Chapter Text
Mike moves into Harvey’s place in a quiet sort of way.
There aren’t any boxes to unpack, or schedules to coordinate, or piles of things to keep and things to donate to the VA. No need to commission the freight elevator to bring up any heavy furniture, no need to beg and bribe friends and family into sacrificing their time and emptying their gas tanks from point A to point B.
Harvey mentions a couple of times that he thinks he got everything from Rachel that Mike would think was important, but he isn’t sure, and if something’s missing, Mike just needs to ask, and he’ll get it, no problem.
It’s a nice of him. The offer, it’s kind. Well-intentioned.
The lobby, the elevator, the front door are all so familiar that Mike doesn’t even think twice, and he doesn’t remember his way around the apartment, exactly, but he knows he’s been here before, and he can probably figure it out without a lot of effort. Maybe if Harvey just reminds him which way’s the bathroom, what’s down that hall there. The guest room has its own en suite, right? Which door is that again?
Harvey smiles like he isn’t sure he’s allowed, offering Mike free run of the refrigerator, pointing to the couch and telling him that he can watch whatever he wants on TV, or maybe he wants to borrow a book, or he can just get settled into his room, maybe take a nap.
Having considered all his options, Mike lines his feet up with the slats of the wooden floor and shuffles into the living room; he sits down on the black leather couch, and he picks up one of the heavy black and white patterned pillows, holding it over his stomach. In a minute, after he’s gotten settled, gotten used to the feel of the slick cushions underneath him, the overstuffing at his back, Mike tucks his legs up beside him and tips over, nestling his head against the base of the armrest as he stares off into space.
This is good.
---
A little after midnight, well after Mike has gone off to bed to sleep or to lie awake or to memorize his new room or to do whatever it is he wants to do, Harvey pours himself a glass of Scotch, two fingers, and sits down across from the couch in a black club chair. One of two. He sits in the chair closer to the kitchen, closer to the guest bedroom; not for any particular reason, just. Because.
Five years ago, or thereabouts, was Mike’s first time here. Five years ago, more or less, Mike sagged drunkenly against the door frame, his tie loosened and his shirt disheveled as he offered up his bar napkin of trade secrets, and Harvey sent him home with a promise to have Donna give him a spare key, because he knew, he could tell that Mike was important, that he was going to stay important, even though he didn’t know quite how much.
Harvey looks down at his liquor with a little smile on his face, tilting the amber liquid back and forth as it catches the reflection of the city lights filling the window behind him, the vast emptiness offering everything, offering every imaginable thing in the world, and promising none of it.
That window. That’s the window where they stood, him and Mike, those are the same city lights they surveyed when Mike decided he wanted to go to law school, to get into the bar under his own name, to do this thing for real, and Harvey, poor Harvey, still too stupid to understand the depths of this thing they’re doing, this game they’re playing, foolish Harvey told him to just hold on tight and enjoy the ride, because they couldn’t play for a lifetime, but they should take what they could while it was there for them. While they could still see it.
Harvey closes his eyes and drinks.
---
“So what do you want to do for your first day as a free man?”
Mike stirs his Rice Krispies and wonders what’s the nicest way to say “Absolutely nothing.” Harvey smiles at him, encouraging and unhurried, and Mike doesn’t know anything, so he just stirs his Rice Krispies and wonders.
“Anywhere you wanna go?” Harvey prompts, cradling his full mug in front of his chest as he waits for the coffee to cool.
Anywhere at all.
Mike puts a spoonful of cereal into his mouth, and Harvey waits for his coffee to cool.
“Buenos Aires,” Mike says, because the words spring to mind for no particular reason, and Harvey smiles, lifting his mug to his lips and taking a sip, even though it’s probably still too hot.
“Might be a little much for a day trip,” he says, and Mike smiles at his bowl full of soggy pulp and too much milk.
“I dunno,” he admits. “I kind of just wanna hang out here.”
Harvey nods sincerely, setting down the mug that was really more of a prop than a necessity, and Mike stirs his milk and sludge.
“Yeah,” Harvey says, “whatever you want.”
The edge of his spoon clicks against the bottom of his bowl, and Mike bites the tip of his tongue.
“But can we go out for dinner?”
Grinning wide like Mike’s just given him a present, Harvey picks his mug up again, raises it back to his lips just for something to do with all this bright and cheerful energy that’s come up out of nowhere after being stomped on and smothered for so long. Drinks his not-too-hot coffee, wiping his thumb across his chin when a little spills out the side of his mouth.
“Sure,” he says as he sets the mug back down. “Anywhere in particular?”
Mike shrugs, not having thought this through particularly well.
“Thai?”
Harvey’s grin gets a little smaller, and Mike doesn’t know what he expected, but he probably shouldn’t be surprised that Harvey’s disappointed in him. Don’t answer a question with a question, Michael, Father Walker used to say, even though Mike is pretty sure that’s something he does all the time now. Him and Harvey. It happens a lot in their line of work.
“You got it,” Harvey says. “How’s seven sound? Too early?”
Dinner at the hospital happened whenever someone brought him food.
“Seven’s fine.”
Harvey smiles a softer kind of smile, and Mike gets a nice sort of feeling in his chest like he’s done something right.
Good job, Michael.
---
Seven’s fine. It is. It’s just that the place Harvey picked didn’t have reservations available until eight, but that’s fine too; Mike doesn’t have a schedule to keep or anything.
Physical therapy is at ten or eleven o’clock, or something like that.
Wait. No. No, tomorrow it’ll be ten o’clock, and then it’ll be eleven, and he won’t go to physical therapy, and it’ll be fine.
Don’t forget.
For now, they go out for Thai, and Mike orders steamed dumplings and green curry because the names are in English, and Harvey orders the Pla Muk Tod and Kang Ped Pet Yang because he’s been living in the real world his entire life and he knows what he’s doing. Mike doesn’t mind.
They sit sipping water and local beer for a minute before Mike clears his throat and tips his glass.
“So when do I start?”
Harvey raises his eyebrows and sets his bottle down.
“Start what?”
Mike hikes his shoulders a little. “Back at the firm,” he says, the most obvious thing in the world.
Leaning back in his chair, Harvey narrows his eyes and thins his lips in an uncertain sort of way, and somewhere along the line, there’s been a terrible misunderstanding.
“I don’t know,” Harvey says as though he’s waiting for Mike to throw hot soup in his face. “Maybe a few months; we’ll have to see how you’re doing with the outpatient stuff. Maybe I can start bringing home some cases for us to work on together, get… Get you back in the swing of things.”
Mike sets his glass back on the table and looks down at his lap, at the napkin spread across his thighs.
“A few months?” he echoes.
Harvey nods.
“You’re doing great,” he reminds him, or reminds them both, “but… I don’t want to give you too much too fast, I don’t want you to get overwhelmed.”
Mike quirks his lip. “You don’t think I can take it?”
“I don’t want you to push yourself so hard that you get hurt,” Harvey corrects. “Mike, you hold yourself to some pretty high standards, and most of the time it’s great, it’s—it’s really helpful, you’ve pulled my ass out of the fire more than once by not giving up on your instincts, but this is…”
He sighs, hoping Mike will take his word for it, knowing that he won’t.
“This is different.”
Different. Of course it is. This is uncharted territory, this is a new horizon, this is shark-infested waters.
Dive in.
“I can do it.”
Harvey sighs again, a little shorter, a little less patient, and Mike does his best to look like he knows what he’s talking about.
“Mike,” Harvey says, “have you noticed that you kind of pause before you talk?”
Frowning, Mike sets his arms on the table.
“Yeah,” he says, “I’m thinking about what I want to say before I say it.”
“That’s great,” Harvey says, “and I’m glad you’re thinking before you speak, but my point is that it’s taking you a little longer than usual to do that. Which is fine,” he presses on before Mike begins to object, “your brain’s still healing, you’re still recovering, I’m just saying that you— You’re just as smart as you’ve always been, you’ve got all the same capacity for learning, and all that drive and determination that makes you you, but the… All the parts aren’t back up to that level yet. The speed, and maybe the endurance.”
Mike looks down at his lap, at the napkin spread across his thighs, and thinks about saying that this is the best that he can do. This is the best he’ll ever do, the most he can ever be.
Harvey probably wouldn’t believe him.
Harvey knows these things.
---
Sometime in the dead of night, a few hours or a few minutes after Mike’s gone to sleep, he wakes for no particular reason, with no particular purpose, to find himself curled up on his side with one hand shoved under the pillows, and the palm of his other pressed up against his right temple.
The spot above his temple is a soft dip, an uneven pit in the smooth dome of his skull. Mike traces his fingers along it, around and around until he finds a scar buried underneath the hair on the other side, a long, thick line of oily tissue reaching from the top of his spine all the way up to the crown of his head.
It doesn’t hurt to touch.
He didn’t really expect that it would.
As he shifts over, an indifferent effort to turn onto his back, the heel of his hand digs into the soft crater of his skull, pressure on the fragile skin, the brain underneath, a tender organ still in recovery; a vicious ache grips his head and he winces, suddenly terrified of his own body. Still healing, still breakable, still flimsy and delicate in ways he doesn’t even know, he wasn’t there, he didn’t see, he didn’t ask.
The ache throbs in time with the blood pulsing through his veins, and he doesn’t know why he’s surprised.
You’re doing great, Mike.
But this is different.