he has no intention of using that gun on him. Or maybe he wants to kidnap him. Would Harvey hear if he started shouting? Probably. Maybe he’d even come in time to rescue him. Or maybe Mike would end up with a bullet in his face. “So I’ll just say it. That man-” He points at the bathroom door. “He is a demon.”
Mike blinks. “What?”
“I know it’s difficult,” the man states, and is he actually serious? “But the man you used to know, he’s not there anymore. He’s possessed, and there may be nothing left of him.”
So the guy is an hunter. That explains the gun. Still, now Mike is faced with another problem: how the hell is he supposed to react to that? The supernatural is no longer a secret, hasn’t been for decades, but there’s still prejudice against some creatures and demons have a particularly awful reputation. Mike isn’t sure that the hunter would believe him if he tried to explain that Harvey isn’t actually that bad, he’d probably think that he is a demon too and maybe, if he’s a hothead, he could stab him on the spot without checking first.
On the other hand, he can’t just thank the guy and leave, because that would result in a fight that would end with either that man or Harvey dead.
He could call the police: hunters basically go around the country killing monsters, people pay them to do so sometimes, but usually they just do it the old-fashioned way, finding creatures that are on a killing spree and getting rid of them. It’s not exactly legal, but if they are caught killing a monster and it turns out that said monster had been causing problems, the hunter is free to go. Which, of course, leads to movements dedicated to protecting monsters’ rights, because if a human killer can’t be executed by vigilantes then neither should a supernatural killer.
Harvey has killed no one, Mike is pretty sure of that, so this guy has no right to lay a finger on him anyway.
“Uh. Are you- Are you sure?” Mike asks, trying to think quickly. The smartest thing would probably be to go to Harvey and discuss this with him.
The hunter nods. “Positive. I saw his eyes flashing and I’ve been following him since then.”
Mike sighs. He doesn’t have to fake his agitation. “Alright. It’s- Uh- It’s weird. I’m not sure I believe you-”
“Try to think about it,” the hunter encourages him. “Has there been any sudden change, any weird behaviour, at a certain point? Something to make you think that he’s changed?”
“I- I don’t know.”
“Or it may also be that he’s been a demon all along,” the hunter theorises. “And the person you know doesn’t exist.”
“I don’t know,” Mike insists. “Listen, I’ll just- Go to the bathroom and tell him I’m done for the night, alright? Thanks.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, demons don’t appreciate being exposed,” the hunter warns. Mike walks faster.
“Harvey,” he calls. Harvey is cursing against his shirt, trying to repair the damage as best as he can. “We have a problem.”
“What?” Harvey asks, without lifting his eyes.
“There’s a hunter here who’s just warned me because he knows that you are a demon.”
Harvey frowns, finally giving his full attention to Mike. “What did you tell him?”
“That I would get in here and tell you that I’m heading home.”
Harvey stares at him for a couple of seconds, licking his lips the way he sometimes does when he is thinking, then he nods. “Alright. Stick to what you told him and go home, I’ll figure this out.”
“What?” Mike jumps. “You want me to leave you here alone?”
He does know that Harvey doesn’t need protection, usually, but this is a hunter they are talking about, guys like that kill people like Harvey for a living, and they often do it out of vengeance, many of them can’t grasp the concept of a “good” demon. No way, no way.
“I can handle myself. And we don’t want him knowing that you know, right?” Harvey points out. There’s just this casual tone that comes out whenever Mike is worried about something that would endanger a human but barely annoy a demon, that voice that reminds Mike of how powerful and untouchable Harvey is. But he isn’t, he may not be human and he may be immune to the flu or a gun or other common threats, but a hunter with holy water and a special knife could be the end of him. And Mike isn’t about to just run away to save his ass.
“He’s not gonna kill me, I’m human.”
“Some of them see no difference between a monster and a human traitor, you know,” Harvey says, drying his hands. His suit seems to be too far gone.
“Then we both have a problem,” Mike shrugs. “What do we do?”
“I could just snap his neck,” Harvey grins. Mike knows he could. He also knows he won’t.
They end up spending too much time in the bathroom, trying to agree on what to do, because Harvey would want Mike to leave first or at least wait outside, but Mike would prefer them to face the guy together, trying to explain. Or at least to go away together. They actually both agree that they can’t just flight without solving this, because the hunter said that he’s been following Harvey, so this isn’t gonna end without a confrontation of some sort. Mike has also suggested to call the police and let them confront the guy, but he hasn’t actually done anything besides stalking, which they don’t have any proof of, besides Mike’s word that he has confessed to it. The police would probably quickly scold him and let him go off with a warning.
In end, the hunter, not seeing Mike return, enters in the bathroom, his hand hidden in the jacket and closed on his blade.
When Mike sees the symbols craved on the handle, he moves a step towards Harvey, putting himself in front of him in anticipation for the shit-storm about to happen.
Harvey ends up with a cut on his arm – at the very least the suit was already ruined – and in a very bad mood, while Mike gets a spit lip and a headache after a not so pleasing collision against a sink. The hunter ends up covered in bruises, smashed against the wall. Harvey looked ready to kill him, but Mike’s hand gripping his arm restrained him.
They explain to the man that they won’t report that he has threatened them without cause if he will disappear and never show his face again. He accepts: it’s not like he has much of a choice.
“It’s not fair, you know,” Mike mutters, as they sit in the car, touching his sore mouth lightly. “You’ll be good and healed in no time, I’ll be sore for days.”
“Nobody asked you to play hero,” Harvey remarks. He hands him a napkin to dry the blood, though.
( “We totally need a codeword for when there’s a hunter around. Something unusual, like ‘unicorn’ or-”
“Donna, do you still have that list of Harvard graduates? I think I might need a new associate.” )
4.
“I’m going to kill him,” Harvey growls, marching down the corridor.
Mike, who is doing his best to keep up with Harvey’s pace, has heard him say stuff like that a thousand times, but when there’s that infliction in his tone and Harvey’s eyes are flashing back and forth from normal to pitch black, like a broken lamp, he knows he’s truly on the edge.
He’s almost praying that Louis won’t be in his office, but then again, Mike doesn’t know Louis to be a particularly lucky guy.
The door bursts open as Harvey approaches it, and the slam makes Louis jump at his desk.
“Harvey-” He starts to protest, and Mike wants to facepalm at his insufferable and arrogant tone. The guy really doesn’t know when stay silent.
“Shut your mouth!” Harvey screams, and the air seems to tremble at the sound. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“You were late-”
“That was my client,” Harvey yells. “And you screwed up my merger.”
“I didn’t have all the facts-”
“Because it was my goddamn client!”
And then things start flying. Or more accurately: all the things on Louis’ desk decide to jump him, as if Harvey had pushed them all forward. Louis quickly covers his head with his arms, and Mike decides to risk his own life for the cause.
“Harvey, calm down-” He tries to protest, and the result is that the pictures on the wall fall down too. God, it’s a mess.
Harvey bends forward and grabs Louis by the collar, pulling him up from the chair and above the desk effortlessly.
“You listen to me,” he orders. “Next time something like this happens, you’ll stay out of it, or you’ll end up like your precious pictures. Am I clear?”
Louis quickly nods, and Harvey lets him go. Louis lands on the desk with a thump, legitimately terrorized. Mike feels a little sorry for him, except he knows that he’ll take it all out on the associates, him in particular.
Harvey heads out of the door, and Mike quickly follows him, sparing one last glance for Louis, whose eyes are locked on the ground.
“Meet me downstairs, we have a client to get back,” Harvey orders, appearing as collected as ever. It’s scary to be reminded of what he can do, sometimes.
( “You know, you didn’t have to terrorize him like that.”
“He shit in my bed and now I have to clean it up, he’s lucky I didn’t kill him on the spot.” )
5.
Mike likes Harvey’s apartment.
He doesn’t go there that often, and he has the feeling that people who manage to get in alone should feel special, but sometimes he has an epiphany after work hours and he runs to Harvey to share how they could crack open their most recent case, or sometimes it’s even Harvey who’ll tell him to get there because he has an idea. Then, once, Mike was feeling lonely and he ended up asking Harvey if they could order takeout and eat together. It's happened a grand total of three times since then.
When they get together, eat junk food and watch a movie, Harvey lets him sleep on the bed, since he doesn’t sleep at all. Or rather, Mike usually falls asleep right on the sofa and he wakes up in the bed. Neither of them ever mentioned it.
They have decided to watch Jaws, because it’s different from what they usually go for and Mike has actually never seen it. Harvey reacted to the news with theatrical shock, making endless jokes about Mike’s non-existent pop culture – for the record, Mike has seen a lot of movies, more than most people, it’s not his fault if Harvey has been there since before movies even existed.
Mike is actually more into it than he expected.
It’s not his favourite movie ever, but he likes the adrenaline when the movie shows people’s legs moving in the water and the tension grows as you see the camera approaching the unlucky swimmer, as if seeing everything through the eyes of the shark.
It’s frightening and unsettling, which is why he has completely forgotten about his surroundings as the tension grows, the music gets louder and the shark approaches once again and- And the television starts flickering, as if there was some kind of disturbance.
“What?” Mike protests, upset after being thrown out of the scene like that and turning towards Harvey to find some sympathy. It’s then that he realises: Harvey is a demon. Demons sometimes unsettle technological devices.
“Harvey!” Mike protests. “Come on, get the signal back!”
“I’m trying!” Harvey protests. His eyes are black, and Mike wonders if it happens whenever he gets too sucked into a scene. If it happened before when they were together, he hasn’t noticed.
In a blink, Harvey’s eyes go back to being human, and Mike can see him forcing himself to relax.
“Can you also do this on purpose?” Mike asks, gesturing vaguely towards the TV.
“Sure,” Harvey replies, eyeing him suspiciously as he tries to realise what he’s thinking before Mike can say it. He’s usually pretty good at that.
“It could be useful to piss off people,” Mike comments, casually.
Harvey immediately grins. “Oh, don’t I know it.” Before Harvey actually says it, Mike knows that Louis is somehow involved.
( “But, like, what happens to the lights and stuff when you have sex?”
“Want to find out?” )