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“Harvey?” he calls, letting himself into the apartment. “What’s the emergency?”
It’s not too unusual for Mike to receive some vague ‘911’ text from Harvey, but he usually has at least some idea of what it is about. Right now, they aren’t working on any big cases that could be branded as an emergency, so unless some deal fell apart in the last few hours—
“Mike!” Harvey calls. His voice is unusually loud, a weird mix of cheerful and slurred. Harvey is standing in the middle of the living room, there are empty bottles of god knows what brand of alcohol all around and he is— completely naked.
“Harvey,” Mike says, slowly. He finds himself freezing on the spot, consciously keeping his eyes in place on Harvey’s face. What the hell. “Why are you naked?”
Harvey smiles widely opening up his arms. “It’s your birthday!” he announces.
Either he’s gone insane, or he’s more drunk than Mike has ever seen him getting. Or both.
“It’s— not,” Mike replies, slowly. Alright, alright, clothes. Because Harvey is completely naked in front of him while grinning like a maniac and it’s pretty distracting. So, clothes. He heads straight for Harvey’s bedroom to open the drawer that he knows contains sweatpants and t-shirts. “And even if it was,” he adds, on the way. “I don’t see the connection.”
“It’s a surprise,” Harvey explains.
“Oh, I am surprised,” Mike mumbles, closing the drawer. He quickly throws the clothes at him. “Put these on,” he orders.
Harvey’s motor skills at the moment aren’t the finest, so he gets hit in the face and it takes him a few seconds to realize where he’s supposed to put his hands to get his face free. When he does, he looks mortally offended.
“You’re very ungrateful,” he comments.
Mike rolls his eyes. “Trust me, tomorrow morning you will be grateful that I made you put those on.” Mike barely resists the urge to grin at the thought of when Harvey will have to listen to him explain what happened.
Then he starts thinking that, actually, there is a really ridiculous number of empty bottles around. He can even see some glass on the floor, near the wall, which makes him think that Harvey threw a couple of bottles or glasses against it.
He frowns. Alright, maybe teasing him tomorrow wouldn’t be sensible. He is actually too drunk for it to be just to relax, especially considering that he was drinking alone.
“No, you are an ungrateful—” Harvey pauses, glaring at him as he looks for the right words. “Ass. An ass, yeah.”
Mike sighs. “Let’s just put those clothes on and then you can— explain,” he says, stepping closer to him because Harvey doesn’t seem to be able to find the right way to put the t-shirt on.
It takes— some time, Mike isn’t even sure how much, considering that Harvey is mumbling stuff that Mike is too busy to listen to, he keeps fighting him away saying that he doesn’t need help only to start dangerously swaying as soon as Mike takes a step back, and to get him to put the pants on Mike has to push him on the couch.
In the end, though, Harvey is decent and Mike drops on the couch right next to him. “Alright,” he says, slowly. “How about you go to bed and get some sleep, so tomorrow morning we can— see what this is all about?”
Harvey scoffs. “You’ll be gone tomorrow,” he states, glaring at him like he just killed his puppy or something.
“What?” Mike frowns. “I can sleep on the couch, it’s wouldn’t be the first—”
“You are leaving,” Harvey insists. “You asshole. I need you and you are leaving.”
Ah. That.
“Not— not tomorrow, Harvey,” Mike replies. It’s not like there’s much else he can say to that.
“Doesn’t matter,” Harvey states. “Family doesn’t leave.”
“We talked about this,” Mike lets out, turning his torso towards him to that he doesn’t have to wreck his neck to look at him directly. “I’ll have a family of my own, Rachel got that job and—”
“We are your family of your own,” Harvey interrupts. “Why it’s not enough?”
“It’s not that,” Mike says, quietly. He wasn’t on board with leaving from the get-go, but he and Rachel talked it out and— really, there’s not much of choice. It’s too good of a job opportunity for her to pass it up, and she’s right when she says that through the years Mike has been prioritizing everything over her. There was the fraud and then he went to prison, and there was always something going on with Harvey— If he wants his marriage to work, he needs to put an effort into it. He needs to make it his top priority, and accepting to follow Rachel to the other side of the country is the first step to do that.
Harvey didn’t take the news all too well.
Actually, at first he didn’t react at all, then he just tried to stone-wall him, act like Mike was asking for his permission. Which he wasn’t.
It took him a couple of days to wrap his head around it and apologize for his harsh reaction. Mike felt that there was something off in his voice and that his smile looked forced, but it’s not like he’s been having such an easy time with this himself, so.
Things went back to normal, as if nothing happened. Mike didn’t bring up the subject anymore in front of Harvey, but apparently he had been thinking about it. Of course he had.
“We should talk about this tomorrow,” Mike states. If they need to have an honest conversation about this, he’d like Harvey to be sober and rational.
He’ll call and text. They’ll facetime. There are countless of ways to keep a long-distance relationship alive, it’s no big deal. At the end of the day, they’ve survived worse, right?
“No,” Harvey snaps. “I gave you everything, and the only thing I ask is to have you here and you decide to just— go away.”
“It’s my life,” Mike says, defensively.
“I need you here,” Harvey insists.
“I know,” Mike snaps. “I’m not abandoning you.”
“Sure you are, and I shouldn’t be surprised,” Harvey scoffs. “You’re just like everyone else.”
“Harvey—” Mike tries, and he’s not even sure about what he’s about to say, so it’s probably a good thing that he gets interrupted.
“Even if you stay with her,” Harvey says, turning towards him and looking— desperate is probably the only word for it. “It’s okay. You be happy, just— let me watch over you, please.”
Mike has the unpleasant feeling that his face looks pretty dumb at the moment. “You— what?” is the only thing that he managed to spit out.
“And you are bright,” Harvey insists, as if that made any sense. “And if you go away you can’t reach me— and I need it, alright? I’m gloomy and I need you here.”
“Okay,” Mike sighs, standing up abruptly. “You’re not making any sense. Let’s get you to bed and talk about— this— tomorrow, alright?”
He leans over to put his arms under Harvey’s armpits and let him up. Harvey scoffs. “You are not getting me to bed.”
“I totally am.”
“Not the right way, you are not.”
Mike’s heart skips a beat. “Definitely too drunk,” he mumbles.
Getting him under the covers is not the real problem: Harvey doesn’t seem to be stable enough on his feet to just brush him off and decide that he won’t follow him to the bedroom, so he lets Mike call the shots on that front without fighting him off.
No, the problem is that Harvey keeps talking. Some are incoherent rambles not loud enough for Mike to actually make out the words, but most of Harvey’s speeches are weird metaphors that keep verging more and more into love-confession territory – “Because you are like the sun, you know, and I am the moon, I need your light or I just die.”
Mike tries to ignore them and write it all off as Harvey not making any sense. Fortunately, after what feels like an eternity Harvey grows quieter and tired, his eyes slowly closing and his grip on Mike’s wrist easing a little.
Mike finally manages to step away from him, get a bowl to leave next to his bed in case he wakes up and he needs to throw up and then head for the couch.
He gets himself a spare blanket and he inhales sharply, trying to find an ounce of will to sleep in him. He’s not successful: he’s fully awake, adrenaline rushing through his veins and making his heart bump at a ridiculous rate, considering that he’s not doing anything stressful— Well, he did just listen to his best friend make up ridiculous ways to confess his love for him. Which would also explain that stunt he pulled when he arrived: Mike is not very familiar with how drunk seduction works, but he figures that just getting all your clothes off could be it.
Or maybe he was just too drunk to make any sense.
In vino veritas, they say, though. But there’s no way that Harvey actually thinks that stuff. No way in hell. He’s his best friend and they’ve spent so many years together, it would have come out— And anyway, it’s Harvey’s problem, right? Mike will have to politely decline. He’s even leaving, so there soon won’t be an awkwardness at work.
He’s happily engaged, he’s leaving town with his soon-to-be wife, and he’s happy about it— Soon it will be just him and Rachel and it’ll be fine. He will miss Harvey, because he’s his best friend, but it’s not like they spend all that time together— It’s not like Mike left Rachel alone in the middle of a conversation about their new life because of a vague text from Harvey. Except he did. “Come on, soon it’ll be just you and me, I have to help him out while I’m still here,” he said, kissing Rachel’s frown away.
He shakes his head, standing up and turning on the light in the kitchen. He decides to start cleaning the place up, since he can’t sleep, shooting glances at Harvey’s shape in the bedroom as he tries to convince himself that it was all the alcohol.
But even if it was— he’s freaking out in all the wrong ways. Not because he doesn’t know how to let him down gently, but because he doesn’t want to. I mean, he wants to. He should. He and Rachel have been a thing for so long— and he loves her, he wants her to be happy.
But thinking about looking at Harvey in the eye and say that there can’t be anything, that he doesn’t want anything— it sounds so fake and it scares the hell out of him, because he’s thought about it, no use in denying that he thinks Harvey is hot – he’s bisexual, but first of all he has eyes – or that he’s thought about a couple of could-have-beens, at some point.
He just— he didn’t think that it’d ever be a problem because he didn’t think there’d ever be a chance.
What does it say about him that his reaction to this situation is wishing that he wasn’t engaged, but at the same time thanking god that he is, just because this way the decision is already made for him – but he hates it, because he knows that he doesn’t want to shut Harvey down.
Once, Grammy told him that when it’s the right person, the one, you just know, because they are more important than anything else, because you’d do anything to make them happy, because it doesn’t matter who or what came before them, you can’t imagine your life without them in it.
What’s his life without Rachel in it?
He thinks of late nights in Harvey’s office that is now his office – even if Harvey spends half of his day in there anyway –, he thinks of movie nights and take-out, of glasses of Scotch and steak dinners to celebrate a victory, of Harvey’s smirk as they slay opposite counsel in court.
He loves Rachel. He wants her to be happy— It just doesn’t hurt all that much to think that her happiness might come from someone that isn’t him, because even if that was the case he would have a home to fall back to.
Then again. What’s his life without Harvey in it?
“Look who’s awake,” Mike says, as soon as Harvey emerges from his room, looking half-dead. His hair is all messed-up, which would probably warrant for a picture under different circumstances, his eyes are blood-shot and the pillow somehow left marks on his face.
“I feel like shit,” Harvey mumbles, sliding on a chair. Mike decides to be merciful and give him his coffee while he fixes himself another cup.
“You look like it too,” he comments.
“Right back at you,” Harvey replies, after looking him over. “Did you sleep?”
“Not much,” Mike confesses, his back now on Harvey as he gets the coffee machine started. He’s been looking for a way good to approach the subject, but— there is none.
“What did I do?” Harvey asks, after a pause. He sounds a bit fearful, and as it turns out he has every reason to be.
“Well,” Mike swallows, turning towards him and trying for the levity-approach. “First things first, you called me here for an emergency and I found you naked,” he begins.
“I— what?” Harvey asks, appalled. “Why?”
“You said—” Mike replies, without bothering to bite back a grin at Harvey’s horrified face. “That it was a surprise for my birthday.”
“But it’s not your birthday,” Harvey says, slowly.
“Nope,” Mike confirms.
“And then you put me to bed?” Harvey asks, hopeful.
“Oh, yeah,” Mike nods. He inhales briefly. “But not before you got around to confessing over and over again your undying love for me.”
Harvey blinks. “You’re joking,” he states, looking completely serious. He’s scanning him like he does when he’s facing an opponent that he still needs to get a good read on.
“I am not,” Mike replies. “You were very creative about it too,” he adds, with a smile, to ease some of the tension. Harvey still looks like someone died.
“Mike—” he begins, looking at loss of words. Mike raises his hand to stop him.
“Is it true?” he asks. “Just tell me if it’s true and we figure it out from there.”
“You’re engaged,” Harvey states.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I never meant to—” Harvey looks like he’s searching for something on his face, maybe absolution for something that Mike has decided he doesn’t really regret happened. “Mike, look, I’m sorry, I never meant to tell you—”
“Before you have a stroke,” Mike cuts him off. “I should probably mention that I’ve already ended things with Rachel.”
“You— what?”
Mike thinks that he’s never seen Harvey look that shocked so many times in a row.
“I did some serious soul-searching,” he explains. “And I realized that I love Rachel, but— I am okay with her being happy with someone else. Like, way too okay. And I mean, how many times have we postponed this wedding? When you really want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
Harvey blinks. “Tell me you didn’t just quote When Harry Met Sally at me.”
Mike shrugs, grinning slightly. It all makes so much sense, and yet it wasn’t easy. He broke things off in person, maybe half-hoping that seeing her would make him realize that his reasoning didn’t stand— yet it did.
She got mad, at first, and they got into a screaming match that miraculously didn’t wake any of the neighbours up. Then she just looked resigned, and not very surprised. Mike just hopes that they’ll be able to work it out and still be friends, especially considering that she’s going far. Time and distance heal all wounds – it’s ridiculous how lighter he felt as soon as he realized that he wasn’t leaving anymore.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Harvey says.
Mike rolls his eyes. “Don’t be so egocentric, it wasn’t about you. Well, it was, but— The nature of my relationship with Rachel is— was what it was.”
Harvey sighs, nodding briefly. “You okay?”
“I think we are deflecting here,” Mike points out. “Did you mean it?”
“I don’t even remember what I said,” Harvey protests, after a few seconds of silence.
“Oh, I can quote it all, but I don’t think you are gonna like it.”
“No, no, I’m good,” Harvey cuts him off. “Look, Mike, it’s— it’s complicated.”
“Harvey,” Mike groans. “You don’t need to make some big love confession, alright? You covered those. I just need you to not be stupid and tell me if you meant it.”
Harvey sighs. “I did,” he states. “I just don’t want you to make any rush—”
Mike lets out a laugh. “Believe me, there’s nothing rushed about this. I’ve been up all night wrapping my brain around it, not to mention all these years in which it’s been pretty damn clear who the most important person to me was.” He pauses, crossing his arms. “Or do you think I’d go to prison for just about anybody?”
Harvey chuckles, shaking his head slightly. “Guess not.”
“So,” Mike says, walking around the table to get in front of Harvey. “I’m willing to be your sun and light of your life.”
“My—” Harvey chokes on his words, looking terrified. “Tell me I didn’t.”
“Oh, you did,” Mike grins. “It was very sweet.” Harvey doesn’t really blush, but his ears get a very interesting shade of red. “So, may I kiss the bride?” Mike adds.
The make-out session that follows was totally worth the sleepless night.
(“Mike. The coffee.”
“Shit.”)