Work Text:
1.
As soon as Jessica comes in, Mike immediately straightens his posture, and for a second Harvey could have sworn that he was about to do a military salute.
He scoffs, because it’s way too ridiculous that the kid works side by side with a demon on regular basis without being intimidated in the least – actually, sometimes he’s boldly annoying; Harvey kinda likes it, in a way – but he acts like Jessica is the personification of Death coming to get him.
He does understand where the suggestion comes from – Jessica does indeed inspire respect and she is someone whose bad side you’d better try to avoid –, but Harvey is still way more dangerous than her.
“I’ll just— leave,” Mike stammers after just one glance from Jessica. He’s gesturing vaguely, a couple of Harvey’s records still in his hands, and he seems to barely remember to put them back before literally fleeing the room.
Harvey stares at him through the whole thing, an amused grin twisting his lips.
When his eyes move to Jessica, she’s standing in front of his desk, looking down on him with a confused frown and a hint of amusement.
“What?” he prompts.
“You let him touch your records?” she asks, a weird teasing note in her voice.
“The kid has no manners,” Harvey explains, leaning back against his chair. “I gave up on trying to instil some in him.”
A pause. “Sure,” Jessica deadpans, but it’s obvious that she thinks he’s full of shit. He just hopes that someday she’ll get to experience the nightmare that’s Mike’s utter inability to respect personal space or knock on the goddamn door before barging in, for example.
2.
Harvey has always prided himself with having very strong boundaries: personal life here, work there. He is not in the habit of mixing the two, which is why his co-workers aren’t allowed to set foot in his apartment, if not under extraordinary circumstances. Donna does have a spare key, but he trusts that she’s going to use only per his request or if necessary.
This way, he can get some peace after work hours, stop playing human – as much as it’s become a second nature by now – and lay back a bit, maybe call Scottie if he wants to have some good sex with no risk of accidentally snapping his partner’s bones.
The first time Mike shows up at his apartment – and who the hell knows how he got the address in the first place –, he’s drunk and he has a breakthrough on their case. Harvey not-so-mercifully shuts the door on his face, because Mike is being loud, he’d probably need some looking after and convincing to get him to bed while he’s all excited because of the alcohol, and Harvey doesn’t really need that invasion of his personal space, thank you very much.
Except it keeps happening, and by the third time Harvey has already stopped shutting the door on his face. After all, all that they do is some extra work after hours, nothing that he has never done on his own anyway.
Except then Mike starts showing up with take-out and a movie that he rented and wanted to watch with someone. Sometimes he calls before coming over, sometimes he doesn’t and he just assumes that he doesn’t have plans – which he oftentimes is right about, because Harvey has had enough of dealing with humans all day long, thank you –, then he shows up at his door with a huge – if a bit nervous – grin and his latest offer for a friendly night.
It’s troubling that it doesn’t take Harvey long to get used to it.
It’s all the more troubling that sometimes he is the one to show up at Mike’s place.
3.
In Harvey’s honest opinion, he’s always been at his best when he’s working on his own.
He didn’t take it kindly to Jessica’s suggestion to hire an associate, first of all because the numbers of humans that he can stand having around for longer than a client meeting without feeling the pressing urge to jump out of his meatsuit – or to tear them out of theirs, depending on how annoyed he is – is remarkably low, and second of all, who in their right mind would think that he’s mentor material?
He’s not: as extensive as his knowledge of the law and how to work around it is – and it’s very extensive, considering for how long he’s been doing this –, people usually tend to want their associates to live long enough to become partners, which simply wouldn’t happen under Harvey’s guidance.
Still, he doesn’t know why exactly he expected Jessica to see the problem here, considering that she hired him in the first place and she has no problem staring him down when he doesn’t like one of her suggestions.
Sometimes it really pisses him off that he likes her enough to let her get away with it.
This to say that he wasn’t enthusiastic at all about getting himself an associate. And that he may have made a very, very ethically questionable move that Jessica will most likely have his head for if she ever finds out half out of pettiness – because if she’s making him do this he’s surely going to make her regret it – and half because he’s genuinely intrigued by the kid – even more so when his reaction to finding out that he’s about to commit a felony with a literal demon turned out to be wondering if accepting would mean selling him his soul and if that would by chance turn him into Ghost Rider.
Mike is— needy. He’s a constant presence, waltzing in his office, talking all the time, following him out when he goes to get lunch, and always ready to make himself useful during cases.
It’s not like Harvey has much of a choice on the matter: that’s his mentee, he has to teach him, and he can’t teach him if he doesn’t at least let him observe.
So, forced to pull himself out of his habit of always working alone unless explicitly ordered otherwise by Jessica Pearson in the flesh, he starts bringing Mike along in court, discussing strategy with him whenever he’s around, letting him intrude as much as the kid pleases and even enjoying his enthusiasm, if he is in the mood.
“Mike,” he calls one morning, walking up to his desk in the bullpen and biting back a grin at the associates quickly getting out of his way. “My office, now.”
Mike raises his head from some documents that he’s been proofreading, looking lost for a few seconds before he shakes his head. “Sorry, I’m— I have tons of paperwork for Louis,” he explains, gesturing towards a pile of documents on his right. “I really can’t.”
Harvey’s eyebrows shoot up. “Louis?” he echoes, a familiar anger burning his stomach. What claim does Louis have over Mike? “You work for me,” he states.
“And him,” Mike reminds him, with a grimace that pretty explicitly conveys his feelings on the matter. “Look, I’ve been putting these off for days, so—”
“I’ll talk to Louis,” Harvey waves him off, trying to keep his tone controlled in spite of how extremely pissed this conversation is making him. It’s not like he can’t manage his cases without Mike, he’s mostly just inviting him to tag along at every opportunity so that the kid can learn more and better – and also offer some more interesting company than his clients during meetings, that’s probably a factor too, that and Mike’s commentary right after –, but it’s a matter of principle: Mike is his associate, so there’s no way that Harvey can request his presence and be told that he’s actually too busy working for someone else.
“Really?” Mike asks, lightening up.
“Yes,” Harvey states, already mentally listing the possible excuses to Jessica if the talk ended up being aggressive enough to send Louis crying to the boss. “Now get your ass in my office.”
“Ay, ay, Captain,” Mike grins, setting the paperwork aside and jumping on his feet.
That’s better.
4.
Harvey has never been a worrier. He’s a demon, he isn’t even sure that he can worry.
He has people that he enjoys having around and that he’s marked as his, such as Donna, or Jessica. If someone had the very bad idea of harming either one of them, it would end in blood and screams, without a shadow of a doubt.
Still, it’s not like Harvey spends his day thinking about what could happen to them, and the only real safety measure he’s taken is sending word out to the other demons that setting a foot in Pearson Hardman would result in a slow and gruesome death.
But Mike— Mike is a human disaster.
Harvey has never met anyone so damn clumsy in his whole very, very long life, and other than being naturally prone to harming himself he also has the shittiest luck possible, all this mixed with a burning sense of justice and absurd need to protect the innocent and save the world, which only causes more trouble.
It’s a goddamn wonder that he survived long enough to reach adulthood – or so he claims: Harvey maintains that he looks like he’s fresh out of high school.
So, Harvey surely can’t be blamed for wasting some time thinking of the impossibly long list of things that could go wrong whenever he is not around, right? One morning the kid showed up at work with stitches on his forehead and a fractured wrist, because he fell off his bike – and now, Harvey is a demon and he could literally walk into traffic and live to tell the tale, but Mike is all bones and recklessness, he should shield himself with a damn car instead of biking through New York’s traffic –, and another he sported a big black eye because he tripped onto something in the dark, and this is just off the top of his head.
It’s literally impossible for Harvey to be a worrier, but the kid is seriously trying to make him into one. Or possibly just trying to get himself killed.
The thing is, human bodies are extremely fragile, and Harvey tends to forget most days, because humans act like they are invincible most of the time and his meatsuit really doesn’t have this problem, but Mike actively tries to remind him that he could get himself killed any second and that he’s doing his best to manage it.
It’s pretty damn frustrating to be in the position of having to try to explain to him how to be a responsible human being when he is not even a human to begin with. Goddamn kid.
5.
Harvey isn’t big on touching.
To be fair, he isn’t big on any form of intimacy ever, and one of the reasons why he appreciates Jessica and Donna’s company like he does is that they keep their distance.
Well, Donna is nosy, but it’s part of what makes her so efficient, so he can live with it. And at least she doesn’t touch him.
He should have guessed from Mike’s lost-kid-in-serious-need-of-approval vibe that he wouldn’t grant him the same courtesy. Still, he isn’t sure that knowing how handsy he is would have been enough to dissuade him from making his offer – it probably would have been enough to make him think it over for more than thirty seconds, though.
Mike always sits a little bit too close him, his knee against Harvey’s and their arms brushing. He grabs him to get his attention when he’s not paying him any, or when he wants to make sure that he’s being properly listened to because he’s making a particularly important point.
He’s also stupid enough to stand in front of him, hands on his chest, and try to use his full-body weight to stop him when it looks like he’s about to off someone – Louis, let’s be honest, it’s usually Louis.
It probably should be annoying. But then again, many things about Mike should be annoying and just— aren’t.
Mike is warm.
Harvey isn’t sure if it has something to do with his soul, if it’s particularly bright and it shows as some kind of heat, or not, but he has by now learnt to live with the fact that he won’t ever be able to shake off hell’s cold completely, and Mike helps. He doesn’t chase it away completely, because the ice is probably a literal part of his twisted soul now and there’s no undoing it, but for a second Harvey almost forgets.
And almost forgetting how rotten he is is probably the best that he can hope for.
So it’s not a surprise that Harvey soon finds himself reaching out as well: an hand on Mike’s shoulder, an arm around his waist to guide him in the right direction, his chest brushing against Mike’s back as he leans over his desk to look at the papers he’s showing him, and he sometimes even gets a bonus shining smile out of it – that makes him feel a bit warmer as well.
It’s all casual enough that Harvey can more or less live with himself doing it, especially because Mike has no idea of how far away he usually keeps himself from that kind of thing.
He doesn’t think he could make himself stop if he wanted to.