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People sometimes wonder aloud why Mike and Harvey are friends, since, you know, Mike’s kind of scrawny and more than a little geeky and has a tendency to run his mouth off without thinking about what comes out of it, and Harvey is really just as geeky but is considerably better at hiding it, and he’s a grade above Mike and has an inexplicable ability to stare people into submission that is vaguely unsettling in a seventeen-year-old.
Harvey usually tells those people, when he’s in the mood to explain himself at all (read: rarely), that Mike just followed him home one day and he hasn’t been able to get rid of him since.
Mike informs them that Harvey’s mom thinks he’s a nice boy and keeps inviting him back, and he wouldn’t want to disappoint Mrs. Specter, now would he?
(This is not entirely inaccurate; Harvey’s mom has, one more than one occasion, offered to trade Harvey for Mike on the grounds that he’s much less high-maintenance, which, ha, proves just how much Mike has her fooled. Harvey has tried to be put out about this blatant familial betrayal, but Mike always grins and ducks his head and looks all of six years old when Harvey’s mom ruffles his hair, and Harvey’s usually too busy stepping on any warm and squishy feelings that might emerge because of it to pull off an appropriately peeved sulk.)
Mostly they’re friends because no matter how hard Harvey tries, Mike is never intimidated by him, and Harvey is quick enough to keep up with Mike’s ridiculous brain, and they both like to piss off the football jocks, and sometimes neither one of them feels like they’re normal, and—well, really, it works because they never have to talk about it, they just are.
(There’s also the fact that when Harvey does something particularly noteworthy, like verbally decimating the idiot who decided to take Harvey on in AP English, for example, Mike gets this big-eyed look of awe, as if Harvey is the best thing he’s ever seen; and when Harvey makes a Star Trek joke or counters Mike’s obscure movie references with his own, Mike looks at him the exact same way, like there is no difference for him, like Harvey can be both of those people and Mike will think he’s amazing either way. Harvey spends more time than he’d like to admit, even to himself, trying to put that look on Mike’s face and keep it there.)
“I can’t hang out with you anymore,” Harvey tells Mike at lunch, eyeing him with no small amount of horror. Mike is wearing a Twilight shirt that he definitely only bought so he could watch a part of Harvey’s soul die.
(Harvey knows this, of course, because Mike showed up at Harvey’s house a week ago with the very same shirt and said brightly, “Look what I just bought!”
Harvey shut the door in his face, but even that couldn’t block out the sound of Mike breaking out into giggles.
Giggles. Goddamnit.)
“No, really,” Harvey continues, “I can’t be your friend while you’re wearing that. It goes against my moral principles.”
“Are we friends?” Mike asks idly. “I was under the impression you only tolerated me because you’re scared of your mom.”
“I was trying this new thing where I’m considerate of other people’s feelings,” Harvey says. “But now that you mention it, your bizarre mind control over my mother might have something to do with the fact that I still put up with you, yes.”
“Tears. Tears everywhere,” Mike says, succinct and unconcerned, still not looking up from his notebook. There’s a twitch at the corners of his mouth; Harvey can see the grin that wants to bloom.
Harvey is not smiling in response, no, no, definitely not, not even a little bit.
“Your face looks a little weird today, Harvey,” Donna says blandly from across the table; her blank look doesn’t falter for a second, not even when Harvey stares her down balefully. Donna has a poker face not even Harvey can match, and he’s seen her cry on command more than once, and she’s only a junior, but she has everyone from the senior class to the tiny freshmen to some of the more spineless teachers terrified of her wrath. To be honest, most days Harvey is unspeakably thankful that Donna is on his side.
Right now, though, he narrows his eyes in a way that means I will remember this betrayal, don’t think I won’t. Donna nods, lips pressed together tightly, which means she is absolutely laughing at him on the inside.
“I actually wrote ‘illicit’ instead of ‘elicit’ last night,” Mike says with a note of dismay in his voice, thankfully oblivious to the undercurrents of a conversation as always. “I don’t think I was drunk.”
“Believe me, if you’d been drunk, we’d know,” Harvey says dryly. Mike’s only been drunk on three occasions, and they were memorable, to say the least; he is not the makes-good-life-choices kind of drunk. He is pretty much the opposite of the makes-good-life-choices kind of drunk, to the point where Harvey has forbidden him from drinking unless either Donna or Harvey is around to supervise. Since the last time involved Mike waking up with several half-naked pictures of himself on his phone and a thorough understanding of how much more mortifying those pictures could be, he’d agreed pretty readily.
“Just the regular kind of stupid, then,” Donna says cheerfully, and looks amused when Mike shoots her a tragic and wounded look, all eyes and trembling pout. “Remember my nine-year-old sister?” she asks pointedly, smirking. “I am immune, Michael Ross.”
“No one likes me,” Mike sighs. “I’m running away to Canada. And I’m taking your mom with me.”
Harvey tries not to think about the fact that she’d probably go, too.
“Okay, got to go, see you after school,” Mike says, voice muffled through the pizza crust he shoved into his mouth, and he gathers up his things in a pile of spilling papers and a half-open backpack and dashes off like the walking disaster-zone that he is.
“Do you think he’s mind-controlling me?” Harvey asks, only about seventy-percent joking, because otherwise there is really no accounting for his taste.
“Yeah, that’s one name for it,” Donna says wryly.
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