Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Someone couldn’t wait for you to get home.”

Harvey says it like something he’s remembered at the last second, like it’s something he should have said the very moment they saw one another, the moment the doors opened. Harvey says it like it’s not important, like it’s something he shouldn’t even have to say because it’s a given, something to be taken for granted, and Mike knows what he means, exactly. And he should be excited. He should be. He is.

The car’s back door is already open, Rachel stepping out and looking back at them disbelievingly, knowing what she’ll find but refusing to trust her own eyes, her own mind, until she can feel his body pressed to hers, until she can hold his hands, leap into his arms, feels his lips against hers. He knows. He understands.

Stepping closer, she smiles a little sadly, and Mike smiles back, a little tired.

All our trials, we’ve made it through.

They step closer still, drawn like magnets, pulled along on a track, and she flings herself at him, and he wraps his arms around her back, nestling his face into the crook of her neck. She pulls back and takes his face in her hands, pressing a kiss to his mouth, and he feels her smile turn wide, turn giddy, and his face begins to ache under the strain of his own ecstasy as they part and he tries not to feel too claustrophobic.

This is a big wide open parking lot, and there’s nothing to be afraid of. This is nothing compared to a crowded subway car at rush hour, or a prison cell behind a locked door, or a sealed coffin buried six feet underground.

He lifts her up and spins her around, and she smiles her giddy smile into his throat until he sets her back down on the ground, and she tucks her hair behind her ears as the wind blows it in her face, across her shiny teeth.

His back might be bleeding, maybe, from where one of Frank Gallo’s men threw him into a metal bedframe a few days ago. He should maybe get a band-aid, probably. Later.

Reaching up to clasp his face between her hands, she pulls him down into another kiss.

He is here, and he is alive.

He is here, and now.

-

Harvey slips his hands into his pockets and looks down at the ground. This isn’t a moment he’s invited to. It’s alright, though; he shouldn’t be. He doesn’t want to be. Return to Sender, back from whence it came.

Harvey listens to the quiet sounds of their tearful reunion, the soft shuffle and click of their shoes on the pavement, the breathiness of their laughter, and looks down at the ground. This is a moment they deserve. After all they’ve been through, all they’ve endured, this is a moment they’ve earned. He hopes they remember it for the rest of their lives, he hopes it carries them through some hard times.

Harvey shifts his weight to his right leg and looks back at the prison gates. The year is only half over, but it’s already gone on just a bit longer than long enough.

We did it, though.

We sure did.

---

It’s nice, being in places where he doesn’t have to smile.

Mike walks through the door into the dimly lit restaurant—it’s atmospheric, a small voice in his head says snidely, it’s inviting—and finds Harvey instantly, nestled in a booth by himself off to the side. Just him and eight glasses of amber-colored liquid. Scotch, probably. Maybe whiskey, but probably not.

“How many people are joining us?” he asks flippantly as he approaches the table, and Harvey smiles.

“Wasn’t sure which Scotch you’d want,” he says, “so I went ahead and ordered them all.”

Mike nods, sitting at the opposite side of the table. This is a very nice gesture.

Harvey nods as Mike selects the glass closest to him and drinks.

“Welcome home.”

Mike smiles.

“It tastes good,” he admits, tipping the glass slightly in Harvey’s direction.

It does, too. This is a very nice gesture.

“I have something else for you,” Harvey says, reaching into his jacket’s breast pocket and withdrawing a piece of paper folded into thirds. Mike takes it curiously, wondering if he’s imagining the undertone of melancholy in Harvey’s voice; maybe he’s projecting.

“It’s an offer letter,” Harvey says as Mike begins reading. “Take a look at the number.”

Mike does.

Oh.

“This is the same money I made as a junior partner.”

Harvey nods.

“You’re the best junior partner there is,” he says. “Easily the best PSL has ever seen.”

Thinning his lips, Mike skims the letter again and folds it back up, shaking his head. “I just got out of prison,” he reminds them both, because it’s already been a few hours and they might forget if he doesn’t point it out every now and again. “I’m not trying to go back.”

Harvey nods. “I know,” he says. “But the firm needs you. And don’t worry about going back to prison, because even though you’ll be acting as a lawyer, your title’s gonna be ‘consultant.’”

It’s nice, being out here where he doesn’t have to smile.

“Harvey,” he says, pushing the letter back in Harvey’s direction, “I appreciate the gesture, but everyone left that firm because of me. I can’t do that to you again.”

Harvey gets a panicked sort of look in his eyes, and Mike forces himself not to look away, tries to stifle the shame burning in his breast.

“Mike—”

“No,” Mike cuts him off, “listen. This is too much, alright, you’ve done too much for me already.”

Please don’t say anything more to convince me; I’m afraid I might give in.

Harvey smiles tightly, lowering his gaze to the paper severing them and setting his hand down on the table just short of touching it.

I’m terrified.

“Just think about it,” Harvey says. Pleads. (Stop projecting.) “If the answer’s still no in a few days, I won’t bring it up again.”

Mike smiles wearily and wraps his hands around his half-empty glass of Scotch.

You won’t.

I won’t.

-

“I have to admit,” Mike says with a funny sort of lilt in his voice, “I missed working with you.”

Harvey nods slowly, drawing his finger along the rim of his still mostly-full glass of Scotch and trying to remember which brand this one is. He wonders, if he tried another flavor, if he drank from a different glass, if he would be able to tell them apart.

“I miss working with you, too,” he agrees.

His heart is slowly cracking, a sheet of glass in the process of being run over by an armored car, warping like melting plastic as he forces a smile onto his face and hopes Mike doesn’t ask him too many questions. He won’t, he won’t; he doesn’t want to talk about it, Harvey can see it plainly, but that’s alright. It makes sense. He understands.

Sooner or later, Mike will take the offer. Won’t he? He has to. He will.

Please, just tell me why not, and I’ll die a happy man, I’m sure.

Just tell me this.

Just this.

---

Five twenty-two. His last appointment of the day is at five thirty; there’s still a chance he’ll make it, a little bit of hope. Five minutes late isn’t too bad, five minutes late is alright.

“This train is being held by the dispatcher; we apologize, we should be moving shortly and thank you for your patience.”

Or something to that effect, anyway. It comes out gritty, half words and half static, but that seems to be the gist. Mike takes his iPhone out of his pocket and opens the Music app as he leans against the closed subway doors, right in front of the “Do not lean on door” sticker that he’s reasonably sure no one’s ever heeded in the entire history of the New York City Transit Authority.

A middle-aged woman with obviously dyed auburn hair that looks like it hasn’t been washed in about three days pulls a small Tupperware container out of her backpack and begins eating candy corn, and Mike fidgets with his earbuds as he takes in her black Velcro sneakers and her electric blue eyeliner and hopes she doesn’t think he’s spying on her.

The idling car smells of citrus cleanser, and a young man in a Hunter College sweatshirt eats a banana. Mike tries not to check his watch.

The woman finishes her candy corn and takes a manila envelope out of her backpack, and Mike catches sight of the letters “LLC” in the header of the papers inside before she begins flipping through them so haphazardly that he can’t believe she’s actually absorbing any of the information printed there.

The idling car smells of oat bread, and a small child sitting beneath an advertisement for the Museum of Sex reaches out to her mother for a bottle of Nesquik. Mike drops his head back against the door and, for no particular reason, wishes he was wearing a baseball cap.

Slipping his hand into his messenger bag, he thumbs the stack of papers stuck in there. Nineteen copies of his résumé, exactly eleven fewer than he started with when he left the house this morning; that’s not too bad for a single day, is it? Not bad for the first day out on the beat. It’s fine. Thirty was too ambitious, anyway, aiming too high. Too much to hope for.

Hell, one was too much, if he’s being really, truly honest.

“Have you ever been convicted of a crime?”

Mike clenches his fist around the warming rectangle of his iPhone and spins the volume up higher.

“Once again, ladies and gentlemen, the train is being held in the station by the dispatcher, we thank you for your patience and we should be moving shortly.”

Five thirty-one.

Don’t worry, don’t cry; there’s always tomorrow.

Mike sighs.

And now, the weather.

---

Harvey sits at his desk, the weight of his body resting on his elbows and his face resting on his hands folded in front of him, the sound of his breathing a wind tunnel echoing in his ears and only his occasional blinking giving away any signs of life.

Did they really think they were going to get away with this? With any of it?

That doesn’t matter now, that doesn’t matter anymore; they knew the risks when they started and they took the chance anyway, just for the hell of it. There were—are only so many swords they can fall on before they run out of ways to bleed for each other.

This was always going to be the end of the road.

His bleary eyes growing tired, Harvey lowers his gaze to the letter before him, kept close to his body and hidden from view. How much longer can he get away with this? How much longer can he put it off?

Well that’s a stupid question if he’s ever heard one. The answer’s right there in black and white; nine days, not a second more.

Harvey closes his eyes and presses his hands to his forehead. He has to tell Jessica; he should’ve told her right away, he should’ve told her the moment he found out. Does she know by now, did she hear it through the grapevine? No, she can’t have. How would she? How could she?

How could she not?

He opens his eyes again.

Respondent Harvey Reginald Specter (Respondent) is charged with violations of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct and the New York Rules of Professional Conduct.

Harvey sighs.

---

“So, how’d it go?”

How did it go.

She says it with such warmth, such consolation; such anticipation of his answer, such preparation for the inevitable. She knows he’s a failure, she knows today was awful. She knows that his train was delayed, that he missed his last appointment; she knows it’s just as well because they wouldn’t’ve hired him anyway, and at least this way he didn’t have to suffer through another “Thank you for coming in, but I’m afraid we don’t” dot dot et cetera. She looks up at him with pity in her eyes and a sad little smile on her face, and she knows.

Mike drops his bag on the table beside the door and contemplates opening the oven and putting his head inside. Not to hurt himself, not to die; just as a thing to try. Something to do. A scientific experiment.

He opens the refrigerator and reaches for a bottle of Sierra Nevada.

“None of those places are gonna hire me.”

Rachel makes a soft humming sound and furrows her brow, making her big brown eyes look extra sympathetic, just for him, as she reaches out to run her hand up and down his arm.

“You don’t know that,” she soothes. “Today was just the first day, you’ll try again tomorrow.”

He scoffs on his way back to the sofa in front of the window. “You didn’t see their faces when I checked that box.”

“What box?” she asks, trailing after him like a lost kitten, or a small child. What box, as though she doesn’t know.

“The box where I admit that I’m a convicted felon,” he says, raising the bottle to his lips.

She sits beside him, placing her hand on his leg, and he swallows.

“Somebody’s going to see the real you,” she reassures him. “If you just keep at it, the right person is going to come along, and everything’s going to turn out for the best.”

Somebody did, once. She knows it; he knows it, too, just as he knows that it doesn’t mean anything anymore, there’s no point in reminiscing. There’s no going back. Not to that life.

“I can ask Jessica if maybe you can help with Leonard Bailey’s case. I mean,” she says too brightly, “who knows, maybe it’ll even turn out to help us that you’ve been to prison, you can give us that personal perspective.”

Look at her, turning a negative into a positive. That’s great, that’s really great.

She pets his thigh and looks tenderly at his face, careful to keep her distance, and he tries to appreciate it; whether she’s doing it for his benefit or for hers, it doesn’t really matter.

Et cetera, and so forth.

---

“Jessica.”

She looks up curiously as he walks in, probably glad for the excuse to take a break from the stacks of paperwork sprawled across her desk.

“Harvey.”

He smiles, tipping his head down and tightening his hold on the letter in his hands.

“Have you heard?”

She begins to smile that knowing smile of hers, the one that means he’s done something reckless and crazy that’ll all work out in the end if she can just bring herself to believe in him for a little while. He hates to be such a disappointment, but, well.

“What’ve you done now?”

Well.

He pauses just a little too long, or maybe just long enough, and she stands as her smile falls away.

“Harvey?”

Her brow furrows as he hands over the letter, watching her take it and still refusing—unable to meet her gaze. It isn’t a long note, it shouldn’t take her more than a minute to read. Maybe less; she might recognize it on sight, she might know from the header how it’s going to turn out, she might not need to read it at all.

Twelve hours later, she looks up at him, the clarity and the finality and the inescapability of their fates settling over her as she hands the letter back.

“I see,” she says evenly. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance the hearing is going to go our way.”

Our way, as though she hasn’t given up on him already. As though there’s any reason not to.

“Anita Gibbs filed the report,” he says. “She’s got more than enough to make it stick.”

Jessica nods slowly and he knows that she’s already escorting her memories of him into the cellar, down to the tombs into stasis.

“Have you called any of your clients yet?”

He shakes his head. “I figured I’d come to you first.”

She smiles gravely.

“I appreciate it.”

It’s nice, the way she’s not pretending this is anything other than what it is.

“Of course.”

Setting her hands on the desk behind her, she leans back, perching on the edge, and looks down at the floor behind him.

“There’s no point in hoping this won’t play out the way I think it will, is there.”

Harvey laughs quietly. Jessica’s always seen through him, always been willing to cut to the heart of the matter. Of course, she didn’t get to where she is by being soft on shit like this.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll keep your name out of it.”

She folds her arms across her breast and fixes him with that knowing expression she has, the one that means she’s disappointed, but not terribly surprised. It’s not hard to figure out why; she’s like him that way, ignoring the inevitable as though that can keep it from becoming a reality. He isn’t sure if he should be grateful to her for playing along or furious that she let the game go on as long as it did.

“I’d like to believe that that’s going to be a possibility.”

He shrugs; he’ll figure something out. Somehow or other. This place that’s done so much for him, these people he’s leaving behind, he’ll make sure to get them out alive.

“Alright,” he says self-consciously, turning away, toward the door. “I just wanted to let you know what was coming.”

“Harvey.”

He pauses, looking back over his shoulder at her scrutinizing gaze, and quirks his eyebrows in question as she tilts her head just a bit to the right.

“You don’t have any regrets?”

And what, exactly, would be the point of that?

Harvey smirks, folding the letter in half and shoving it into his pocket.

“Nah.”

I’d do it all again.

---

“So, how’d it go?”

How did it go.

Mike throws his bag down onto the sofa as he stalks past, having learnt his lesson by now that the table beside the door isn’t quite strong enough to bear the full force of his exhaustion, his defeat, his weariness and frustration and anger at spending the day out, again, wandering the city in search of something, anything at all, lowering his standards by the minute even though he knows it won’t do a damn bit of good, won’t make any fucking difference, only to come home to that same goddamn question, that same goddamn pity. That same goddamn blind optimism and vapid encouragement, that same goddamn presumption that everything will magically work out just fine in the end if he can just. Keep. Going.

“It went the same as it did yesterday,” he bites out. “And the same as it did the day before yesterday, and the same as it’s been going all week, and the same as it’s going to go every day for the rest of my life.”

She smiles her same sympathetic smile, petting his arm in her same sympathetic way, and he sinks down onto the sofa beside his bag, turning on the television the way he does every day, the way he’ll do every day for the rest of time, the rest of his fucking life.

“You’ve just gotta keep at it,” she says. “It’ll work out eventually.”

He snorts derisively, and she pets his arm some more.

“There are programs that can help,” she offers. “When I went to see Leonard Bailey the other day, I heard about this place called the Center for Employment Opportunities that tries to place people with criminal records in stable jobs.”

His lip twitches up at the corner. “You want me to be a janitor?”

“No, of course not,” she soothes immediately, “but Mike, you’re not just some common criminal, I bet they could find something really good for you. Something you’d like.”

It’s nice that she’s trying, really it is. It might be better if she knew what the hell she was talking about, but he can’t ask for much right now; he’s a convicted felon, after all.

“Rachel, those programs aren’t for getting white collar criminals back on their feet,” he says tersely as he changes the channel from news to sports. “They’re for teaching people who’ve never held stable jobs before how to work a nine-to-five every day without flipping their shit.”

“But you—”

“They’re not for people like me,” he snaps, having no patience at the moment for her well-intentioned naiveté. “People like me are supposed to ‘know people,’ people like me are supposed to get out of prison and have buddies who can land them on their feet, who can funnel them right back into the corporate conglomerate and pass them their five hundred thousand dollar paychecks on the sly until everyone’s forgotten what got them in trouble in the first place and they can go right back to being the corrupt sons of bitches they always were.”

There’s a certain hardness in her eyes that he barely notices, except that it’s so unlike the simpering pity he’s become accustomed to that he nearly asks her what’s wrong, as though it isn’t obvious. As though he couldn’t have seen it coming.

“You know, I’m just trying to be helpful.”

She is, isn’t she.

He sighs.

“I know.”

“You could be a little grateful, that’s all.”

He could, couldn’t he.

Except that he’s getting a little sick and tired of hearing about how great everything is going with Leonard fucking Bailey, how amazing Rachel’s life is turning out right now except that she misses Mike, she wishes they could make more time for each other, wasn’t it nice back when they worked together and they saw each other every day.

“You know what,” he says flatly, turning off the television and tossing the remote onto the coffee table, “I’m gonna go for a walk.”

He feels her petulant glare on his back, but she won’t follow. She won’t try to stop him; she knows better than that. Or, hell, maybe it’s a self-preservation instinct kicking in, maybe this is all about her; he doesn’t much care either way.

He makes it a ways—all the way down the elevator, all the way out the front door, all the way down the block to the corner of thirty-eighth and Second—before his phone rings. It’s gotta be Rachel trying to beckon him back, trying to gloss over the issue as though it doesn’t exist, as though nothing’s wrong if they can just pretend hard enough, and he fishes it out of his pocket to end the call before it begins.

Or maybe not.

“Harvey.”

There’s a brief pause before Harvey responds; Mike wonders if they have a bad connection, but then Harvey says “Hi, Mike,” and he knows it’s something much, much worse.

“Where are you?”

Harvey chuckles softly. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m fine. I’m at home.”

“I’m coming over.”

“No,” Harvey stops him, “no, don’t… Don’t worry about me. I’m alright.”

Mike scrapes his nails against the back of his neck. “Like hell you are. What’s wrong?”

Harvey sighs. “You know, there was a time in my life when I could tell everyone I had everything under control and they’d believe me.”

“Welcome to the other half.”

Harvey chuckles again. “Smartass.”

Mike smiles, but only for a moment. “Seriously, Harvey,” he presses, “you’re starting to freak me out. I won’t come over if you really don’t want me to, but can you just tell me what’s going on?”

Silence. Mike pulls the phone away from his face just enough to make sure they haven’t been disconnected when he hears Harvey sniff as though he’s bracing himself for something unpleasant, or preparing to deliver a cocky denouement; Mike’s most paranoid instincts inform him in no uncertain terms that it must be the former, and he tries to tell himself that the latter is equally likely as he begins to scan the streets for a cab, even though he doesn’t have any money on him.

“Harvey?”

Harvey sucks in a long breath and lets it out in a longer one.

“I want to tell you that I don’t regret a minute of it.”

Mike stands on a dark street corner with his back pressed against a brick wall and looks out on the river across the way.

“Harvey.”

“This isn’t your fault.”

“Harvey.”

“What?”

Mike doesn’t want to smile; it just sort of happens. He should be ashamed, being that this isn’t the time for such things as that.

“You’re freaking me out here, man,” he says, forcing all the levity he can manage even though it makes him feel like a goddamn liar. “Just tell me what’s going on.”

Harvey pauses, trying to regain his momentum. Maybe Mike shouldn’t have derailed him like that.

Oh, well.

“I’ve been disbarred.”

Mike pauses a moment, trying to regain his bearings. Standing with his back pressed against wall, he slides down to the ground and sits as his legs give out beneath him.

Oh.

Well.

---

Standing with his hands clasped behind his back, Harvey watches the sun rise over the East River, counting down the hours, the minutes, the moments before Jessica arrives. Before he remembers that he’s not supposed to be here right now, technically. Legally.

She’s always been too generous with him.

The clamor of associates filtering in begins to leak in through his office doors, the beginning of another day; a new day, a new start. A new chance to fix old mistakes.

Harvey watches the sun rise.

“You’re still here.”

He sure is.

Donna stands behind him a ways, maybe sensing his desire for solitude, his vain efforts to pretend that all things are as they always have been, that nothing is new under the sun. Then again, maybe she just doesn’t want to get too close, doesn’t want to risk infection. That’s okay; he understands.

“My last day as an Esquire?” he asks rhetorically, rocking back on his heels. “I figured I’d make the most of it.”

She hums softly, taking a delicate step forward.

“Just because I’ll be working for Louis from now on doesn’t mean I’m not always here for you first.”

He smiles a wry sort of smile. She’s so predictable; he should find it comforting, in this mess of everything that’s happening all at once. He should appreciate it, and her loyalty.

“Not sure what you’re going to be able to do for me,” he says. “I’m not even sure what I’m going to do next.”

She laughs softly, taking another step forward.

“You’ll land on your feet,” she assures him. “You always do.”

We’ll see.

He makes a terse noise in the back of his throat. “So Louis is putting you to work already?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

For once, it doesn’t seem worth the trouble to draw away when she laces her fingers with his, and she doesn’t waste any time in gripping his hand tight.

The sun sits in the sky atop Brooklyn, and Harvey tries to remember what they were all thinking back then.

Get busy living, and get busy dying.

That’s goddamn right.

---

One month.

For one whole month, plus a few days, Mike has been hunting—calling, emailing, applying, biking, walking, scouring the city for a job, for anyone willing to take a goddamn chance on him. To give him so much as a second glance.

Have you ever been convicted of a crime?

Hurling his messenger bag onto the sofa, Mike drops heavily beside it and tips his head back, looking up toward the ceiling and narrowing his eyes until spots begin to dance before them.

Have you ever been convicted of a felony?

Mike closes his eyes and pushes his hands into his hair. The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results; Einstein said that, or something like it, and yeah, the guy was really onto something.

Then Mike’s phone rings, and he snatches it up enthusiastically as he wonders if maybe one of his dozens—or is it hundreds?—of job applications has actually borne fruit, only to read Rachel’s name on the display and begin to set it back down.

But what if it’s important?

Mike thumbs the “Accept” button.

“Hey.”

“Mike,” she says. He wonders if it’s his imagination that she sounds so cheerful; maybe he’s overcorrecting after all those sad-eyed rejections. “I’m really sorry, I know we were going to go to the Indian place tonight, but Jessica and I are finishing up the paperwork on the Leonard Bailey case and I think it’s gonna be a late night.”

They were going to go where?

“I’m sorry,” she says again, “but…I still can’t believe it, Mike, he’s going to be a free man! After all this time, he’s going to get to go home to his daughter, he’s going to get to live his life the way he wants to, and I just— I’m really sorry, I can’t go home until this is done.”

He’ll be able to live his life the way he wants to? Sure, if you say so.

Mike wrinkles his nose and pinches his temples between his fingers and decides not to mention that he completely forgot about dinner.

“I get it,” he assures her. “It’s fine.”

“I really am sorry.”

He presses his lips together. “It’s fine.”

She hums softly, and he lets himself relax into the conversation’s lull.

This isn’t so bad.

“So,” she chirps suddenly as his eyes snap open, “how did the job hunt go today?”

Son of a bitch.

He scowls and reminds himself that she’s just trying to be nice.

“About the same as yesterday,” he says, doing his best to mimic her enthusiasm even though the same as yesterday means the same as the day before that, and the day before that, and last week, and the week before, and every single fucking time he’s been turned away and away and away.

She makes a pitying “oh” noise. “What about that place in Brooklyn, weren’t they the ones reaching out to you in the first place?”

He rolls his eyes dramatically. “Yeah, I guess their recruiter jumped the gun a little on that one.”

“Oh, Mike…”

Oh, Mike.

“No,” he cuts her off. “It’s fine. So do you have any idea what time you’re gonna be getting home?”

“Why don’t you ask Harvey for help?”

Did you even hear me at all?

His lips pinch for a moment. No, no, she’s trying her best. It’s not her fault he’s roaming the streets collecting rejections like a damn masochist while she’s tucked away in her nice little office in her nice little corporate law firm with her nice little case that’s working out just so nice and perfectly for everyone.

“Not sure that’s the best idea right now,” he ventures as it occurs to him that the news of Harvey’s disbarment might not have made it past the upper echelons of PSL.

“Why not?” she presses. “I mean, he owes you one, I think this is the least he can do.”

Pressing his fist down on top of his thigh, Mike stiffens his spine, narrowing his glare at the wall.

“He what?”

Rachel coughs a disbelieving laugh. “You went to prison for him, Mike, the least he can do is give you a job.”

The least he can do.

The least he can do.

Mike grits his teeth. “I think he’s done more than enough.”

“Look, Mike,” she says dismally, “I know he got you out early, but you weren’t here while everything was going on, you didn’t see how desperate he was to save himself, and how many times he tried to use you to do it. You might not think he owes you, but I know he does.”

To save himself? She doesn’t know the half of it, but Mike bites his tongue. It’s not his secret, not his to tell.

Much as it is his fault.

“It’s late, I’m not gonna call him tonight,” he dodges. “Maybe tomorrow.”

She hums cynically. “I know he’s your friend, but just…don’t let him take advantage of you like this, okay?”

Mike bites his tongue.

“Yeah, okay,” he says. “Tomorrow. Good luck with your case, I’ll see you when you get home.”

“Mm, I love you.”

“You too.”

He sits in silence, his phone still pressed to his ear as she ends the call, dismissing him to get back to work. Back to her job. Back to her passion project, the guiding light that carried her through his time in lockup. He doesn’t have any right to bear her ill will over it; it’s good that she has this thing in her life, it’s good that she’s so invested. It’s good that she’s got something to be so excited about.

It’s good.

Suddenly, without putting too much thought into it, he clenches his fist around his phone and lunges to his feet, sweeping his arm across the coffee table and knocking two stacks of books and some weird silver branch sculpture thing to the floor with a whoosh and a soft thump. Staring at the mess through his narrowed eyes, he realizes quite abstractly that Rachel won’t appreciate coming home to such a thing, and if, or rather when she asks what happened, he’ll have to have something to tell her.

Picking up one of the books, he drops it back on the table with a dull thud.

It’s a good start.

Mike grabs his messenger bag by the shoulder strap and trudges into the bedroom.

It’ll be easier to figure everything out tomorrow.

---

“Did I tell you that Louis has a new girlfriend?”

Harvey tips his head in an apathetic nod and picks at his filet mignon as Donna grins, gesturing with her fork.

“Tara Messer,” she confides. “She’s an architect, he hired her to remodel the firm, and then he started making up all these crazy reasons to keep her around. He’s really gone off the deep end, I’m actually kind of embarrassed for him.”

“Mm.”

Donna drops her arms, her fork clattering against her plate as she sighs wearily. “Harvey,” she urges, “what’s wrong? I haven’t spoken to you all week and we’re out to this nice lunch and I’m giving you a perfect opportunity to make fun of Louis and his terrible love life, and you’re giving me nothing. And don’t tell me nothing’s wrong,” she preempts him, even though he wasn’t planning on it, “because I can tell something’s bothering you, so how about we just cut to the chase and you tell me what it is?”

Harvey makes an effort to smirk with just the corner of his mouth.

“I was talking to Mike the other day,” he admits, pushing the meat around on his plate.

Donna shakes her head blankly. “I don’t get it, that sounds like a good thing.”

“Yeah,” Harvey says. “It was. Until he started telling me about all the job hunting he’s doing, all the places he’s applying and getting turned away. Seems no one wants to hire a convicted felon as their in-house counsel.”

“Hm,” Donna murmurs, her eyes going soft as she rests her chin on the back of her hand, picking her fork back up to dangle between her fingers.

Harvey takes a sip of water.

“So what’s he going to do next?”

Harvey drinks for a bit longer before he sets his glass down.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “No one at the firm can go to bat for him without implicating themselves, and he’s hit up damn near every firm in the city. I think he’s talked to just about everyone in the tri-state, none of them will give him the time of day; the only place that didn’t throw him out on his ass was this little clinic on the East Side, offered him twenty-K to supervise their first-year associates.”

“Well, that’s—”

“He’s better than that!” Harvey barrels on in a fleeting moment of ardor. “Not just the money, but he’s… He’s better than a babysitter to a bunch of amateurs.”

Donna purses her lips and tilts her head along the track of the slender bones in her hand.

“So help him find an alternative.”

Harvey frowns. “What alternative? You want him to start his own clinic, run his own firm? Get his license by magic?”

“Well what he’s doing now obviously isn’t working,” she dismisses, “so try something else! That’s his specialty, isn’t it? Thinking outside of the box?”

“There is no outside the box on this one,” he says morosely.

She shakes her head and waves her hand, tossing his objections away. “Nope,” she declares, “you’re not giving up this easily. Not the great Harvey Specter, not when it comes to helping out a friend in need.”

A friend. Is that all he is now, after everything? No more than a casual acquaintance?

“I don’t have any favors to call in,” he reminds her. “I used up most of my IOUs to get him out of prison, all my good standing is—gone, I can’t hire him myself, I— I’m out of options. I’m up against a wall that I can’t break down.”

Narrowing her eyes, Donna nods slowly for a moment until she reaches out and raps him upside the head. Harvey flinches back, his arms jerking up defensively in a motion far more dramatic than the situation calls for, and she rolls her eyes.

“Harvey Specter never runs out of options,” she rebukes him. “You can’t break the wall down, find a way around it. You’ll come up with something.”

He scowls a little petulantly, glowering down at his steak as she shrugs and tucks back into her butternut squash bucatini.

“It’ll be fine. But let me tell you about this architect of Louis’s.”

Harvey sticks his fork into the field greens bunched up beside his steak.

Yeah, okay.

---

Walking along the narrow sidewalk of East Thirty-seventh, which is really intended to be more of an emergency diversion than an actual path, considering the fact that it’s right beside an interstate, Mike hikes his bag up on his shoulder and contemplates throwing himself into traffic. Not that he has any particularly suicidal impulses or anything; just to see what would happen. How many cars would swerve out of the way, whether any of the drivers would call the police. A social experiment.

He looks both ways and crosses the street.

Rachel might be home by now, but then again, she might not; it’s only about six thirty, and since the Leonard Bailey case finally wrapped, she hasn’t had any major projects keeping her up nights, but she’s a hard worker, playing politics, gunning for status, trying to establish herself and stuff. It might be nice to see her, might be nice to sit down to a meal together, but truth be told, he wouldn’t mind going a whole night without her badgering him about another days’ worth of no job offers, for once.

He inserts his key into the lock with a shred of optimism; it sticks when he tries to turn it.

It was a nice idea, while it lasted.

In the living room, Rachel sits on the sofa with a glass of red wine in her hand, her cell phone held limp at her side as though she’s just stopped paying attention to it. Mike musters a weary smile and drags himself to the chair on the opposite side of the coffee table, dropping down into it and pondering what he’d like to eat for dinner.

“So,” she says, yanking him out of his reverie. “How’d it go?”

Again, and again, and again. Mike shrugs.

“I’m starting to think this might be a lost cause,” he says carefully as Rachel’s gaze sharpens.

“Meaning what exactly?”

He tries, for a moment, to decide if this is a better or worse reaction than whatever he was expecting.

“I mean I’ve applied at just about every law firm around,” he hedges. “The only places that don’t turn me away for my criminal record are the ones that turn me away because they’re one guy trying to start his own practice who can’t afford to hire a temp, forget about an associate.”

Rachel swirls her wine glass. “So what are you saying?”

Mike looks off to the side. “I was talking to Harvey the other day,” he admits. “And I started thinking, maybe I should start looking for some kind of other work. Work that doesn’t… Work, you know, work that doesn’t have anything to do with the law.”

She arches her eyebrows sardonically, and he wonders if she saw this one coming.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” he deliberates, “maybe… Maybe I’ll be a teacher. You know, because I can’t… I can’t do, so I might as well…teach.”

Rachel glares unenthusiastically, and he tries not to roll his eyes.

“It’s not like there aren’t other jobs in the world,” he presses. “Other jobs where you don’t need licenses, or degrees, or I mean I might as well go find a job in a mailroom somewhere, start over from the ground up.”

“So you’re gonna be a teacher?”

Mike sighs.

“You think it’s a bad idea.”

“Not if that’s what you really want,” she says idly, leaning forward to set her glass on the coffee table. “I just thought the law was your passion. Isn’t that why you’ve been putting so much effort into finding a job at a firm somewhere? Even though you don’t have your license?”

“I’m just trying to come up with options,” Mike says, trying not to grind his teeth. “I would love to get back into law, obviously, but it’s pretty clear that that’s not going to happen anytime soon, so maybe it’s time to start thinking about alternatives.”

Wringing her wrist, Rachel purses her lips with a soft hum, and for a moment, Mike can’t stand to be in the same room with her.

“If that’s really what you want to do,” she says, “I’m sure you’d make a great teacher.”

“Okay, thanks,” Mike snipes, pushing himself out of the chair and storming off to the kitchen.

Maybe there are some leftovers in the refrigerator.

---

Harvey rocks back on his heels, squinting against the glare as he looks up the glossy façade of the Citigroup Center and slips his hands into his coat pockets. It ought to feel stranger, being here now; maybe his emotional well has been drained by the whole disbarment thing, but whatever the case, this is just another building, just another city block. Just another place he can visit from time to time, another place he doesn’t quite belong.

A crowd of men in fine suits bustles out the front doors, parting ways as they near the stairs and Donna swans through their ranks, her heels clicking along the pavement as she smiles at him.

“Thanks for meeting me.”

He smiles indifferently. “You sounded like you needed someone to talk to.”

“Funny you should mention that, actually,” she says, laying her hand on his arm and guiding him down to the sidewalk. “Because what I want to talk about, is you.”

Harvey nods, his vision going a little out of focus. They’ve been dancing around this conversation for awhile now, though he isn’t entirely sure of the direction she intends to take it.

“Harvey,” she begins. “Remember when I told you to help Mike find an alternative? Since his hunt for a job that has, oh, anything to do with the legal system doesn’t seem to be working out?”

Harvey starts to agree, but she isn’t really paying attention.

“Well what I didn’t say was that you should spend your entire existence doing it,” she presses. “You can’t just sit around waiting for your disbarment to end and the firm to take you back, Harvey, because it’s not going to happen, especially now that Jessica’s moving to Chicago!”

She’s what?

No, that’s a matter for another place, another time. He’ll call Jessica later and get the word directly from her.

“You need to find a new career,” Donna carries on, “a new goal, a new—a new passion. And Harvey, I’ll help you however I can,” she tightens her grip on his arm and turns to him with her wide eyes, “you know that I’m always here for you, but you don’t know how much it hurts me to see you…adrift like this.”

“I’m not adrift,” he defends weakly. “I owe a lot to Mike, it’s the least I can do to see if I can help him get back on his feet.”

Donna sighs melancholically and stops walking, halting him in his tracks without much effort. “You’ve done everything you can for him, but even you can’t erase the past,” she points out, unnecessarily direct and unwittingly cruel. “I love you, Harvey, I just want what’s best for you, and I think that right now, that means giving yourself permission to focus on helping you.”

A new passion. Harvey chuckles under his breath; how to explain, how to make her see that his passion is the law? The only thing he’s ever really wanted, the kindness thrust upon him that he spent so much time taking for granted, taking advantage of as though it was the one true constant in the universe? Sure, baseball careers, major league dreams are derailed by injuries all the time, that wasn’t surprising in the least, but the law, the thing he’s given himself to body and soul for so long that everything else has become an afterthought, of secondary importance, that was supposed to be something permanent, something he could count on. Something he could control.

And now, this.

Perhaps somewhat detached from his body, dissociated from himself, Harvey allows Donna to grasp his hand, to pull it toward herself with a beseeching look in her wide eyes, and she only wants the best for him, she only wants him to do what’s right. He smiles at her, feeling the shift in the air as she smiles back, and wonders where they go from here.

Somewhere new.

---

Mike does his very best to keep a smile on his face until the last door’s closed behind him, the last fond farewell and best wishes sent his way, before he shoves his earbuds into his ears and cranks up his most aggressive rock music as his entire demeanor collapses. “I don’t think much of your education,” yeah, well, who gives a shit, Mister Acting Vice Principal of PS Whatever, I didn’t really want to work here, anyway.

His phone rings exactly on cue, and Mike wonders where the cameras are, and how Rachel has time to watch him all day long while she’s so busy at her amazing job.

“How’d it go?” she greets the moment he picks up.

“Awesome,” he retorts. “So awesome. They hired me on the spot.”

“Oh, wow,” Rachel marvels. “Congratulations. You might wanna be careful about—”

“Rachel, I’m kidding,” he cuts her off. “Somehow it took two hours of interviewing for them to get to the part about not hiring people who never graduated college.”

Rachel tsks sympathetically. “I’m sorry, Mike,” she croons. “But hey, maybe you want to give the law another shot, hm?”

She didn’t just. He couldn’t have heard that right.

Or did she?

“Another shot?” he mimics.

“Well,” she says with forced coolness, “I mean, how many years did you have to waste at that bike company before you found Harvey? You have to stick with it, but it’ll work out eventually.”

“Waste?” he seethes. “Rachel, I was trying to keep my grandmother in nursing care, and put food on my table, I didn’t— I didn’t have the luxury of just calling up one of the numbers in my dad’s little black book and and, and charming my way into an interview!”

She falls silent, and he knows it was a cruel thing to say, he knows that isn’t how it happened, but nothing matters anymore, he won’t go to the trouble of sparing her feelings after such a callous dismissal of everything he suffered through before Harvey, before her, before all of this.

“Mike,” she says in a brittle voice, carefully measured and barely restrained. “I know you didn’t mean that.”

He didn’t.

But so what if he did?

“Didn’t mean what,” he grinds out, “didn’t mean that it was hard? That you’re not the only one who had a tough childhood, oh, no, Rachel, I’m so sorry you decided you needed to make a name for yourself out from under your father’s shadow, I’m so sorry you didn’t get into Harvard on your first try, I’m so sorry your boyfriend ran out on your dream wedding because he had to go to prison.”

“Oh my god, Mike,” she blurts out, just quickly enough that he’s sure she didn’t hear at least half of what he said, or more. “I know your family was poor, okay, I don’t care, that doesn’t matter to me!”

And what, exactly, the fuck does that have to do with anything?

“Mike?”

Mike holds the phone away from his face and stares down at Rachel’s name on the screen, the “Work” tag displayed below it in a somewhat smaller font.

“Mike, are you there?”

He can’t decide whether to hurl the phone into the river or stomp it underfoot, although the former means he won’t have the satisfaction of seeing it destroyed and the latter probably requires hardier shoes than the ones he’s wearing.

“Mike?”

“Yeah,” he says numbly. “Okay.”

“Mike, what happened?”

Who knows.

“Bad connection.”

She sighs. “Look, Mike—”

“I’ll be home later.”

She makes a funny whimpering noise, and he wonders if he’s supposed to take it for an apology. “When?”

Who fucking knows.

“When I’m done.”

She sighs again. “Okay. Good luck.”

He says “Thanks” at about the same time that he ends the call; it’s impossible to be sure whether she heard him before the line went dead, whether she thinks he hung up on her or fell victim to that bad connection again.

Tucking his shoulders up against the wind, he lopes across the street to Riverside Park and makes for the path along the Hudson.

Maybe if he’s lucky, someone will push him in.

---

“How about something with music?”

Harvey glances up from his position on Donna’s couch, the New York Times held limply in his hands as he scans the National section and contemplates flipping to Sports, for all the difference it’ll make. Donna stands in her kitchen doorway, her brow arched goadingly and her torso tilted forward just enough to be noticeable, not quite enough to really show off her breasts.

“I don’t know the first thing about music law,” he dismisses as Donna slinks closer and curls up beside him.

“I didn’t mean music law,” she says, “I meant getting into the music industry. Finding a new passion, remember, following a road you never had the chance to walk down before. You love music; why not take the opportunity to follow in your father’s footsteps?”

Harvey chuckles to himself; there’s a hell of a difference between have a healthy appreciation for music and knowing the first thing about playing the sax.

“I don’t think so,” he murmurs, forcing himself to stick with the news.

“Come on,” she goads, “maybe it’s not playing an instrument, maybe it’s managing a young star, maybe it’s being a mentor? Hm?”

Yeah, because that worked out so well the first time. Harvey can’t decide whether to burst out laughing or start to cry, or maybe scream into the night; ultimately, it’s none of the above, which doesn’t feel particularly satisfying, but at least won’t have Donna asking him any questions.

“I’m guessing you already have someone in mind.”

She grins. “Daisy Jones. She’s a sixteen year old digital influencer with more than fifty million followers, and she wants to take a shot at being a pop star.”

A pop star. A sixteen year old wannabe pop star, already being followed around by fifty million wide-eyed ingenues who’re probably just as eager to see her become a musical icon as she is, just as eager to be able to say “I knew her when.” “I knew who she was before she was somebody,” something like that.

Hi. Uh, Rick Sorkin.

Harvey folds the paper and sets it down on the coffee table.

“You’ve already got this all planned out, huh?”

Donna smiles, rubbing her hand up and down his arm.

“I’m just trying to look out for you.”

Harvey presses his lips together and nods slowly. So this is what’s left for him now, huh? This is what he gets to do with his freedom. This is the world he’s going to be enmeshing himself in.

“You’ve gotten in touch with her?”

Donna winks. “I told you, I’m looking out for you.”

She would, wouldn’t she.

Harvey smiles indifferently.

So here’s this.

---

It’s been three days now, since Mike was last home.

One night wandering Central Park and another camping out in the youth hostel at a hundred and third and Amsterdam, though, are just about enough to persuade him back to his nice, warm bed inside his nice, warm apartment, with his nice, pointless life. He should probably say it’s Rachel who tempts him back, but that’s a thin and vacant lie, and there’s no need for it.

At least this time, Mike can be the one lazing about on the sofa, swirling a glass of red when his lover walks through the door.

He would’ve been, too, if Rachel wasn’t already settled there with a nervous look on her face.

“Mike.”

Here we go.

“It was a bike messenger company,” he says flatly as she pushes herself up off the cushions.

“What?”

He shrugs. “You called it a bike company. It wasn’t, it was a courier service.”

She nods, and he knows she doesn’t quite know what he’s talking about. She might not even care, might not even think it matters anymore. Does it? Maybe not. That’s not really important, though, is it?

“Mike, I just want what’s best for you,” she recites, having scripted and rehearsed her speech with every intention of delivering it the moment she saw him again. “I want you to do something that lets you live up to your potential, I want to help you be the amazing person I know you are.”

He wonders if she sounds this wooden in the courtroom. Figures it would be in his best interest not to point it out.

“If you really don’t want to do legal work anymore, I can’t pretend to understand it, but I will support you, because I love you, and I want you to be happy.”

Did she download this off the Internet, or what? Is there a self-help book he’s never seen lying around here somewhere, did she run down to Barnes and Noble to pick one up while he was gone?

“Thanks,” he says, because it’s more or less what she’s aiming for. “I just…needed some time to think.”

She nods eagerly, and he offers a weak smile.

“Did you figure it out?”

“What?”

She steps closer, holding her hands up to her chest as though holding herself back from reaching out for him, and he steps sideways, toward the bedroom.

“What you needed to think about.”

And what was that, exactly?

Mike shrugs and scratches his hip.

“Not really.”

She hums softly, turning as though to follow him as he diverts back to the kitchen.

“I’m sure you’ll get it eventually.”

Are you?

So that makes one of us.

---

“Mister Specter, it’s so lovely to meet you.”

Harvey takes Missus Jones’ proffered handshake firmly. “Pleasure’s mine,” he says with a sunny grin.

“Yes,” she says flippantly, “Donna speaks very highly of you.”

That’s nice. Baseless, given his complete lack of experience, but…nice.

“As I’m sure you know, my daughter is looking to parlay her talents into the music industry,” she goes on, and Harvey’s smile tightens at her blatant misuse of the word. “As such, we believe that I will no longer be able to handle the managerial duties of her career on my own, which is where you come in.”

“Of course,” Harvey agrees. “So Daisy, Donna tells me you want to get into pop music.”

“I’m going to become an idol,” she corrects. “It’s more than just the music.”

The derision in her voice turns his stomach, but Harvey’s dealt with pretentious shits before and he knows how to handle himself. This is just a job, it’ll be fine. It is fine.

“Alright,” he says to the girl’s mother, “so why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for from me.”

Missus Jones folds her expertly manicured nails in front of her face, and he wonders which Disney movie she thinks she’s starring in.

“You will be my assistant manager,” she drawls, as though Harvey is a remarkably stupid person with whom she’s interacting as part of some kind of charity project she’d rather not have people find out she’s affiliated with.

“You want me to be in charge of her finances?” he asks, wondering if he can pass the job off to Louis before it occurs to him that that’s no longer an option. “Manage her bookings?”

“Bookings?” Daisy mimics contemptuously. “My platform is the Internet, Mister Specter, and while I realize that might seem like some newfangled magic box to someone like you, let me assure you that my audience is massive, and will watch whatever I put out, whenever and wherever I choose to do it.”

Harvey glances at her mother for some small act of control, some mild rebuke of Daisy’s bratty behavior, but Missus Jones only looks at him in anticipation, seeking his approval of her daughter’s poise and professionalism in such a cutthroat field.

“Look,” he says hesitantly, “I’m sure Donna told you that my background is in corporate law; if I’m going to take this job, I really think I’d be better utilized doing some actual business management, so if you could just tell me what it is exactly—”

“You’d be managing my image,” Daisy sneers. “I live a very public life, Mister Specter, and it’s better for my brand if my videos aren’t bombarded with negative comments, and what’s best for my brand is best for me, which is what’s best for you. My sponsors have already advised me that if I can bring up the likes-to-comments ratio on my next Instagram of the latest Kardashian perfume, they’ll raise their investments by ten percent, and comment curation is a vital part of that process.”

Harvey’s entire self feels like it’s being slowly deflated.

“People are going to pay you,” he elaborates, “for posting a picture, on the Internet, of something that people buy because of the way it smells.”

“And reviewing it.” Daisy leans back, tossing her long brown hair over her shoulder. “It’s all about endorsements.”

Harvey looks to Missus Jones again, but she seems, if anything, legitimately proud of her insane daughter, in no mood to field any questions about what the hell is going on here.

But it’s not like he can just…not ask.

“And what about the music?”

Missus Jones curls her lip as Daisy rolls her eyes.

“Are you even listening?” Daisy rebukes him. “My audience will follow me anywhere. I’ll ask them to write songs for me, I’ll post recordings on my channel, and they will eat. It. Up. And then when I get a musical following, I’ll just do a collaboration with Taylor Swift or something, the songs will write themselves.”

She waves her hand contemptuously, and Harvey feels the precise moment that his soul leaves his body.

“So you want me to watch all these videos,” he tries to understand, “and…delete negative comments.”

“Not all of them,” Missus Jones puts in. “She has to maintain a small amount of controversy or it’ll seem suspicious.”

“Plus then people will defend me,” Daisy adds, “and that’ll give me ammo against the haters.”

The haters?

Harvey sighs. So this is what happens to disbarred attorneys; he’s always sort of wondered.

“You want to hire me as a media watchdog,” he sums up to Missus Jones’ sage nod.

“I’m so glad you’re understanding the situation.” Reaching down into a briefcase on the floor beside her, she retrieves a stack of papers that looks like nothing so much as a contract and slides it across the table to him. “Here are our terms, plus of course the NDA, the confidentiality clause, the longevity agreement, and delegation of creative control.”

Electing not to point out that an NDA and a confidentiality clause amount to exactly the same thing, Harvey pulls the contract toward himself and breezes through the unnecessarily complex legalese. He recognizes the template from LegalContracts.com, but the Joneses have made a number of stupid additions full of long words used seemingly for no other reason than to make the thing even more incomprehensible.

The word “music” isn’t even mentioned until page twelve.

“Sign here,” Missus Jones says as Daisy looks on smugly, “and initial here, here, sign here, initial here—”

“This needs to be signed before a notary,” Harvey interrupts, scanning the last page.

Daisy scowls. “Why, it’s just between the two of us.”

“You added the notary agreement,” Harvey says, turning the contract toward her and pointing to the blank box marked for stamping. “I’m not sure why, but it’s in here, so unless we sign this in front of a notary, it’s not legally binding. And no self-respecting notary public would stamp a document that arrived on their desk already signed,” he adds when Missus Jones opens her mouth again, “so unless you’ve got one waiting in the car, we’re done here.”

“You’re a lawyer,” Missus Jones snipes, “surely you must have a notary on call, or some friend we can visit.”

Reaching reflexively into his pocket, Harvey closes his hand around his cell phone as he tries to decide which of his notary public contacts is most likely to be available at the moment, balanced against which of them he can ask for this stupid favor without humiliating himself to death.

Wait a second.

Is this really the hill he wants to die on?

“I’m sorry, Missus Jones,” he says, pressing his hands to the tabletop and standing. “Daisy. I believe I’ve misled you in regards to my interests in this case.”

Missus Jones glares furiously and Daisy raises her hand to her open mouth in a gesture surely mimicked from some soap opera he has no intention of ever viewing, but Harvey only smiles as a sense of lightness begins to fill his chest.

“I’ll sue you for breach of contract,” Daisy challenges, and Harvey can’t help laughing.

“What contract?” he asks archly. “Look, ma’am, if your daughter wants to become a singer, I suggest you get her a vocal coach, and if she wants to be famous for being famous, maybe she should get in touch with whoever’s perfume she wants to start hocking, but unless you need a recommendation for a good attorney, I don’t think we have anything to discuss.”

Missus Jones tries to shove the contract back at him, and Daisy begins to sputter incoherently, but Harvey contents himself to nod a somewhat derisive farewell and turn to walk out the door with his head held high and a small spring in his step.

The elevator of this generic executive building arrives almost at once, and Harvey boards it cheerfully, pressing the starred button for the lobby and inspecting his smiling reflection in the highly polished button panel.

The great Harvey Specter. It’s been awhile since he turned down a job for being too far beneath him; it’s been awhile since he was offered any jobs beneath him.

Awhile since it’s been worth his time to consider them.

Harvey steps out into the lobby of the generic executive building and nods to the bored security guard stationed inside the front doors.

And then…

---

Life is beginning to get to that repetitive point wherein Mike can no longer tell one day apart from another.

Rather, he can tell when one day ends and another begins, but the day of the week, the difference between morning noon and night, weekdays and weekends… Meaningless. It’s not bad, exactly, just…mildly inconvenient.

Although in his defense, he’s only tried to job hunt on a Saturday once, and it only took him three minutes of trying to buzz his way into a locked building to figure out what the problem was.

Harvey would laugh if he knew.

Then again, he might’ve stopped Mike before he left the house.

Not that it matters. Today, Mike notes as he pulls his phone out of his pocket, is Tuesday, which doesn’t mean much of anything.

Just as he’s about to slip the phone back into his pocket, setting his bike helmet on his head and reaching up to clasp it beneath his chin, the call screen blackens as his ringtone chimes and Rachel’s name appears. “Work.” She must be on her lunch break.

Accept.

“Hi,” he says cheerfully.

“Hi,” she parrots. “How’s it been going today?”

“Same old, same old,” he reports, propping his foot against the heavy support beam in front of nine-oh-nine Third Avenue, leaning away from the glass doors, the massive windows. “Keeping at it.”

“Aw, Mike,” she murmurs. “I’m sorry. But I mean this was a charter school, right, aren’t they usually pretty picky? Don’t you need a teaching degree?”

“Kind of,” he dismisses. “This one was a long shot anyway, it’s fine.”

She hums softly. “Okay. Where are you headed next?”

“I was gonna go see Father Walker,” he lies, “see if he knows anyone who’s looking, or who might be willing to give me a shot.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” she approves. “Good luck, I’ll see you when I get home.”

Because of course she’ll be home late. He bites his tongue and sniffs.

“Thanks,” he says, hanging up without waiting to exchange goodbyes, or admit to any falsehoods.

Keeping his eyes on the rainy pavement, Mike walks desolately away from the doors of Dietrich and Walsh as he checks it off his mental list of city law firms that he knows are too good for him anyway.

Charter school, yeah, right. What a stupid thing to lie about.

But they’re at their best when they’re not being too honest.

---

It’s either a blessing or a curse, or a bit of both, that Donna is utterly faithful to her classic eight-hour workday. On the one hand, they don’t have to have this conversation until six; on the other, Harvey gets all day to dread the predictability of it.

Sure enough, at five fifty-eight exactly, Donna storms right into his apartment, practically lunging toward him with her fists clenched at her sides and her face pulled taut; she’s a general picture of furious discontent, and he has no trouble playing the tranquil stillness to her impetuous rage.

“You walked out on them?” she fumes, narrowing her eyes.

Harvey smiles blandly. “Wine?”

“No, Harvey,” she snaps, reeling back and crossing her arms tightly, “I don’t want any wine, I want to know what the hell you were thinking telling them they were beneath you!”

Is that what that woman decided to go with? He laughs softly. “I didn’t say that,” he corrects. “I said someone like her looking to get into music should be reaching out to a vocal coach, instead of an attorney.”

Donna presses her hands to her eyes and parts her glossy rose-colored lips to sigh wearily. “Harvey,” she says as though it pains her, “you’re not a lawyer anymore. That is the whole point of things like this.”

What’s the old adage? You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink? Can’t teach an old dog new tricks? One of those. Harvey steps past her to the decanter of scotch behind his living room set and pours himself a highball.

“It wasn’t a good match.”

Lowering her hands, Donna sighs, throwing her shoulders back and stepping toward him. “Harvey, I know you loved your job,” she soothes as the hair on the back of his neck stands up, “but you have to accept that it’s time for something new.”

Harvey closes his eyes as he sips his scotch.

“Harvey,” she tries again, “what was the problem, was it that you weren’t in charge? I thought you’d like being a manager, I thought you’d like having that sort of control, but if you want to be the head of something, why not be your own boss?”

He coughs a laugh over the liquor sliding down his throat. “You want me to start my own company? Doing what, exactly?”

“No,” she rejects disdainfully, “I mean work on a project. Write a book, write a screenplay, do something creative. Make your own world, your own reality.”

What, like the one where I still have my license? He shakes his head with a droll smile; that probably didn’t even occur to her, trying to push him in the opposite direction of the entirety of the rest of his life.

“I’m not a writer,” he points out, and she smiles.

“You’ve written tons of stuff,” she says. “You can write a brief in your sleep, you’ve written hundreds of depositions and contracts and memos and all kinds of things! Harvey.” She places her hand on his arm, pressing her fingertips into the fabric of his shirt and the muscle beneath, and he looks down at it when she shakes him eagerly. “You could write about your time at the firm, you could write your story. Your meteoric rise from the mailroom to senior partnership.”

He takes another drink, and she draws her hand back.

“I think it’s a little early to be writing a memoir.”

“So don’t make it a book,” she invents, “make it—make it a television show! Harvey, you could write a pilot for a television show all about your time at Pearson Specter!”

“Pearson Specter Litt,” he corrects reflexively.

“But don’t you get it, you could call it whatever you want.” She reaches her other hand toward his shoulder and steps closer still. “You could tell your story, your side. Make sure everyone knows what really happened.”

Lowering his gaze to the drink in his hand, he swirls the glass idly. It’s not the worst idea in the world.

“I still have some contacts from my acting days,” she tempts him. “If you write the script, I could get you in the door at some major networks.”

A script about his life. His time at the firm. His improbable rise from minimum-wage mail clerk to spit-polished associate to top-of-the-hill senior partner. His ludicrous decision to hire a poor kid on the run from the cops as his personal associate.

The best decision he’s ever made.

Harvey smiles, and Donna’s grin widens.

“What do you think?”

He downs the last of his scotch and sets the glass down beside the decanter. “What the hell.”

That’s the way it goes these days.

---

Sunday morning, Mike wakes at seven o’clock exactly and slips out of bed to get a jump start on the paper.

Closer to nine, Mike’s nearly finished the crossword when Rachel emerges from the bedroom, stretching her arms elegantly over her head as her thin cotton bathrobe gathers around her shoulders, and Mike reminds himself not to resent her for anything.

Eye on the ball.

“G’morning,” she yawns, shuffling toward the coffeepot to pour herself a cup. “What’s the plan for today?”

“Nothing,” he says proudly. “Absolutely nothing. I’m going to watch TV, or go for a walk in the park, or do whatever the hell I feel like.”

“Mm.” Raising the coffee to her mouth, she furrows her brow and steps forward to lean against the counter. “You sure?”

Mike folds the paper and sets it down on the coffee table. “One hundred percent. I’ve been going nonstop pretty much since I got home and I think I deserve a break.”

Rachel casts her eyes down demurely, and Mike leans forward over his lap.

“What.”

“Nothing,” she defends at once. “It’s just that between you being out every day, and me working such long hours, I feel like I haven’t gotten to spend any time with you, and I was thinking we could…do something today. You know,” she shrugs, “together.”

Mike frowns. Admittedly, Rachel’s hours are long, but Mike is usually home by six, isn’t he, and he knows for a fact that at least some of her late nights are by choice rather than necessity. They’ve even been out to dinner a couple of times, and if she wanted a night in or something, there’s been ample opportunity; hell, she could’ve suggested this last weekend, she could’ve warned him that this was coming.

“I was really looking forward to having today off,” he says. “You know, no…no schedule. No structure.”

“We don’t have to be structured,” she says, shaking her head imploringly. “It’s just that we haven’t seen in each other in awhile, I was hoping we could spend time together. We don’t have to go on a guided museum tour,” she promises, making her way to the sofa and leaning against the armrest beside him. “I just want to be with you.”

Quietly grinding his teeth, Mike tries to think of a kind way to explain that the idea of spending the day with her fills him with dread.

“It’s not you,” he starts clumsily. “It’s not that I don’t want to be with you, it’s just that I haven’t had any time to myself in a really, really long time, and it’s starting to feel a little…claustrophobic.”

She frowns, setting her coffee cup down on the table beside his newspaper and standing up with her chest puffed out, her hands resting low on her hips.

“Are you avoiding me?”

Mike sighs. “I just said it’s not you,” he repeats, “but I’ve been job hunting basically every minute of every day since I got out of Danbury, and when I was there, I was— It— Look,” he tries again, “I just need some time to myself, okay, is that okay with you?”

“Danbury?” she snaps, and of all the places he expected this conversation to go, that one hadn’t even made the list. “You’ve been out of Danbury for months, you don’t get to start using that as an excuse now.”

“An excuse?” he repeats disbelievingly, shoving himself up to his feet. “Rachel, we haven’t— I haven’t told you anything about what happened there, you don’t know anything about what I went through! You don’t get to tell me how I’m allowed to recover from that!”

“You’ve been fine!” she shouts, pushing her face aggressively toward his. “You’ve been living your life perfectly normally until now, until I want to do something, and now all of a sudden you have post-traumatic stress disorder, well, that’s pretty convenient, isn’t it?”

“Post—” Taking a step back, he nearly falls over the coffee table, flailing his arm to keep himself upright as he stares down at her in disbelief. “What the fuck are you talking about? I need some time to myself, so I must have PTSD?”

“I think you’ve been avoiding me for months,” she retorts. “I think something’s going on and you don’t want to talk to me about it.”

It’s not a particularly fantastical leap that takes him back to Rachel’s bitter resentment of him for dating Jenny, to her admission of kissing Logan Sanders, to her sour guilt in trying to hide it. And now, after everything their relationship has suffered, every trial they’ve endured, every weight they’ve managed to cast off, she really thinks he’s being unfaithful. She really thinks he’s trying to hide something from her and she really thinks she has the right to be angry over it. Over her own goddamn imagination.

“You know what,” he mutters, waving his hand aimlessly and turning toward the door, “I’m out of here, okay, I’ll see you later.”

“Mike!”

“No,” he raises his voice just above a normal speaking level, “no, I’m going for a walk or something, I need to be alone.”

“Mike—”

The slamming of the door blocks out the end of her plea, her demand, whatever she’s trying to say, to beg, to swear. Mike stabs the elevator button and rolls down the sleeves of his blue plaid button-font as he wonders where, exactly, the fuck he’s supposed to go now.

This is just exactly what he wanted.

This is not exactly how he imagined getting it.

---

“Thanks for your time.”

Harvey doesn’t bother putting too much energy into his smile as he walks out the door; he’s learned his lesson by now. It doesn’t make a difference.

The script feels heavy in his hand. It ought to; it’s eighty-five pages of history. Eighty-five pages of his life, laid out in black and white. Courier Final Draft, because Donna insists that’s the font the pros use, even though it makes it look like it was written on a typewriter; one-point-five spaced paragraphs separated by double spaced lines, because Donna insists that’s how a real script is laid out, even though doing the whole thing uniform would make it look a lot less cut-and-paste; left-aligned content, because Donna insists justified is only for published books and graduate theses, even though the cleanness would’ve been nice, he thinks.

He did everything right, in other words. By the book. He’s doing everything right, every goddamn thing, and yet.

“Does this remind anyone else of The Good Wife?”

“It’s kind of like that show, not Psych, the other one; The Mentalist, it’s like The Mentalist.”

“You know what this makes me think of, Boston Legal. Or L.A. Law, anyone else thinking of L.A. Law?”

Harvey scoffs quietly. It’s almost enough to make the five hours he spent rehearing his pitch to the bathroom mirror last night seem like a waste of time.

Where’s your silver tongue now, huh?

Shaking his head, Harvey fishes his cell out of his pocket.

“Harvey?” Donna answers at once, somehow still with baited breath even after their last litany of rejections. “How did it go?”

He sighs. “You know how it went.”

“Harvey, I’m sorry,” she consoles. “But you’ve got a meeting tomorrow with the guys from TNT at ten; it’s all about attitude, you just have to stick with it.”

Awesome.

“I’ll be there,” he promises. “But I’m gonna be home late tonight, maybe you wanna stay at your place.”

“Are you sure?”

Without a doubt.

“I think so.” Looking left and right, he marches across the street to his Bentley, parked just at the edge of a No Parking zone, and slides into the front seat. “I’ll call you after the meeting tomorrow.”

“Alright,” she acquiesces with obvious reluctance. “Good luck.”

“Bye.”

Harvey tosses the phone and the script to the passenger seat beside him. It’s almost five o’clock; too late for lunch, too early for dinner. Too early to camp out at a bar and pretend he has somewhere to be after a quick pick-me-up.

Sticking his key into the ignition, Harvey revs the motor, pulling out onto the road. Come to think of it, he actually isn’t too far from PSL; he could stop by and say hi to Jessica, and Louis, and avoid Donna in person instead of just hanging up on her on the phone.

Well, it was a thought.

Gunning it down Fifty-second, Harvey pulls over in front of the Pool Lounge and buttons his suit jacket as he walks in the front doors. This’ll either remind him that he’s still too rich to be worried about looking for work, or it’ll emphasize what a has-been he’s become, but either way, Donna won’t be able to find him, and the change of pace will be absolutely delightful.

How long is too long to nurse a jalapeño tequila?

Maybe he’ll try for some kind of record.

-

Storming past the doorman, out the front doors onto Thirty-seventh, Mike allows himself a few seconds to fume and drive his nails into his palms as he clenches his fists, narrowing his eyes and glaring at everything and nothing. This is the last straw, the last fucking straw; it was one thing when Rachel snubbed his feeble efforts to look for work outside the practice of law, and another when she complained that he wasn’t making time for her, and quite another when she accused him of cheating on her, but to claim that their relationship isn’t a priority for him, that he doesn’t care enough about her to put any effort into working out their problems…

There’s only so much of this shit a guy can take.

Taking a deep breath, trying to clear the red haze from his vision, Mike stalks to the bike rack and unlocks his steed, pedaling up Third and weaving in and out of traffic until he settles into the bus lane. Where the hell’s he even going? Who knows; if he keeps on, he’ll pass Grand Central, and he could buy a train ticket to Pennsylvania, or Boston, put as much distance as possible between the two of them and figure things out in the morning. A little ways beyond that is Saint Bartholomew’s, if he feels like making penance, or Blackstone Group, if he feels like pitching his résumé to another company that’ll never hire him in a million years.

Ten minutes later, he pulls onto Fifty-second, and glances over his shoulder to the left. The Pool Lounge, huh?

A pretentious bar way out of his price range. Sounds about right.

Fastening his bike to a No Parking sign outside the front door, Mike unbuckles his helmet and walks in like he belongs.

The dim lights make it seem later than it is, and Mike immediately feels scandalous and daring. It’s not really, though; late, that is. It’s only about five, maybe five thirty; there might be an event next door in the main dining room, or some early patrons trying to grab a quick dinner, but the lounge, having just opened, is unsurprisingly unpopulated.

Except that tucked away at one of the alcove tables against the wall, at a setting meant for six, a single gentleman sits with his back to the door, a pale yellowish drink set in front of him as he picks at a small plate of cucumber slices and Mike tries to figure out why he seems so familiar.

Then he turns his head to look despondently at the vacant room, and Mike doesn’t know whether to laugh or scream or cry.

“Come here often?”

Harvey glances up with a shallow smile, sliding his chair in a few inches even though there’s already more than enough room for another guest.

“Too often, apparently.”

Smiling over a clumsy laugh, Mike pulls out the chair across from Harvey’s and sits without being asked.

“Hey.”

Harvey nods and moves his chair back out.

“So how’re things shaping up for the next Rebecca Black?” Mike asks, wrapping his hand around Harvey’s cocktail and tipping the glass from side to side.

Scoffing, Harvey lowers his gaze to Mike’s fiddling. “Hell if I know.”

“Things didn’t work out?”

Harvey shrugs indifferently. “Irreconcilable differences of opinion.”

Mike smirks. “Didn’t take long.”

Harvey chuckles softly. “No it did not.”

It’s a meaningless exchange, a gentle reintroduction to one another; a soft reminder that things aren’t quite exactly the way the used to be. The way they’re supposed to be.

All the ways they aren’t.

“How about you,” Harvey interrupts Mike’s quiet reverie, “anyone invite you onboard for next semester?”

Mike mimics Harvey’s lethargic shrug and releases his glass. “It was a good idea, but it’s not working out as well as I thought.”

“Parents not taking too kindly to your rap sheet?” Harvey asks sympathetically, and Mike’s mouth quirks in a little grin.

“They probably wouldn’t,” he admits, “but it hasn’t even gotten that far. There’s no way I’d get hired anywhere more prestigious than some underfunded public school in the outer boroughs, and when was the last time you heard about some kid’s life being changed forever by a second-rate English teacher who’s only there to kill time until he figures out what the hell to do with the rest of his life?”

Harvey nods his gradual acquiescence, and Mike shakes his head.

“I made it through three interviews before I went back to the law firms. And that went about as well the second time around as it did the first, so.” Pointing at the ceiling, he draws his finger in a tight circle. “Here we are.”

Nodding again, Harvey takes a sip of his cocktail, and Mike rights his posture and clears his throat.

“Anyway,” he brushes off the entirety of his meaningless endeavors in one fell swoop, “what’re you doing if you aren’t managing this kid? Getting into consulting?”

“Ha, ha,” Harvey mocks. “No; Donna actually got me to write a script. A, a pilot, for a TV show based on my time at the firm. From mailroom to board room.”

Picking up a menu, Mike begins to peruse the drinks section. “Please tell me that’s just the working title.”

Harvey snorts. “Dick. It’s called ‘A Legal Mind.’”

Seemingly on something of a whim, he reaches into his briefcase and unearths a stack of heavy paper bound with brass brads, and it looks like this is a real thing they’re really doing, trying to create this television show.

A real thing Harvey’s really doing, Mike corrects himself sternly. They live separate lives now, nothing in common but a little bit of shared history.

“Sixth draft?” Mike inquires, peering across the table at the stamp in the lower right corner of the script’s title page.

Harvey pushes it toward him. “Donna thought it would be more impressive if it looked like I’d been working on it for awhile.”

A real thing Harvey and Donna are really doing.

It’s nice that they’re in it together.

Mike opens the script and begins to skim.

INT. STATE OF THE ART MAILROOM – AFTERNOON

“Wow,” he murmurs, flipping through the pages. “You’re really going back to the beginning, huh?”

“Don’t worry,” Harvey assures him. “You’ll show up eventually.”

“Yeah, that was definitely my biggest concern.” Mike closes the script and hands it back. “It’s good; so what are you going to do, sell it to ABC?”

“I have a meeting at USA next week.”

Mike narrows his eyes and leans forward. “You don’t sound very excited.”

Harvey smiles wryly. “It’s kind of hard to keep morale up after the tenth executive in a row tells you there’s nothing original about your life story.”

Nothing original about being a child of infidelity, a child of divorce; nothing original about being in the right place at the right time, getting lucky and delivering the right incriminating evidence to the right person; nothing original about letting the glory get to your head as you rise through the ranks, your humanity ebbing away piece by piece as you do your damnedest to forget every bit of fortitude you forged to get you where you are, every brick you had to build into that wall around you, around your heart and soul, until some dumbass kid crashes into your life and turns it upside down and inside out.

Or maybe Mike should stop giving himself so much credit.

But still.

“Well I think it’s great,” he proclaims, smacking his hand down on the papers still sitting between them. “Shows a lot of promise, I like where you’re going with it.”

Harvey levels him with a disaffected glare. “You lived where I’m going with it.”

“So I know what I’m talking about when I say it’s gonna be good!”

Harvey’s mouth stretches in a brittle smile, and Mike falls back into his chair and works to keep his own laughing grin at least modestly in place. It’s gonna be good. It’s gonna be great. He can change all the little things, twist all the little details, right all the stupid wrongs. Save everyone who needed saving, everyone who slipped through the cracks. Well, for drama’s sake, probably not everyone, but. Maybe just a few.

“Excuse me,” Mike calls out to a wandering waiter, “can I get a mango cocktail?”

The waiter nods, Harvey snickers into his hand, and Mike puts on an affronted expression.

“Yeah, and what’s that, Bacardi?”

Harvey fondles his glass in Mike’s direction.

“Tequila and sherry.”

“Oh, it is on, old man.”

Harvey smirks.

“Take your best shot.”

-

“It’s not like it’s anyone’s fault we’re like this!” Mike wails, smacking his hand down on the table, heaving himself up and falling into the chair beside Harvey. “It’s just that I’m looking for work, and she’s always at work, and when she’s at school she’s at work, and I don’t have a job, and it’s a very stressful situation!”

“Very stressful situation,” Harvey repeats, nodding and taking a sip of his pistachio gin.

“But I can’t fucking stand it!” Mike vigorously swirls his cardamom rum, glaring at the place setting at the unoccupied chair across from him. “She bitches and bitches and bitches at me and it’s not my fault no one wants to hire me, I’m doing the best I can, but there’s nothing she can do about it except complain, so that’s all she does, and then she comes home, and I comes— I come home, and all we do is fight, and I want to get out of there, Harvey, how do I get out of there?”

This is what happens to storybook romances. This is what happens to people who are supposed to be together forever, this is what happens when the world thinks people have found true love. Killing themselves to cling to a lie, stringing everyone else along until they start to believe it too, and then it’s far too late to leave until the pot boils over and everyone just ends up getting hurt. Hurt and dead.

Harvey presses his hand down on top of Mike’s and looks firmly into his eyes.

“You’ll do the right thing.”

Of course he will. That’s what he does.

“We suck together,” Mike says thoughtfully. “We’re okay when we’re fine, but you know how I went to prison?” Harvey starts to nod, but Mike ignores him and presses on: “I got out of prison, and now my life is…totally different, and she’s all pissed at me, and, dude, dude—we suck.”

“You don’t suck,” Harvey argues, but Mike shakes his head violently.

“We do suck!” he cries. “We were fine until I lost my job, but now she’s working and I’m not working and I hate my life and she’s so mad at me, all the time, and we suck.”

Harvey nods sagely. It’s hard to argue with that logic.

Also, he doesn’t really want to.

“I miss you,” Mike mourns, sliding his hand out from under Harvey’s to move it closer to him. “I’m sorry I don’t call as often as I should. I’m sorry I didn’t know about your TV show. I’m sorry I’m not living up to my potential.”

Well, that’s hardly Mike’s fault. If anything, if anyone’s, it’s Harvey’s; Harvey’s fault for not making it to the courtroom fast enough, for not heading Mike off on his way to Gibbs’ office, for not convincing him to take the deal. To not take the deal. Who can remember, and what does it matter, in the end?

It’s Harvey’s fault, is the important part.

“You do you,” Harvey says, which is something he heard one of the younger associates say one time, making a few of the others laugh in the nice way that means they thought it was funny and not the mean way that means they thought she was stupid and out of touch. Mike drops his head into his free hand and sighs heavily, his back rising and falling with his loud exhale.

“But everything I do is wrong,” Mike murmurs, sounding so close to tears that Harvey nearly starts crying right alongside him. He won’t, though, because who would that be helping? One of them needs to be strong, and it might as well be him.

Might as well.

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” Mike realizes suddenly, picking his head up and looking at Harvey as though he’s a marvel for merely existing. “I’m supposed to be in jail, or dead, or in jail, and I’m not, and it’s because of you.”

Harvey wants to take credit. Harvey would love to take credit. Harvey deserves to take credit.

But Mike is the one who challenged Harvey to hire him, and Mike is the one who worked his ass off learning how to do everything no one had any right to expect of him, and Mike is the one who refused to give Harvey up every single time he should have, and Mike is the one who sent himself to prison to save them, to save him, and Mike has always been the one fighting, and fighting, and risking everything, and Mike deserves to take a rest. He’s earned it, and he should know, and Harvey should tell him, even though he doesn’t know how.

“I don’t regret a single minute,” he says firmly, even though he’s said it before and Mike should know by now and it isn’t nearly enough.

Mike stares at him as though for the first time, and for an instant, they’re back at the Chilton, back in Room 2005, back at the beginning of everything right and wrong in their lives. Every moment they would never change, even if they could, even though they probably should.

“You’re amazing,” Mike breathes, and Harvey knows what’s about to happen, knows it as Mike grabs his shoulders and pulls him forward, pulls him into a kiss full of lime and chartreuse and vanilla and holds him, and holds him, and doesn’t let him go.

Because he knows better, because he tries to be good, and kind, because Mike is special, Harvey lets him kiss him, lets him breathe into his mouth, lets them fall together as he threads his arms up through Mike’s embrace and strokes his hands up over the back of his head, into his soft hair. Because he knows how this ends, because he tries to do the right thing, because Mike is suffering and he won’t admit it, Harvey wraps him up in a hug and cradles him close, and he presses Mike’s face into his shoulder and feels the wet spot on his shirt when he begins to cry, even though he’s clutching Harvey so tight that his shoulders aren’t shaking, and his back isn’t trembling, and he’s hiding it as best he can because he can’t ask any more of Harvey than he’s already been given.

He could, though.

He could, and Harvey would give it.

And he won’t, and Harvey will try anyway.

---

Lying on the queen-sized bed in his pay-as-you-go single in this bargain-basement Hilton DoubleTree, Mike holds his phone up over his face and scrolls through his inbox as though the numbers will change if he wishes really, really hard. The only place that’s sent him so much as a follow-up is that shitty East Side clinic, begging him, again, to accept their offer of a fifty-hour work week at just over minimum wage, or at least come back in and talk about it because we really think this could be a great partnership, Mister Ross, you sound like an excellent addition to our cause.

Awesome.

Mike drops his arms at his sides and kicks his legs out spread eagle, taking up as much space as possible just for the hell of it.

He could go back to the apartment. It’s his, technically; his and Rachel’s names are both on the contract, but he was the one who bought it, his grandmother was the one who was meant to live there, he’s the one who was bringing in the big paychecks before…before…

Mike sighs.

What’s the point, exactly? Of any of this? No one wants him, no one will take him, and every refusal just makes him angrier and angrier, and what for? He’s angry at everything, all the time, every circumstance, every decision, every bad idea that lead him here, to this point, this day, this place and time in the universe where nothing is going right. Rachel might not have supported his decision to look for work outside of the law—she didn’t, really, no matter what she said, and she was right anyway, not that he’ll admit as much to her face. But that’s not even the point, the point is that now he’s on his own, begging for a job, please, please, I just need to feel needed, I need to feel valued, I need to feel like more than a chess piece on the board of life. Or a token on the board of Life, if he doesn’t feel like mixing metaphors.

Mike sighs.

He could go back to her. He could; he could go back home, and knock on the door, and cast his eyes down and mumble that he made a mistake, that he loves her and misses her and wants to try again; she could say she loves him too, and she understands, and they could do it all over, the same way they always do. They could promise that it’ll be different this time, that now they understand, that they know why it happened the way it did and they won’t let it be that way again, and they could keep going and going until it does, because it always does, and it always will, and they should just stop pretending already, shouldn’t they? Should they?

Yeah. Yeah, this game has been going on long enough.

So what now?

He’ll keep going, is what happens now. He starts at the bottom and builds himself back up. He figures out how to do things different, how to do things right, how to get back to where he wants to be. Back to where he knows he belongs, back to where he’s been before, on a stronger foundation made of bricks and mortar instead of dirt and dust.

Mike scrolls through his inbox for new messages.

This time will be different.

---

“So, Mister Specter.”

Harvey smiles amicably as Jimmy you-don’t-need-to-know-my-last-name arches his eyebrows. He’s an old hand by now, having delivered the same exact speech to far too many other executives and one head of production who owed Donna a favor that she probably regrets cashing in over this.

“What’ve you got for me?”

“I’ve got a network prime-time hour-long drama,” Harvey recites, trying to strike a fine balance between arrogance and enthusiasm, “about a lawyer—”

“Lemme stop you right there,” Jimmy interrupts. “I know the legal drama format. I’ve seen Law and Order. I’ve seen The Practice. Tell me what’s different about you. You looking to replace Franklin and Bash or what, how do I know you’re not throwing me a Reckless reboot?”

Trying not to stumble over the offhand list of his spiritual predecessors, Harvey casts about for the script shoved into his briefcase and holds it up as he tries to think of his feet. The old game isn’t going to work anymore, not this time, but he can come up with something new, can’t he? It’s a curve ball in the courtroom, a surprise witness, and he’s handled dozens of these. Hundreds. This is nothing, this is a walk in the park.

“So this mailroom clerk,” he says, flipping the script open and pointing to the words Jimmy is too far away to read, “this kid, he finds a legal discrepancy in one of the associates’ paperwork, he reports it to a senior partner, and she sends him to Harvard Law.”

Jimmy nods slowly, tenting his fingers in front of his face.

“So what is this, The Miraculous Adventures of the Out-of-His-League Law Student?”

Harvey smirks. “No, see, that’s just the prologue; beginning of Act One, fresh out of law school, that senior partner, Katherine, she gets the kid a job at the DA’s, and he’s working for this corrupt district attorney—”

“So it’s the corruption of the naïve youth.”

“No,” Harvey says, his voice becoming touches more manic with every word, “no, he doesn’t know the guy’s corrupt until he’s been there for a couple years, but then after he finds out, he goes back to work for Katherine and he climbs the ranks, he puts in his hours, he kicks ass and takes names, and then finally he gets promoted to Senior Partner and she makes him hire his own associate, and then—”

“Wait,” Jimmy cuts him off. “Is the show about the DA’s office, or this Katherine lady’s firm?”

Harvey pauses, his mind filling in the gaps in the question that Jimmy doesn’t even know he’s asking:

Is this the story of Harvey Specter, or is this the story of Harvey and Mike?

Jimmy leans back in his chair. “Well?”

“It—it’s both,” Harvey fumbles. “It’s not really about the office, it’s—about this kid, all the…stuff he goes through, all his history coming back to bite him in the ass, and the…the people, you know, the people he meets along the way.”

“Hm.” Jimmy drops his elbows down on his armrests. “Well, I can see where you’re coming from, Mister Specter, but—”

“But it really starts when he’s hiring his associate,” Harvey blurts out before he has to hear another “No,” before he has to listen to another sympathetic lecture about how hard he obviously worked but how badly he’s obviously failed, how close he got to that brass ring but how many inches meters miles out of reach it’s still hanging. “Because the kid he hires doesn’t even have a law degree.”

There we go.

Drumming his fingers rapidly against the armrest, Jimmy furrows his brow and screws his face up indecisively.

“Alright, Harvey,” he finally says, leaning forward and extending his hand, “lemme see what you’ve got.”

Harvey does his best to keep his eyes from widening to an absurd degree as he hands over the manuscript.

“The uh—the kid,” he blurts out as Jimmy tries to take it from him, “the kid shows up on page, uh, page…eighty-three.”

Jimmy glances up from the script and Harvey winces when he immediately flips to the end.

It’s somehow the longest minute and a half of Harvey’s entire life, and he wonders when he started to give a shit about this stupid show.

“I’ll tell you what, Harvey, it’s not a bad premise,” Jimmy drawls when he’s finished, thumbing numbly through the rest of the pages. “But so tell me more about this Max guy.”

Harvey balks.

“The associate,” he says.

Jimmy nods slowly. “I know.”

“He’s…a fraud.”

“I got that,” Jimmy deadpans. “I want to know what’s so special about him that he gets all these stage directions for a guy who only has about two lines.”

Harvey frowns. He doesn’t have any more than anyone else, does he? Well, okay, maybe a few, but—it’s just that Mike has a certain way of moving, and something in his tone of voice, when they first met, was instrumental in persuading Harvey to hire him, and if the actor, whoever he is, whoever he ends up being, doesn’t get it exactly right, the audience might not understand why Harvey would’ve taken such a colossal risk, would’ve done such a stupid thing, and it’s really the beginning of everything, so.

“He’s…an important part of the story.”

Jimmy looks back down at the script.

“You realize this is…extremely specific,” he says. “Directors usually try to have a little more faith in their actors.”

“It’s just—” How to explain this accurately, how to convey the message without sounding completely insane? Harvey makes to grab the script back, but Jimmy holds it out of reach and doesn’t seem to notice.

“He has to move so that the briefcase falls open,” Harvey says, “it has to be completely accidental, and then he has to— He doesn’t look…freaked out, because he isn’t there for the job, he doesn’t care, this guy already knows he’s running from the cops, and then the way he says his name—his fake name, and the way he shakes his hand, it’s…”

Casting about for some prop he can use to demonstrate, some tool that might show just exactly what he’s trying so poorly to say, Harvey impulsively rubs his hand against his thigh and reaches it out for Jimmy to shake, except that’s not quite the right blend of timid and self-assured, not quite the right devil-may-care mix of “fuck this” and “why the fuck not,” but maybe this time, maybe this way—

“Alright, Mister Specter,” Jimmy warns, standing and holding both his arms firmly against his sides, “I think we’re done here.”

“No, but—”

“Mister Specter.”

Jimmy glares at him, holding out the script, and Harvey can’t do this, he can’t get it, it isn’t right, it isn’t close, and Jimmy knows it, Jimmy can see right through him, anyone would, everyone can, this is stupid, this is so stupid.

Stepping forward, Harvey makes sure to keep his spine straight and his chest held high, straightening the hem of his jacket and putting the script into his briefcase.

“Thank you for your time,” he says.

Jimmy nods slowly, and now it’s time to go, out the door and down the hall.

When Harvey gets home, he’ll throw it into the fireplace.

---

There’s plenty of work out there for a guy willing to look for it. Plenty to be done by somebody willing to roll up his sleeves and get down in the trenches, to look under every rock and behind every curtain, to go where no man has ever thought to go before. It’s a world of opportunities out there, an endless barrage of chances, doors waiting to be opened and prospects waiting to be made real.

Mike hitches his bag up on his shoulder and turns down Eighth.

Yeah, sure. That’s what they all say.

There’s a very narrow window of opportunity that very lucky people get to stick their hands through at just the right time and grab onto just the right people on the other side. There’s a very specific skill set the world is looking for, and if you don’t have exactly the right pedigree to back it up, good luck ever getting by in this town. Bury yourself in the mire and the muck and pay your dues long past their expiration date until someone in the high tower takes pity on you and sets you on his shoulders until you get yourself thrown off.

That’s what they ought to say.

Mike sighs.

This isn’t something he can blame on anyone but himself. Maybe Anita Gibbs, but really, they were always barreling down the road in exactly this direction; if it hadn’t been her, it would’ve been someone else, and there’s not much point in pretending otherwise.

Mike looks down at his watch. It’s nearly nine o’clock; law offices are long since closed to new visitors, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s been days since he sent out any applications; longer since he heard back from anyone. He should probably just go back to the hotel and order room service, or maybe he’ll pick up some instant ramen on his way there.

He’d do it, too, if not for the lurid neon and big glass windows of Smith’s Bar drawing his eye, and what a lucky break this is.

Mike steps inside and drops his bag on the nearest barstool.

“Fancy meeting you here.”

Harvey smirks into his scotch.

“You stalking me or something?”

Mike laughs under his breath and ignores the fact that they haven’t seen each other in nearly two weeks.

“So is this a celebratory drink or a self-pity thing?”

Harvey looks at him askance, and Mike rests his arms on the bar and shrugs.

“Someone pick up the pilot?”

Harvey closes his eyes a moment. “It’s been about…five days since I burned the last copy.”

Mike nods sagely and pretends he saw this coming.

“Genius is never appreciated in its time.”

Harvey snorts an inelegant laugh. “I should’ve brought you into those meetings.”

Raising his hand to flag the bartender, Mike settles back onto his stool and kicks his feet up against the base of the bar. “Donna didn’t sell it?”

“Donna wasn’t there.” Harvey takes another sip of scotch and coughs as he tries to swallow and talk at the same time. “Not that that stopped her from weighing in after the fact; she told me, quote, ‘You’re Harvey Specter, you’re better than this.’”

Mike shakes his head. “What, did she think you were half-assing the pitch?”

“I was.” Swirling the last dregs of his drink, Harvey taps his fingertips against the rim. “Right up until the end. I practiced for hours, I gave the same exact speech a dozen times in a row to a dozen different suits, but I don’t think I really cared. Well.” He smiles darkly to himself, dropping his gaze to the bar. “Maybe at the end there.”

Nodding, Mike signals for a bottle of Lager. “Lemme guess, you went off script.”

“No shit.”

Side-eying Mike’s prodding glare, Harvey smirks and pushes his glass aside. “I got a little carried away with one of the scenes,” he hedges, “and while I was on my way home, I thought about what’d just happened and I realized, you know what, I’m not actually interested in this project. I don’t want to dedicate my life to some television show, I don’t want this to become—me, it’s just this scene, this one scene, it needed to be absolutely perfect, you know why?”

The moment Jessica told him he was going to Harvard. The moment he got his JD. The moment he passed the bar. The moment he met Donna. The moment he found out about Cameron’s dirty tricks. The moment he quit the DA’s. The moment Jessica hired him back. The moment his life turned a corner, diverged in a yellow wood.

One of hundreds.

Mike shakes his head and takes a swig of beer, and Harvey smiles a crooked smile at the countertop.

“Because it was when I decided to hire you.”

Mike sets his beer down on a coaster and picks at the label with his thumbnail.

Of all the roads less travelled.

“You know,” he confesses, “I’ve always admired you.”

A trio of young professionals giggle and stumble over each other through the front door, and Harvey wraps his hands around his glass and smiles at the corner of his mouth. “For saving you from yourself?”

Well, that.

“No, seriously,” Mike says, “I mean, sure, you’re the best goddamn thing that’s ever happened to me, you made my dreams come true and you gave me the family I always wanted, but I was talking about—you know, all of it. You came from a pretty dark place, and you got past it and you really made something of yourself, and you fought hard to get to where you are.”

Harvey glances around pointedly. “Day drinking and unemployed?”

“First of all, it’s like nine PM.” Mike nudges his shoulder as Harvey grins. “But no, I meant someone who’s not afraid to go after what he wants, who’ll fight like hell for what’s important to him, who won’t let something like—like being disbarred stop him from figuring out a way to get back to the job he wants in the field he loves.”

“Easy as that,” Harvey quips.

“No one’s saying that.” Mike slides the beer and its coaster toward himself and twists it so the label faces the back of the bar. “But you’ll get there.”

Harvey nods slowly, and Mike slings his arm brazenly over his shoulders.

“You’re Harvey goddamn Specter.”

Harvey laughs.

---

The nights are the hardest.

Generally speaking. The days aren’t so great, either, but at least while he’s loafing around during the sunlit hours, there’s still time for things to come up, for opportunities to arise and so on. There’s no hiding at night; he wasted the day and now he has to sit with it, sit in his cavernous condominium, sipping his outrageously expensive scotch whiskey and mulling over his greatest mistakes. Sit with the knowledge that he’s wasted the past twelve, twenty-four, forty-eight hours, that the alcohol is burning away less and less of the residue seeped into his skin and if he doesn’t find a solution soon, then…

What.

Harvey holds his glass up to the light.

Then nothing.

What’s he even doing with himself? Trying to manage a musician, trying to pitch a television show, trying to drink his troubles away as though it’ll change a goddamn thing. Pretending this is what he wants, this is anything close to what he wants; pretending he’ll be happy taking the easy way out, accepting his disbarment and fading into the dark.

No. This has gone on long enough.

Time to fight like hell.

Groping around on the coffee table for his cell, Harvey sets his scotch down and emphatically stabs the speed dial. The answer doesn’t take long; it never really does, though, does it?

“Harvey,” Donna mumbles, “do you have any idea what time it is?”

As though this wasn’t the norm for both of them, back in the day.

“Almost eleven,” he answers sharply. “Donna, I can’t do this anymore.”

She pauses, and it doesn’t even cross his mind to repeat himself.

“Harvey,” she says then, remarkably clearer this time. “What are you saying?”

Whatever you think I’m saying, you’re probably pretty close.

“This whole…television thing,” he says, “the music, the art scene, the—trying to move away from law and the corporate world. I can’t do it. I don’t want to.”

“You can’t go back to law,” she challenges. “You tried, you gave it your best shot, but there’s no outside the box on this one, Harvey; can’t you see that I’m just trying to protect you? I’m trying to help you move on, I’m trying to help you forget about a life you can’t go back to.”

Leaning back in his chair, he smiles to himself. It’s sweet, in a way. How she tries to look out for his best interests, how she tries to make sure he’s taking care of himself. Stupid, the way she’s going about it, but…kind.

He won’t laugh; she doesn’t deserve that.

“I’ve just gotta figure out how to break the goddamn wall down.”

She sighs.

“What do you think you can do?”

Funny you should mention that.

Harvey casts his eyes down, toying with the hem of his jacket. “I’m gonna be a consultant.”

“Harvey.”

“I’ll open my own firm,” he carries on, “or I’ll be a contract employee, or I’ll move, I’ll work in-house at some firm that’s never heard of me. I’m gonna make this happen, Donna, I’m going to get there somehow.”

“Harvey…”

No.

No, we’re not doing this. Not again.

“Look.” He pauses just long enough for her to cut in without seeming terribly rude, but she doesn’t take the opening, so he sucks in a sharp breath and steadies his hands: “Either support me, or don’t, but this is the way it’s gonna be, and I’m not changing my mind.”

Donna waits.

He knows why.

This is the way they always go, isn’t it? Harvey makes a decision, or takes some action, or doesn’t, and Donna sidles up to remind him that he knows what he did was wrong, and he sees the error of his ways and does everything he can to capitulate. To change course, to fit her narrative. To prove her supremacy, his utter dependence on her, her value in this chaotic world.

Not this time.

“I can’t.”

Donna sighs.

“Harvey, I’m worried about you.”

And while you’re doing that, maybe you could trust me to stand on my own two feet for once, huh? How about it? How does that sit with you?

“Thank you,” he says, because her intentions are good. “But trust me, this is going to work out,” he says, because it has to.

She hums low in her throat, and he thinks about hanging up on her.

That wouldn’t be very fair, would it.

---

“So what’s so important that you needed to schedule a meeting with me on purpose?”

Mike smirks and takes his seat across the table. “I didn’t want to leave this one up to fate.”

Harvey smiles wide. “Alright,” he prompts, spreading his hands, “lay it on me.”

Resting his arms on the menu before him, Mike wonders what, exactly, he thought would be easy about this, and why he didn’t bother to prepare a little better. Or a lot better.

It’s a bit late for that.

“I’m thinking about moving,” he says stiffly, lowering his gaze to Harvey’s hands as they fall back to the tabletop. “Maybe to a small town in Iowa where nobody’s ever heard of Harvey Specter, Jessica Pearson, or anybody else.”

Harvey furrows his brow as though the words ring a bell, but he can’t quite place them. “Why would you…”

The instant the memory clicks, the heartbreak on his face very nearly takes Mike apart.

“Mike.”

Mike smiles a fragile smile, trying desperately to hold onto the resolve he felt so strongly just a moment ago.

“I figured you should know. After everything you’ve done for me.”

Harvey leans back in his chair. “Mike, you can’t.”

He knew this fight was coming. He knew it was coming, and it’s here, and he can hold up against it. He can.

“You said it yourself,” he reminds them both, “it’s the only way. I’ll go to law school, I’ll get my degree, I’ll pass the bar in another state, I’ll start over with a clean slate. Everything’s gonna work out.”

“I want you to stay,” Harvey says, and Mike doesn’t know what to make of the fact that he’s pretty sure he isn’t imagining the desperation sticking his words in the back of his throat.

“Harvey,” he placates as gently as he can, “you know I can’t.”

“But what if you could?”

Images suddenly begin to cycle unbidden through Mike’s mind of Harvey begging him not to take Gibbs’s deal, to give him a little more time to find something, anything, any way out of their mess, to please just trust him that everything was going to be okay as he confessed to poisoning Mike’s food, to kidnapping him out of prison just for a few hours, because it might make all the difference in the world.

Harvey saving Trevor. Harvey paying for Mike’s Rookie Dinner.

Harvey giving Mike his old office.

It’s the big things, and the little ones, too.

Mike smiles softly.

“What’re you gonna do,” he taunts, brushing off the nostalgia, “blackmail the chair of the Character and Fitness Committee?”

Except that Harvey looks deadly serious, and he didn’t plan to say whatever he’s about to when Mike first called him up, but he’s certainly going to say it now.

“I don’t need to,” he says. “I want you to work with me.”

“Harvey, I’m always gonna be on your team—”

“No,” Harvey interrupts, “I want you to go into business with me. I want us to work together.”

Mike rubs the underside of his jaw uncomfortably. “I mean, that’d be great, but I can’t ask you to leave New York.”

Sighing through his gritted teeth, Harvey clutches the sides of his chair and tilts forward until his chest is pressed to the edge of the table. “Shut up a second,” he advises. “I’m opening a consulting firm, and I want you to be my partner.”

Don’t worry about going back to prison, Harvey promised him. You’ll be acting as a lawyer, Harvey claimed, just under a different moniker.

There’s no wall high enough that Harvey Specter can’t climb it. No wall so strong that he can’t break it down.

“So,” Mike can’t resist teasing, “you want me to be a consultant? Haven’t we been over this once or twice?”

Harvey scowls, and Mike shakes his head. “No, Harvey, I… I’d love to work with you again, but I’ve applied to every law firm in the city, they all know who I am and what happened, they all know what I did. There’s no way any of them would accept consulting services from me. Or anyone I worked with, I can’t do that to you again.”

He sees the fire sparking in Harvey’s eyes as his mind races for a workaround, some clever scheme to slip through the cracks in the system and still get everything he wants; the moment the light brightens when he finds it, and the dawn of a new day suddenly doesn’t seem so sinister anymore.

“Internal investigations,” he says. “You and me. Come on,” he presses when Mike’s lips twist uncertainly, “it makes sense.”

“We can hunt down any auditable offense because we’ve committed them all?” Mike asks dryly, and Harvey offers a smug sort of grin.

“You’ve gotta admit there’s some poetry there.”

Mike rolls his eyes, even though, in a weirdly fucked-up way, there kind of is.

It’s all very “them.”

“So I guess we’d be equitable partners,” Mike posits, “seeing as how we’ve got about three seconds of auditing experience between us.”

“Something like that,” Harvey agrees. “But we’d be doing what you always wanted, we’d be going after the big guys who’re trying to take advantage of the little guys; we’d be stopping them in their tracks, we’d be fighting the good fight. Tell you what,” he goes on before Mike can continue to theorize, or begin to object; “how about you take a day to think it over, and get back to me when you’ve made up your mind.”

Whatever you decide, let’s be sure we’re sure.

What’s there to think about, really? Oh, plenty; he doesn’t want to get involved in a project that’s so unformed, he’s afraid of rolling the dice without a fallback, he’s anxious about starting his life from the ground up all over again.

Except that none of that’s true, is it?

Looking at him imploringly, Harvey does an admirable job of hiding his quiet desperation, his subtle covetousness, and Mike very nearly gives in right then and there.

Harvey is the best thing that’s ever happened to him, and he doesn’t regret a single minute. Not even the ones they probably should.

Today, he recalls, is Tuesday, which is a pretty good day to present someone with a major life decision when they haven’t got much else to do with their time.

“How about this,” Mike says, “if I wake up tomorrow and find out this wasn’t just a massive drug-induced fantasy, I’ll give you a call and we’ll see where we go from there.”

Harvey grins that genuinely happy grin of his, the one that makes his eyes crease at the corners and his teeth show like he’s fighting to keep from laughing, and Mike smiles back and tries not to look too besotted.

On the whole, he doesn’t try very hard; wherever it is they’re going, they’ll get there soon enough.

They’ve been on this road a long time.