Chapter Text
Ordinarily, Harvey Specter wouldn’t be caught dead as far north as the Bronx. Even before he became the newest Senior Partner at Pearson Hardman, New York’s top law firm, he had an image to maintain, one of sleek offices, fast cars, and thousand dollar three-piece suits. It was all part of playing the role as the best attorney money could buy, and it wouldn’t do for some of his more affluent clients to see him “slumming” off of the Island.
What his clients didn’t realize was that Harvey had grown up in the Bronx. He had gone to school in the Bronx, played baseball in its parks, and even nowadays returns to a seedy little gym on Saturdays to box. While not as impressive perhaps as downtown Manhattan, the Bronx is just as important to Harvey as all his roots lay north of the Harlem River.
The Bronx also holds one thing above Manhattan, and that is the Bronx Zoo. Harvey has been to the Central Park Zoo, back when he had first moved onto the Island and was dating a pretty young co-ed from NYU, but for him, the Bronx Zoo would always be superior.
His brother, Marcus, obviously thinks so, too, or else neither of them would be there early on a Saturday morning, waiting with Marcus’ family to enter the animal park.
“I want to see the lemurs,” Eliza Specter proclaims, tugging insistently on Harvey’s hand. Eliza is eight years old and had wrapped her uncle around her finger from the moment Harvey held her in his hands. “They’re so cute, Uncle Harvey.”
“I don’t know,” Harvey says doubtfully. “Aren’t lemurs kind of scary?”
“No!” cries Eliza. “They’re not! They’re the cutest animals ever!”
Marcus laughs. “I wouldn’t start an argument with her, Harv. You know you’ll never win.”
“I get paid ridiculously large amounts of money to argue,” Harvey reminds him. “I’d find something to use against her.”
“Don’t count on it,” Hannah, Marcus’s wife, says. She carries an infant Elliot on her chest. The baby, unaware of the zoological debate going on around him, continues to mouth at a chubby, spit-covered fist. “Even the best Closer in the New York City couldn’t convince her otherwise.”
“Then we’ll settle,” Harvey says, and Eliza gives a cheer. ‘Settlements’ usually mean presents when it comes to Harvey and his niece. He is sure that one of the gift shops around the zoo will have stuffed lemurs looking to go home with a very, very excited third grader.
Eliza continues to educate Harvey on lemurs and why they are so cute as their group moves closer to the ticket booth. Harvey, who has always been able to multitask rather well, keeps an ear on his niece as well as listening for the girl behind the Plexiglas window. It’s not that he regularly eavesdrops on other people. Harvey would rather just be aware of his surroundings, so not it’s not totally by accident when he hears the conversation the ticket seller is having with the man in front of their group.
“I’m so sorry, sir,” Harvey hears the girl behind the Plexiglas say, “but we don’t accept this promotion anymore.”
The man at the ticket booth, the one preventing Harvey and his family from purchasing their own tickets, looks down at the slip of paper in his hand. “I don’t understand. It’s says free admission for kids on their birthday.”
The girl nods patiently. “Yes, sir, it does, but this promotion ended last month. I’m afraid you’ll have to pay the full ticket price.”
At the man’s feet, a boy a couple of years younger than Eliza plays with the zipper on his jacket. He pulls the slider up and down, listening to the sound it makes against the teeth. The man bends down to pick up his son, balancing him on his hip.
“How much for the full price ticket?” he asks.
The girl glances between the man and his son before answering hesitantly. “It’ll be forty three dollars and ninety cents for the both of you.”
Even from where he’s standing, Harvey can see the mortification settle on the other man’s shoulders. He glances at his son who is still occupied with his jacket zipper, and reaches up to brush the boy’s light hair from his forehead.
“I haven’t got enough,” the man says lowly, quite clearly embarrassed. His cheeks and the back of his neck flush a deep red. He looks at his son once more before shaking his head lightly. “That’s--It doesn’t matter. Thank you. I’m sorry I wasted your time.”
Even as the man turns away from the ticket booth, his son questioning loudly about where they’re going, Harvey is moving. Marcus calls out after him, but Harvey is already in front of the man and his son, hand outstretched.
“Excuse me, sir, but I think you dropped this.”
Blue eyes meet Harvey’s briefly before dropping to stare at the folded fifty dollar bill tucked between Harvey’s fingers.
“No, that’s not--”
“It is,” Harvey insisted, pushing the bill into the man’s hand. “It must have fallen from your pocket when you pulled out your wallet.”
Their eyes meet again, and Harvey nods firmly. For a moment, he fears that the man is going to refuse, to throw Harvey’s money back in his face, but he relaxes when the man nods and accepts the bill. He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing, and hitches his son higher onto his hip.
“Thank you,” he says and turns back again toward the ticket booth.
Returning to his brother’s family, Harvey tries to act as nonchalantly as he can. Marcus, however, slaps him on the shoulder as Hannah gives him a bright and teary smile. Eliza tugs on Harvey’s pants, demanding to know if Harvey knows the man and the little boy.
Harvey simply shrugs and steps forward at the girl behind the Plexiglas calls for the next visitor.
***
Harvey doesn’t give the man at the zoo much more thought over the weekend. The new work week brings new cases and new challenges at Pearson Hardman, and Harvey is forced to focus on finding a way to save his client’s ass from their own stupidity. He simply doesn’t have time to think about a man he met once in the queue at the zoo.
“Donna, where the hell are the Compton files?” Harvey demands late Monday morning, not bothering to press the intercom button. He knows that Donna listens.
“They arrived an hour ago,” his assistant says. Through the glass, he can see her working at her computer. She doesn’t even turn around to talk to him. “My chair is a little wobbly, though, so I’m using them to balance it out.”
“Donna,” he growls.
“I can’t give you what I don’t have,” Donna replies. She finally turns around in her chair to level him with a look. “You’ll get them when I get them, Harvey.”
Clenching his jaw, Harvey leans back in his own chair. The briefs were supposed to be here by mid-morning, and it is closer to lunch than it is breakfast. While he is more than capable of working without them, he prefers working with concrete information than guess work. A lack of information only brings a lack of results, and Harvey Specter always got results.
Harvey closes his laptop and stands, grabbing his suit jacket from the back of his chair.
“I’m going out for an early lunch,” he says, slipping his arms into his jacket sleeves. “Text me when the briefs get here.”
Donna salutes him as he leaves.
While most of the Senior Partners send out their assistants to trendy, high-end bistros for their lunches, Harvey has no problems simply grabbing a hotdog from the street vendor outside of Pearson Hardman’s building. It remains a point of contention between him and Jessica, who has long since ceased in trying to dissuade him from eating “dirty street food” like some blue-collar worker out of a construction site, but Harvey is adamant that the best hotdogs in the city come from the cart outside their office.
He orders two hotdogs and covers them in liberally in mustard and chopped onion--Donna would have something to say about onion breath later, and his tailor would kill him for even thinking about mustard while wearing a suit--but Harvey has a bottle of mouthwash in his office and blood stains are harder to get out of suits than mustard. He figures he is safe.
“Heads up!”
Something quick darts past Harvey, clipping his elbow and smashing his lunch against the lapels of his suit.
“Goddamnit!” Harvey swears. Rene is going to have his head. The hotdog vendor needlessly hands over a stack of napkins; the suit is a goner.
“Dude, I’m so sorry,” the man on the bicycle says, circling back. “You okay?”
“Don’t call me dude,” Harvey growls, wiping ineffectually at the mustard stain. “And watch where you’re going.”
“I’m sorry,” the cyclist says again. “I’ve got a stack of files to deliver and I’m already late as it is.”
Harvey’s head snaps up. Being nearly run over by the courier carrying his briefs is quite the coincidence.
The person delivering them is, too.
“Oh, shit, it’s you,” the courier says. His cheeks flare red as he covers his face with a gloved hand.
“It’s me.”
“Do you work here?” He points to the building towering above them. “In this building?”
“I’m a lawyer at Pearson Hardman.”
The kid gestures to the messenger bag strapped to his back. “I’ve got a delivery for some ass-hat named Harvey Specter. Who the hell names their kid Harvey?”
“Actually, it was my great-grandfather’s name,” Harvey replies. He enjoys watching the realization dawn on the kids face with the same relish he enjoys when he lets opposing counsel know just how tightly he has their balls in his fist.”
“You’re Harvey Specter,” the kid says. “Holy shit. The lawyer who I’m supposed to be delivering this files to, and the man who has personally loaned me money.”
“The man whose suit you’ve managed to ruin and whose name you’ve managed to make fun of,” Harvey adds with false awe. “If only you delivered legal documents just as efficiently.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t--,” the kid apologizes. “Look, I tried to find you at the zoo, but you’re a hard guy to track down. Seems like I owe you more than fifty bucks now, though.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Harvey says. Except maybe another hotdog.
He throws his ruined lunch in the trash can and turns on his heel back toward the office. He has a spare suit hanging in the closet of his office, and he somehow needs to make it back up to the fiftieth floor without attracting attention with his mustard stain. Luckily, it has restrained itself to the jacket.
“No, I do, man.” The kid is following him now, walking his bike after him. Harvey would be annoyed if he didn’t need the files the kid had on him. “Fifty dollars might be couch change for you, but it’s a lot of money for me. Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to take my kid to the zoo.”
“Consider it a birthday present from me to your son.”
“Thanks, but I still have to pay you back.”
Harvey nods at the security guards inside the building. He’s probably more grateful than he should be when they stop the bike messenger. Unfortunately, every elevator is on another floor, so the kid has time to catch back up with him, sans bike.
“My name’s Mike,” he says, offering a hand. Harvey ignores it. “Mike Ross.”
“Well, Mike Ross, do you make a habit of running over pedestrians on their lunch break?”
Mike blushes. “I’m really sorry about that. I told you I was in a rush.”
“To deliver files I needed an hour ago,” Harvey says. A bell announces the arrival of the elevator, and Mike moves to get on. Harvey stops him with a hand against his chest. “What are you doing? You can give me the files here.”
Mike shakes his head. “Sorry. I’ve got to take these all the way to your office. I can’t just hand them over willy-nilly.”
“Willy-nilly?” Harvey sneers. “What are you, twelve?”
He lets Mike onto the elevator, knowing making him wait for the next one would only keep him from his files longer.
They ride the elevator door in silence, and as soon as the car arrives on the fiftieth floor, Harvey charges out, leaving Mike to catch up. Most of the Partners are away at lunch, so Harvey makes a quick beeline to his corner office. Donna is where he left her, sitting behind her desk. She opens her mouth, a comment about the mustard sure to follow, but Harvey glares.
“Don’t ask,” he growls, stalking past her. “Just sign for the damn Compton files.”
He catches the shared look between Mike and Donna, and, not for the first time, wishes the door of his office could be slammed.
***
Most of the time, Mike Ross doesn’t think about being a single father. His alarms goes off at six at which point he rises, showers, and dresses for the day. After setting the coffee pot to percolate, he then moves on to drag his three year old from his own bed. Malcolm, who is not and has never been a morning person even at three, naturally puts up as much struggle as he can. Dressing twenty five pounds of dead weight in the morning is a skill Mike has learned early, and he considers it a point of pride that he can forcibly dress his son without waking him up. Then its breakfast and down to Leslie Carlisle’s apartment two floors down where Mike drops Mal off before leaving for work. Working two jobs, taking care of his son and grandmother, Mike is lucky if he thinks about anything other than the back of his eyelids when he finally drops into bed.
Other times, it’s all he can think about. It’s the single toothbrush on Mike’s bathroom counter and the empty chair at the breakfast table. It’s the lonely jacket hanging on the hook by the door, and the way only the left side of Mike’s couch sags from use.
He feels it especially in the empty space beside him in bed.
And it’s not that he feels as though he needs someone there with him. He and Mal have managed just fine on their own for three years. Sure, Mike has had to make sacrifices--all parents do--but he has never once thought of his son as a burden. He does what he needs to do to make sure that Mal is fed and warm and happy, and Mike doesn’t need anyone to help him do that.
But, oh, his bed is empty sometimes.
He channels that energy into work. Not only does Mike have to support Mal, but he also has an elderly grandmother to provide for. His Grammy’s healthcare is expensive, and if he wants to continue to keep her in the home that she’s in, he has to work as much as he can. There isn’t much time for dating.
That doesn’t mean he’s dead, however.
“I’m telling you this guy is ridiculous,” Mike says as he sets the table for dinner with his grandmother. “His haircut alone could probably buy groceries for two weeks.”
Edith Ross chuckles from her place on the sofa. At her knee, Malcolm leans against the coffee table, coloring with three crayons at the same time.
“I don’t think I’ve heard you this infatuated with someone since high school,” she says, smiling.
“Infatuated?” Mike scoffs. “Grammy, the guy’s a complete tool. The money he spent on that suit I ruined would probably cover my rent for the next two months. I bet he even has a corner office.”
Grammy raises her chin, a wry smile on her lips. “It wasn’t so long ago that you were aiming for one of those offices yourself, Michael.”
Mike shrugs. “Things change, Gram.”
Mike’s biggest change looks up from his crayons and holds up his paper. “I’m done!”
“That’s great!” Mike exclaims. He walks around the small table to crouch down in front of Malcolm. “What did you draw this time?”
Mal grins. “A dragon. It’s lives at the zoo.”
“The zoo? We were just there. How come I didn’t see him there?”
“Because daddies can’t see him,” Mal explains. “Only kids like me can see him.”
“Well, what does he do while he’s hiding from all of the daddies and mommies?”
Mal shrug his little shoulders and places the drawing carefully on the table. “He eats cotton candy.”
“Speaking of eating,” Mike say. “Come wash your hands. It’s dinner time.”
“The nurses tell me that someone’s not taking their medication.”
Dinner’s over, the dishes are drying by the sink, and Mike and his Grammy are sitting on the sofa. Malcolm is wedged between them, trying desperately not to fall asleep. His chips dips, once, twice, and then he’s asleep, face tucked into Mike’s side. Wrapping his arm around Mal’s shoulder, Mike pulled his son closer, enjoying the simple, warm weight against his body.
Edith huffs a sigh, rolling her eyes. “They’re trying to kill me.”
“They are not,” Mike insists. “If they do it before January, they can’t count it toward next year’s quota.”
She slaps his arm lightly. “Michael.”
“Listen to me,” Mike says, leaning over Mal’s head to look his grandmother in the eye. “I want you here for a long time. I want Malcolm to know his great-grandmother for as long as he can. Part of that is taking your medication.”
“I thought I raised you better than that,” Edith says, glaring at him. “Blackmailing me with that sweet child.”
“Not blackmail,” Mike says. “Think of it more as an incentive.”
Edith hums with false disapproval. “Perhaps you were meant to be a lawyer after all, Michael.”
Mike laughs softly as he takes Edith’s hand. He squeezes gently, running a thumb over the soft, think skin over her knuckles. “I’m serious, Grammy. You need to take your meds. Do you get it?”
“Yes, yes,” Edith sighs. “I’ll take the damn pills.”
“Good,” Mike says. He leans closer and presses a kiss to her forehead. “Now I’ve got to get this little guy home and into bed or else he’ll be a handful tomorrow.”
He is barely out of the door when his grandmother’s doctor waved him down.
“Mr. Ross, I was hoping to speak with you before you left.”
“Of course, Dr. Shraeger,” he says, hitching Mal higher up onto his hip. “But can we talk while we walk? I need to get my son home.
“Of course,” the doctor says, falling into step beside him. “Unfortunately, Mr. Ross, your grandmother’s getting worse. I’ll need to move her to full care or else I’ll have to transfer her to a state facility.”
“No, I won’t put her in a state facility.”
“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to come up with twenty five thousand dollars.”
Mike stops walking.
“How much?”
The doctor at least has the manners to look contrite. “Twenty five thousand. That’s what it’s going to cost to move Edith to full care.”
Mike can only stand there as his mind whirs frantically. Twenty five thousand dollars? That’s more than he’s ever had in his bank account at one time. Even picking up twice as many shifts at both of his jobs, there would be no way for him to get that much money, not with rent and food and Mal to think about.
“How long do I have to pay it?” he asks. He holds a hand to the back of Mal’s head, stroking the blond hair softly.
“We’re willing to give you two weeks,” Dr. Shraeger says. “After that…I’m afraid it’s either a state facility or she moves back home with you.”
“Okay,” Mike says, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “Yes, okay. I’ll see what I can do.”
Shraeger nods solemnly. “Come back and visit her again soon. She does better when you’re around.”
With that, the doctor turns and walks back down the hallway, leaving Mike to hail a cab by himself.
***
The second time Mike steps into the elevator of Pearson Hardman, he’s wearing his only suit instead of his biking gear. It’s nothing like the suits the people around him are wearing; the jacket doesn’t lie quite right on his shoulders and perhaps the pants are a tad too long, but Mike has never been one to place importance on labels. Clothes are clothes, and Mike is more than okay with wearing off-the-rack. He doesn’t have money, and he makes do with what he does have. He isn’t ashamed of that.
That doesn’t stop him from pulling self-consciously on the fraying cuffs of his jacket or wishing he had spent even a little bit of time polishing his shoes earlier that morning.
“You keep picking at that, Delivery Boy, and you’ll pull that sorry excuse for a suit to shreds,” Donna, Harvey’s assistant warns even as Mike approaches her desk. Though she’s sitting behind a desk, Donna Paulsen is every bit the guardian of the gate into Harvey’s office. And while Mike is sure she would much rather see herself at a spectacularly beautiful knight in Prada armor, he sees her more as Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards Hades.
“Lovely to see you, too, Ms. Paulsen,” Mike says.
“No, no,” Donna says, wagging a finger. “Just Donna. It’s like a name and a title all in one.”
“Donna,” Mike concedes, nodding. He glances over through the glass and into Harvey’s apartment. He can see the lawyer sitting behind his desk, his chair facing out toward the skyline of Manhattan.
“So,” Donna says, once she and Mike are on the same page. “What have you got for us today? You’re a little overdressed to be delivering paperwork.”
“Actually, I was wondering if you would do me a favor and squeeze me in for a quick meeting with the boss-man.”
A perfectly sculpted eyebrow floats toward the ceiling.
“What, you think I’m going to let a delivery boy just waltz into the office of New York’s best closer simply because he puts on a shabby suit?”
Mike smiles and pulls out his secret weapon. He sets the Styrofoam cup on Donna’s desk, watching as she zeroes in on it.
“Is that—“
“It is,” Mike replies.
“How did you—“
Mike leans over the edge of her desk, never gladder that old Harold Gunderson from Harvard was in Pearson Hardman’s associate bullpen. “Is it important how I know, or that I know?”
Donna’s attention snaps back up to Mike, her eyes narrowing. Mike holds the gaze, willing himself not to break. He already has the feeling that stronger men than he have fallen. Finally, Donna grabs the coffee and takes a sip. She gives Mike one more smile before turning to her desk phone.
“Harvey, you’ve got a walk-in,” she says, pressing the intercom button. “Go ahead, Delivery Boy.”
From the outside and through its glass doors, Harvey’s office could have come from an advertisement in an IKEA catalogue. All of the furniture matches in a cold and sleek way, all glass, chrome, and black leather, giving the appearance of a complete space without the personal touches of the person actually using said space. It is only after Mike steps through the door—knocking first, of course—that he sees any reflection of Harvey in the room.
Basketballs and baseballs line the window sill like trophies, each with the messy black scrawl of the athlete who signed them. Gifts from clients, Mike assumes, and the notion of being the friend of a friend for any one of those men makes the inner-child in Mike giggle with excitement. Inspiring just as much anticipation is the floor-to-ceiling shelving unit that holds more vinyl records than Mike has seen outside of an actual store. While he is no connoisseur of classic records, the sight brings to mind Saturdays spent with his grandmother sorting through dusty boxes at garage sales.
The jewel of Harvey’s office, however, is the almost one-hundred-and-eighty degree view of Manhattan. He’s lived in New York his entire life, but never has Mike seen the city from this position. Even the view from the top of the Empire State Building pales in comparison to this; that high up the view is impersonal, meant to fill tourist with awe at the sheer magnitude of the city. Harvey’s view allows for a detached yet comfortable vantage point where one can still appreciate the finer details of Manhattan.
“Make sure to pick up your jaw before you trip over it,” Harvey says. He closes his laptop and fold his hands on top of it. “What brings New York’s finest suicide cyclist to Pearson Hardman?”
Mike shakes himself free of the hold of the skyline and turns to face Harvey.
“I need this to stay between us.”
They both look to Harvey’s desk phone and then out through the wall to Donna’s desk. Having been caught, she spins around in her chair and turns off her side of the intercom.
“Are you sure she turned it off?” Mike asks.
“Donna, the Geller file that you lost back in the DA’s office? I shredded it.”
There’s no reaction from his secretary, so they turn back to face each other.
“I told you before that I don’t want any handouts,” Mike says, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He actually twists his hands together. It’s this level of nervous fidgeting that catches Harvey’s attention. He sets the folder aside, sitting straighter in his chair. “And that’s still the case, but…”
“Something’s changed,” Harvey says. He stands from his chair and buttons his jacket.
Mike nods. He swallows, rubbing a hand through his short hair.
“My grandmother has health problems,” Mike begins. “After her last fall, her visiting nurse suggested that we put her in an assisted living facility so someone could keep an eye on her. Things were going pretty well but her condition changed, and now she needs an upgrade in care.”
“And the home is looking at you to foot the bill.”
“You probably make twenty five thousand dollars in one conversation with your clients,” Mike says, “but it’d take me almost a year to make that much money even if I saved everything I had. The home needs it by next week.”
“I see.”
“I know it’s a lot to ask,” Mike says hurriedly, “and I realize that I’m taking advantage, but… My Grammy raised me. She took me in even when she didn’t have to, and now I have to do anything I can to help her. Even if it means making a complete asshole of myself by groveling.”
Harvey considers Mike, considers the ill-fitting yet neat suit he wears. Twenty five thousand dollars is a lot of money, even though Harvey has long since stopped paying attention to his monthly bank statement. He knows that someone like Mike would rather do anything else than ask for that kind of money with no real hope of paying it back, and the fact that Mike is standing here in Harvey’s office is enough to make Harvey seriously consider the request. Anyone else and he would think they were just looking to hitch their wagons to Harvey’s star.
With Mike, however…
Before Harvey can answer, there’s a knock on the door.
A suit pokes his head in, shooting Mike a dirty look before turning to Harvey.
“Excuse me, Mr. Specter, but I was hoping—“
“Forgive me, Mike, but I seem to have had a stroke,” Harvey says, “because I swear I just hallucinated an associate who holds so little value over their own life that they thought it would acceptable to barge into a senior partner’s office while he is in a meeting.”
The associate in question opens his mouth to speak, but Harvey shakes his head and holds his hand up.
“No excuses,” he says. “Tell me what's so important that you felt the need to interrupt, George.”
“It's Gregory, sir," the associate says.
"Hm, well that's a lot, doesn't it?'
"Yes, sir," Not-George mumbles. "I’m having trouble the stock option back-dating with the Smith files."
“Although back-dating options is legal, violations arise related to disclosures under IRC Section 409-A,” Mike recites. “Unless you consider Sarbanes-Oxley.”
Harvey’s office falls silent. Both he and Gregory stare at Mike, neither quite believing what just came out of the delivery boy’s mouth. Mike, realizing what he’s done, blushes red and looks down at his toes.
The associate sneers. “The statute of limitations renders Sarbanes-Oxley moot post-2007. Not that I would expect a delivery boy wearing a suit he found in a dumpster behind Goodwill to know that.”
“Not if you can find actions to cover up the violations as establish by the Sixth Circuit, May 2008.”
Durant opens his mouth to respond, but Harvey holds up a hand to stop him.
“How did you know that?” Harvey asks.
“I learned it,” Mike says, looking up from the floor. He ignores Durant and looks directly at Harvey. “When I was at Harvard Law.”
“You got into Harvard Law?” Gregory scoffs.
Mike shrugs. “What, like it’s hard?”
Harvey spins on his heel, grabbing the back of Gregory's suit jacket and all but throws him bodily from his office. “You, out!”
He points to Donna and jerks a thumb back over his shoulder. “You, in!”
Donna closes the door behind her and follows Harvey over to stand near Mile
“When did you graduate?”
“I didn’t,” Mike says. “I had to take a leave of absence when Malcolm was born, and I just wasn’t able to go back.”
“How many years were you there?”
“Two.”
Harvey looks at Donna who only lifts her shoulders, the palms of her hands facing the ceiling.
“Hold that thought, Ms. Woods.”
Only offering a cursory knock before entering, Harvey strides into Jessica’s office and stops in front of her desk.
“Cancel the Chilton interviews tomorrow,” he says.
Jessica doesn’t even look up from the file she’s reading. “And why on Earth would I do that?”
“You’ll do it because our new associate is standing in my office as we speak.”
She looks up from the file, eyes narrowing. Tilting her head to the side, considering him like a cat does prey, Jessica leans back in her chair. “Alright. I’ll bite.”
“His name is Michael Ross, and he’s smarter than any of those other Harvard douchebags you would make me sit through tomorrow.”
“We don’t hire off the street, Harvey.”
“What if I told you he went to Harvard?”
“Then I would ask about the catch.”
Lesser men than Harvey would have to steel themselves. He, of course, doesn’t miss a beat.
“He never actually graduated.”
“Harvey—“
“He took a leave of absence, and due to extenuating circumstances he couldn’t finish,” Harvey says. “But he has completed two years at Harvard Law. If he works for us for three more and we get a Harvard professor to sign off on it, we’ll have ourselves a Harvard-educated lawyer with only a partial amount of douchebaggery.”
“What makes you think I’d agree to this?” Jessica asks. As soon as she says it, Harvey knows that he’s got her. They’ve known each other a long time, and Harvey has never once bullied Jessica into anything. Where usually she would shut him down immediately, asking questions means that she's taking the bait.
“With enough time and effort, he’ll be almost as good as I am,” Harvey says, putting his hands on the edge of her desk.
“I’ve already got one pain in the ass. Why would I need another?”
“This kid’s a genius, Jessica, a walking law library. All we have to do is train him up a bit, and he’ll be raking in the money for this firm.”
Jessica stands up and crosses to the window. Harvey watches her back, knowing he’s won. Jessica only shows her back to him when she needs to hide her amusement.
“All right,” she says, turning away from the glass. “We’ll give the kid a shot.”
“Great.”
“But,” Jessica says, raising a finger in the air, “his signing bonus comes out of your pocket.”
“Done.”
“And you’ve got to do something for me.” Jessica turns to a stack of files and plucks one from the middle. “Pro bono.”
“Anything but that,” Harvey insists. He steps back toward the door.
“Do it or the kid walks.”
Begrudgingly, Harvey reaches out and takes the file. “Fine.”
“No pawning it off, either,” Jessica adds. “Use it to get the kid running, but you better be there every step of the way.”
Harvey nods and turns to leave.
“Oh, and Harvey?” Jessica calls as she reclaims her seat. “If the new puppy makes a mess on the carpet, he won’t be the only one in the dog house.”
Blowing back into his office, Harvey strides around his desk to sit in his chair. Mike, who has been sitting on the arm of Harvey’s couch, jumps to his feet.
“I’m not going to give you the money--”
Mike visibly deflates, his expression falling.
“--but what I will give you is a job.”
Mike blinks. Once. Twice.
“A what?”
“A job.” Harvey undoes the button of his jacket and returns to his chair. Crossing his left ankle over his right knee, he turns toward his laptop and opens his email. Behind Mike, Donna spins around in her chair and stares at him with raised eyebrows. I hope you know what you’re doing.
“How--why?” Mike asks. He falls into one of the chairs on the other side of Harvey’s desk.
Harvey shoots off a quick email instructing Donna to get the paperwork started. “My boss is requiring me to hire an associate. The interviews she set up are going to be a complete and utter waste of my time, but hiring you will solve everything.”
“I don’t have a law degree,” Mike says.
“Let me worry about that,” Harvey says. “You start a week from Monday. Here’s what you’re going to do: Give your two weeks or whatever bike messengers give. It doesn’t matter what you tell them, just tell them you’re quitting. Second, buy some nicer suits. People make assumptions based on the way we look. It’s shallow, but true.”
Mike can’t quite process what’s happening. Even his mind seems to have trouble wrapping itself around the fact that he came in to ask for a loan but is leaving with a job. A job he previously thought he’d never be able to achieve.
“I don’t understand.”
“You need money, I need an associate,” Harvey says. “You ever hear the phrase ‘teach a man to fish?’ Mostly bullshit, but I think it applies.”
Donna appears again, handing Harvey a freshly printed piece of paper.
“You’re getting the twenty five thousand as a signing bonus,” Harvey says. “If you work hard, this job is going to make you insanely wealthy. It’s hard work, but if you do the work you’ll never have to worry about money again.”
He slides the paper across the table. “Sign it, Mike and you’ll be back on the track you wanted to be on from the beginning.”
If he takes this job, Mike would never have to worry about not being able to provide for Grammy or Malcolm again. He’d be able to move her to a home that would take care of her, one that was worthy of the woman who took him in when nobody else would. He would be able to provide the kind of life that he wanted for Malcolm. He’d never have to go without just so his son wouldn’t have to. Hell, he could finally move them out of their shoebox of an apartment and into a place where Malcolm could actually have an entire bedroom to himself.
With the feeling that he is standing on the edge of something very dangerous yet incredibly exciting, Mike accepts the fountain pen Donna offers him and signs on the dotted line.