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It starts the way these things always do.
By accident, that is. And he tries to fix it, of course; he tries to fix it like getting out of a car accident, leaning into the skid, and it’s probably a sign or something, that a deadly sort of metaphor is the best way to describe it. At least a hint.
Maybe he should’ve listened.
---
None of the kids who show up on their doorstep are ever ready to step out on their own.
Oh, sure, they think they are. Kids that age always do, and ones with shiny new Harvard Law School diplomas are the worst of all. Harvey doesn’t hold any pity for them, eyes goggling wide and sweat dripping down their necks as they hear through the grapevine about the buy-in, five hundred thousand dollar bets that most of them will never see in their wildest dreams, for now staring down the bills for those goddamn rookie dinners, this little preamble to another life that’ll always be too far out of reach; these are the kinds of stakes we play by, and if you’re not ready to jump into the deep end, then you’d better get out of the water now, while the getting is good.
Sitting at a corner table, hidden in the dark behind the hustle and bustle of mingling associates, Harvey sips his scotch and watches Mike’s posture stiffen, his smile become thinner, coming and going faster and faster as the evening draws to a close and the plates start to pile up, the remains of filet mignon and rack of lamb and wagyu beef bleeding into each other and dripping down the sides. Yeah, Harvey thinks as he fondles his glass. Welcome to the big leagues, kid. We’re happy to have you stop by on your way to debtor’s prison.
Louis takes a sadistic sort of delight in slapping the night’s final tally against Mike’s chest, looking coldly into his eyes and flashing the briefest of smirks that looks like it’s supposed to mean something but neither Louis or Mike is entirely sure of what.
Harvey smiles to himself as he watches Mike’s naïve little sneer fade and shatter as he opens the billfold and panic settles in its place. So here’s your first lesson, rookie: Whatever hell you can imagine for yourself, reality is always worse.
Pay this Amount>> $10658.48
Mike fumbles with his jacket pockets, scrambling for his credit card. Maybe he’s translating the cost into nursing home fees, into fraudulent LSAT bills and a sliding scale of drug buys, an automatic calculation.
“Sorry, sir,” the bartender says, tossing a rag over his shoulder, “but the check’s been paid for in full by a Harvey Specter.”
Mike looks down at his hands and smiles a private little smile, all his calculations going up in smoke, and he goes back to rejoin the party.
Harvey sits in a dark corner and sips his scotch.
---
The days pass by so much quicker now, time flying as it hasn’t done since he was a little boy who didn’t know any better, or a young man desperate for every hour to stretch on forever and ever because there never seemed to be enough of them to do all the things he needed to. It isn’t naïvety that’s causing it, though, not this time, it isn’t stress or panic or exhaustion or any of those things. No, this time, this time it’s fun, it’s amazement at the fact that he’s actually enjoying himself again, actually living each day for its own sake instead of ambling through yet another bunch of hours to get on to tomorrow and do it all again.
What’s different now? Stupid question.
“I’ll fire him,” Jessica says coldly. He saw it coming, really he did; she gave him enough warning, after all. She told him she wanted to do it, and Jessica Pearson always gets what she wants, one way or another.
“No you won’t,” Harvey retorts. Jessica Pearson might get what she wants, one way or another, but Harvey Specter looks out for his own, and he’s not giving up without a fight. Not this life, not the reason it’s finally starting to come together. Not this fresh start out of that sour old hell.
“I’m not staying without Mike.”
She won’t let him go. She can’t. He has too much dirt on her, too many dark secrets buried in the walls and under the floorboards. She won’t give him up. Not after everything she’s done for him, all the chances she’s taken and the hours she’s spent making him into what he is.
Links in a chain, that’s all we are.
Milestone markers on the road to a better day.
---
These games can go on for only so long before it comes time to test the waters’ depths.
It’s always so silly, the way these things happen. Everything you think you know, everything you take for granted, stretch it to find its limit, push and pull until it breaks; why not just bust it up on purpose? Build the debris right into the thing from the start, wait on the whole mess to tear itself apart and then walk away while the break is still clean.
It’s late at night, this time, when Harvey knocks on the door to apartment 2B. Dark, out in the streets. Mike is probably tired, worn out and weary, and he probably won’t answer.
Testing, one, two. Testing.
Harvey puts his hands into his pockets, his weight sinking down into the floor through the soles of his shoes. He’ll wait a while; he’ll wait as long as it takes. Check all the boxes this time, fill in all the ovals.
Mike opens the door, dead on his feet, and Harvey hasn’t prepared enough for this. Not nearly enough.
“When I sent you home,” he says before he can tell himself different, “I didn’t mean for you to never come back.”
I didn’t mean for this to all come crashing down so fast. I didn’t mean for us to end the way we did.
I didn’t know any better, but for you, I’m trying my best.
Mike holds himself up with slouching curves and force of will.
“My grandmother died,” he says in his throttled voice.
“I know.”
Mike shakes his head and backs away, and Harvey follows.
Testing, testing.
“I ever tell you about my dad?”
Break it all apart and stitch us back together.
---
This is our world out of balance.
Life is so easy, isn’t it, easy to live and easy to take for granted when everything is all in a line, all in order. Unsurprising, wanting nothing. Harvey’s made a terrible mistake, he thinks, living this way for so long. Becoming complacent, telling himself and everyone else that it’s because he’s got nothing left to prove, nothing left to show.
“You’re not the best,” he says.
You made a mistake, that’s what he meant.
“You’re fired.”
My head is all full of concrete and I need some room to remember how to breathe.
Harvey storms back to his office, throwing the doors in his way and banging on the walls, kicking the furniture and smashing the lamps. He slams against the windows, he beats his fists against the desk and shatters every pane of glass he can reach, shards scattered all across the floor and raining down on the street outside.
How are you doing, Harvey?
Donna stands in the hall, her lips parted and her eyes glittering damp, her hand raised to her chest, her heart.
Harvey clenches his fist tight around the pen in his hand and looks up at her with a solemn smile on his rigid face.
“I’m okay.”
You want to learn how to love? You want to teach yourself this simple thing that no one ever thought to tell you what it means?
You suffer through your mistakes. You work through the change. You learn how to be better than you were before.
You give away what you want to get back.
---
“I’m sorry for the things I said,” that’s how it should start. “I’m sorry too,” that’s how it would end. We did wrong, the two of us, but we wish we hadn’t and we won’t do it again.
It won’t, though. They won’t. That’s not how it’ll go.
“Come with me,” Harvey says. That’s all. That’s all that needs saying, that’s all that Mike needs to hear to understand that it’s time to move on, time to walk across that bridge and all the water roaring along underneath. On to the next game, the next fight, and all of this will seem very small and far away, come morning.
“Yeah, baby!” Mike says. “Butch and Sundance are back.”
That’s all that needs saying. “I forgive you,” that’s what it means. “I want to pretend the same way you do, I want to live in the past like it’s the present and forget all the bad parts in between.”
I love you, they could say. In the gaps between our words, those could be the hidden lines. No, no, that’s not allowed; not now, not today, but maybe when everything has fallen back into place, when all the pieces are laid out in a row.
That time we lost, we’ll find it again. One of these days, everything wrong will start to feel like it’s right.
---
If you want this life, you’re gonna have to go and take it.
How many times does he have to learn his lesson? How many more before it sticks? He knows it by now; he does, he tells himself every morning, every noon and night. Words and actions, words and actions, there’s the break. There’s where it all goes wrong.
I love you, he said to her.
I love you.
It was only a matter of time, wasn’t it? He knew. He knows. Everybody knows, everybody’s watched this from the start, waiting for this inevitable conclusion, this inevitable beginning. He has no right to call this a surprise, no right to be taken aback. No right to be furious.
That’s not it, is it?
You could have said it first, say the voices in his head. You could have told him what you meant. Could have told him what he means.
The time was never right for us.
Harvey looks at Mike’s and Rachel’s smiling faces and does his best to copy, to pick the right picture from his catalog and string together all the right words for caution, and concern, and joy, and pride. It’s good, all of this; things falling into place and all that. There’s more than one way for all of us to match up, more than one way for the wires to cross.
They move in together quietly; too fast, a little bit, but maybe not. Maybe this is them doing what’s right, and there’s no place in it for him to pass judgment. No place for “Yes, but if only.”
The catalog ends, the last page, and Harvey puts it back down on his bedside table where it’ll stay.
I’m happy for you.
---
All this and nothing more sustains us.
Wouldn’t that be nice? If our lives went the way they do in fairy tales.
The city lights sparkle and glitter before them and Mike sticks his hands into his pockets as he decides he wants to run away.
“I want to go legit,” he says.
What an idealistic man you are. What a fantastic imagination you must have, what a marvelous sense of whimsy.
Harvey shakes his head.
“You can’t.”
“Harvey, listen—”
“Do I need to state the obvious?”
No. I know it, you know it. Let’s not kid ourselves, how about that? These flights of fancy are all right for the late night hours, this other world where all that exists of the city and all of our lives in it is the outline sketched against the darkened sky, blurred edges and pinpricks of light, but we can’t live here forever, can we? No, not forever. Not for long.
“I’m stuck,” Mike says.
I know you are. I know.
All our fun and games had to catch up with us sooner or later and it fits, don’t you think, that they’d come on all at once, pushing us through the days on a tidal wave, crashing toward the shore. No one pays attention to the little changes, don’t you know that? You want to be noticed, you have to make yourself be heard.
“I’m tired of putting the people I care about in jeopardy,” Mike says.
I know. I know.
I can help you, if you want. I can fix everything, if you ask me to.
“Give me permission to go.”
Give me permission to save you from my disaster. From all the stupid things we put ourselves through.
There’s space here, in this place, for hatred. There’s space for bitterness, for feeling slighted, used and abused. For being taunted and teased, shown the edges of a future that’s been in his sights for as long as he can remember and that looks nothing like what he imagined but so, so much better.
There’s space in love for forgiveness.
Harvey puts out his hand, and Mike takes it with a grim smile.
“You’re a good man, Harvey.”
I’m not. I’m not as good a man as I could be. Not as good as I should be.
Harvey looks away and nods.
“Thanks.”
Thanks for everything; it was a good ride, while it lasted. We had fun, while we were here.
We did, for a while.
---
Mike comes back, in the end. He doesn’t expect it, Harvey doesn’t, but somehow it’s not surprising; this is where Mike is meant to be, after all, where his story started and where it has to stop, someday. Down the line, sometime later on, who knows.
“Seriously, Mike,” he says with a smile on his face, maybe in his heart, maybe not. “It’s good to have things back to normal.”
“Yeah,” Mike says. “Normal.”
Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t all of this what you want, what you’ve always wanted? Haven’t I given you that? Didn’t you take it when you had the chance?
I tried. I tried my best.
“I admire what you have with Rachel.”
Don’t you know? You’re my role model, have I ever told you? Your heart, so big and so open, you wear it on your sleeve the way I don’t know how. So freely given, asking so little in return while I sit here in the corner, in the dark, admiring the light from inside your shadow.
That’ll be the death of you, that heart of yours, and maybe it will be for me too, but for now, do me a favor, will you please? Hold on to what you’ve got, that happiness you have. Hold on to it while you can.
“It’s real. It’s hard to come by, and all you have to do to keep it is forgive her.”
Be the man I never will. Be the man I could have become if I had been wiser, and kinder, and better. If I had known you sooner, if I had learned faster everything you have to teach me.
Mike nods with a smile on his face, narrow and solemn, cold and wise.
“I have to take care of something I should have days ago.”
Harvey watches him walk out the door.
We could have been something, you know. Really something else.
Harvey shakes his head.
When it’s this quiet, it’s easy to forget how many days it’s been.
Time to wake up and say goodbye.
---
Mike stands in the elevator with his head down.
Back to normal, Harvey said. Back to normal, that’s what this is.
When have we ever been?
Back to the devils we know, he meant. Back to the storms and furies that follow along from all the things we’ve done before, back to the games we make up as we go along and sometimes pretend we know how to play. Back to our old selves in our old lives, back to the way we were before.
“All you have to do to keep it is forgive her,” Harvey said. All you have to do to put things back in order is pretend it never happened, look the other way. We’re bigger than our mistakes, we’re better people than we seem. If you can forgive me for every hurt I’ve caused, surely you can forgive her, too.
“So if you want to stay here tonight,” Harvey said, “by all means.”
If you want to stay in this place where you run when things are hard, he said. If you want to stay here where you’re always welcome, where I shaped my life around you while it all went to hell. If you want to stay in this place where things are broken apart and then put right back together, you’re always welcome.
“But I think you should go home.”
The elevator doors open, and Mike keeps his head down.
It was pretty stupid, wasn’t it. A flight of fancy, a little magical thinking. We might have been, you and me, if we had turned a different direction back then, or that other time, or the other one. Before this or that thing happened, before it was impossible. Before we knew what we might become.
Mike walks out into the street and keeps walking.
Back to normal, that’s where we’re going. That’s where we belong.
Give it a minute, and I’m sure we’ll get there.