Work Text:
Every new hire at Specter Ross was given one instruction by his fellow attorneys: do not ask about the empty corner office on the south-east side of the building. Lucy Miller, Seattle University School of Law graduate and new first year associate, has heard the same from her fellow associates in the bullpen. You never talk about the empty corner office. And you don’t go into the empty corner office. If you can, you even avoid looking inside the empty corner office. Just, do as if that part of the firm doesn’t exist.
During her first weeks at Specter Ross, Lucy had a few occasions to pass by that office. Some people, mostly partners or the most senior associates, did a detour to avoid the empty corner office. But Lucy didn’t see the point. So she had the occasion to glass at it, behind its glass walls. It’s a gorgeous office, modern, with a large glass desk and a wall made of shelves with records on them. There are always fresh flowers in the empty office but she had never seen anyone replace them. The office felt alive, as if its owner had just left for the afternoon and could be back any second.
Tamara, a third year, one day explained everything to her:
“It’s Harvey Specter’s office. The other named partner and Mr Ross’ husband. He died more than a year ago. Mr Ross asked us all not to touch it.”
Poor Mr Ross… Mr Ross was kind from the few interactions she had with him. He had welcomed Lucy to the firm himself, coming to greet her to her cubicle on her second day, apologizing that he hadn’t done it the day before.
Lucy noticed that sometimes at night, there were lights coming from the empty corner office, once she even heard music being played, some jazz with the tune of a saxophone coming to disturb the silent corridors of the firm. But she never approached the empty corner office during those moments, knowing it would be inappropriate to do so, that it was something she knew was forbidden even without it being explicit. But the next day, as she passed it, she noticed that the chairs had moved in that office and there was a half empty bottle of scotch in the coffee table.
Curiosity was always one of Lucy’s faults. So she googled the man, the deceased owner of the empty corner office. She found herself looking at pages of court records in Westlaw with Mr Harvey R. Specter listed as one of the attorneys of record. Some of them in Washington State but most of them in New York. In the New York ones, sometimes, Mr Ross was listed as second chair. Then she went to google. She found the articles about Mr Ross and Mr Specter coming out as a married couple, some of their most unfamous wins – there were even cases Lucy had studied in Law School – and finally an obituary.
Harvey Specter, 64
Faithful husband and brilliant attorney.
There was a picture of the man. Good looking, a cocky smile, she had trouble imagining him being with someone like Mr Ross. Not that Mr Ross wasn’t good looking but Harvey R. Specter seemed to be the stereotypical corporate law shark, something Mr Ross was not.
4 months after she arrived at the firm, for some reason, at around 6pm, everybody from paralegal to senior partner was scrambling to leave the firm. Even if it was a Wednesday. Again, Tamara was her source of information as she was passing through the bullpen, wearing her coat and taking a stack of files home with her:
“It’s the anniversary of Mr Specter’s death. The second one. We leave early to let Mr Ross have the firm to himself.”
Lucy understood she had to leave as well. It took her about 15 minutes to gather her stuff. She was at the elevator, waiting for one to arrive when Mr Ross exited the one she had called. He ignored her, hiding behind a huge bouquet of flowers he was holding in one hand. She also noticed the bottle of scotch in the other. It broke her heart.
Mike put down the bottle on the coffee table and put the flowers in a vase on the he had prepared earlier. He knew that people talked about it, his habit to spend time in Harvey’s office. He had even heard some ambitious associates whisper that he was losing it. He probably was. How could he not with Harvey being gone. He looked through the record collection and the Spinners record found itself there, in his hands, the one he had joked about with Harvey when they were still hiding their fraud from everyone at Pearson Hardman, the time Harvey had punished him by giving him to Louis. So long ago… When they were still idiots, obvious about each other’s feelings.
He carefully put the record on and smiled sadly as he could almost hear Harvey’s voice in the room.
“I told you the Spinners were the defining pop anthem of their time. You are learning puppy.”
Mike smiled sadly to himself, whipping away a tear. He paced the office as the upbeat music played. He poured himself a drink and raised it toward the empty chair behind the desk, where Harvey used to sit, propping his feet up on the desk at night or during a phone call, being full of cockiness and arrogance.
Two years. Harvey had been gone two years. Too soon. They had started to make plans. In fact, they were making all the relevant paperwork to sign the firm over and retire. He and Harvey were supposed to move back to New-York for their retirement, go to brunches with the Litts and Williams on Sundays, picnic in Central Park during the spring, spend Summer in the Hamptons in a house they had planned to buy.
They were supposed to announce their retirement a month later to the partners of the firm. Well, it would be retirement for Harvey but Mike had planned to write a book. A publishing house had approached him, the story of the college drop-out with the brilliant legal mind was a brilliant plot. It had all gone to shit because of a badly timed heart attack.
Mike had buried Harvey in New-York. The man was a New-Yorker, he needed to rest at home. It had felt right. He had paid a lot of money to have the coffin fly from Seattle to New-York. So apart from the few times a year he made the trip, this office was the only place he had to think about Harvey, to honor his memory. And he knew about the whispers about using the office. But he didn’t care. He was the sole managing partner of the firm now. All he had left of Harvey’s at the firm was this: an empty corner office.