Work Text:
“You never really told me how dinner with Jessica went.”
It is almost 11PM on a Friday, and Mike is at Harvey’s place. It’s only been a few days since The Week of Hell, when Jessica found out about his past, Harvey almost fired him, Jenny broke up with him, Trevor proved himself to be a jerk and since there was a new boss in town, they are working on a case. At 11PM. On a Friday. Actually, they aren’t working on it, Mike is. He has something to prove, after all. (He kind of did it already when he almost, almost beat Jessica at law trivia, but come on, as genius as he might be, he wouldn’t beat Jessica freaking Pearson at this.) Harvey is sitting on the couch next to his associate, the ankle of one leg resting on his other leg’s knee, an iPad in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. Maybe the latter is the reason he seems so relaxed and that he’s actually trying to make conversation with Mike. Maybe.
“What?”, the other answers, without taking his eyes off the file he is reading.
“Your dinner with Jessica. Tell me about it”, he repeats, putting the iPad aside and moving on his seat a little bit so he can face Mike.
Mike finally looks up and sees Harvey taking a sip of his wine and looking at him expectantly. “Uh…why do you want to know about it?”, he frowns.
“Because.”
“Wow. Nice argument. No wonder you’re the best closer in town.”, Mike scoffs and Harvey smirks, drinking a liittle bit more and still looking at Mike. “Well”, he cleans his throat and places the file he was reading on the coffee table, adjusting himself on the couch and finally taking the beer Harvey handed him thirty minutes ago. It’s not as cold as he’d like it to be, but it’s not terrible either. “We just talked. I was completely freaked out at first, my hands were sweating so much, it was disgusting. But when I realized she was just trying to know me better, I relaxed.”
“What did you talk about?”
Mike starts thinking it’s really weird that Harvey is trying to know what happened, but then, one thought crosses his mind. “Wait, are you mad you weren’t invited? I mean, I know you’re my boss, but she’s your boss too, so that makes her my boss twice and she has more power over me than you, and I couldn’t just, you know, ask her to ask you to come too and—”
“Mike!”, Harvey interrupts him and smiles. “I’m not mad. I just want to know what happened. From where I stand, I can see she likes you, even with the whole college fiasco. I want to see what side of you she saw. That’s all”, he waves his free hand slightly and gulps down the rest of the wine on his glass, before leaning down and placing it beside Mike’s file.
“Oh. Okay”, he feels very silly right now. “She talked about a lot of things that happened to her when she was at Harvard, then she asked me how it was for me. You know, Harvard. Dude, Ifroze.” Harvey is going to reprimand him about the ‘dude’ thing when Mike continues quickly. “But only for a few milliseconds, I swear! I kept my poker face - or, as I like to call it, my Harvey face - very well”, he has the audacity of looking smug and Harvey can’t help but laugh.”I told her about how my eidetic memory helped me at school and how I thought people from Harvard would be different from my classmates. I said they were ‘not smart’, Jessica called them ‘stupid’”, he snorts. “She can be a very fun woman to spend time with”.
“She is a very fun woman, but she can’t be that person at work. People have to fear you if you want to be a good leader, so you have to be serious in order to gain respect. And that’s why you’ll never be a good leader”.
“So you think I’m fun? Oh, thank you, Harvey!”, he places both hands over his heart and makes a dreamy face.
“Shut up. I meant that you aren’t a serious person. That doesn’t mean you’re fun, that means you’re an idiot”, Harvey explains with a smug grin on his face and Mike pouts.
“Well, you are no fun at all”, he takes a sip of his beer. Harvey raises his eyebrows, making a serene face like what Mike said doesn’t affect him in the least. “Anyway, then she asked me a personal question and left. The end.”
“Which question?”, now that made Harvey curious.
“A personal one”, Mike shrugs and takes a long sip, enjoying the feeling of making Harvey wait and preparing himself for what’s coming.
Harvey rolls his eyes, “I heard it the first time. What was it?”
“The reason I became a ‘lawer’”, he uses his hands to make air quotes - the right one being a little weird, since he was still holding his beer. “As I said, it’s something personal”.
Harvey can tell by the way Mike’s voice trembles at the end of the sentence, it’s something important. It’s already late, the kid could be resting at his own place, instead he’s at Harvey’s, working his ass off and now being interrogated by his boss. The least he could do is make Mike more comfortable, so that’s what he does. “See, when I was a teenager, my parents got a divorce. It’s not like I didn’t see it coming, they were having arguments every single day and the living room became my dad’s bedroom, and the couch, his bed. I just didn’t believe it when it actually happened. You always believe that your family is going to get pass through all the bullshit and the fighting, and everything’s gonna be fine in the end. It’s not”, he confides Mike, looking at the coffee table, but not really seeing. “So they got a divorce. My mom was the one who left. She left me and my brother with my father and all I could think is that he let her do that. He didn’t fight for her. She just left and he did nothing. I spent two whole years talking only the necessary to my father. For God’s sake, I hated him.”
Mike was listening to it all quietly, absorbing every bit of information Harvey was revealing to him. And this time it wasn’t something Harvey would tell him and he’d be rolling his eyes because ‘that’s such a Harvey thing to say’. No. This time it was a completely different Harvey, a side of his boss he didn’t know up until know. He suspected it existed, but only now he was comproving its existence. So he stares at his boss intensely, while he continues, “However, one day it was too much for him. I don’t really remember what I said and what triggerred the whole thing. All I know one second he was screaming at me and the other he was collapsing, crying and telling me she was the one who left us because she was the one who didn’t want to be there. She was the one who didn’t love us enough to be there. I was hating on the wrong person, apparently”.
“I…I’m sorry to hear that, Harvey”, he says, placing a hand on Harvey’s thigh. Harvey just shakes his head and meets Mike’s eyes again. “Do you still talk to her?”, he asks hesintantly.
“Not really. My brother sends Christmas cards and shit like that to her, but I don’t. I just don’t.”
Mike sighs, takes his hand off Harvey and scratches the back of his neck. They stay silent for a little while until Mike starts, “My parents went out to have dinner when I was eleven. They used to do that once, twice a month, just to keep the flames alive, you know? It was the first time they had left me alone to go out like that. They had always insisted on leaving me with a neighbor or my grandma, but I remember arguing with them and telling that I’d be fine all by myself, after all, I waseleven.” Mike scoffs and closes his eyes, shaking his head. “They were coming home when they got into a horrible accident. God, I obviously still can remember everything that happened that night, including what I felt when that cop - officer Parkman, his name - showed up at our doorstep.”
Harvey knew Mike was an orphan and that his parents died in a car crash, it’s no surprise to hear what Mike was saying. Except it is. Hearing Mike’s version of the whole thing, of an eleven-year-old boy having to face this kind of news alone. Damn, having to face this whole thing at all, it was heartbreaking. He moves closer to Mike and places a hand on his shoulder first, then holds his associate by the nape, where he starts to move his thumb on the side of his neck slowly.
Mike takes a deep breathe and continues, “Granny took me in. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized we had a case. It turns out this restaurant kept feeding this guy drinks long after they knew…”, Mike trails off. “Anyway. I just…I felt so helpless. And I didn’t wanna feel that way. Ever again.”
“I’m sorry, Mike”, Harvey murmurs as Mike leans forward and places his elbows on his legs, and head on his hands. Harvey can only move his hands slowly over Mike’s back now, comforting him and giving some time for him to recover. It hurts him to see his associate like that, his friend, his… He wanted to know more about Mike, to learn more about Mike, yet now he’s just regretful. “I’m sorry I made you feel bad”.
Mike lifts his head up for that and also sits straight, staring at Harvey with big blue watery eyes. “Hey, it’s not your fault. If I wasn’t comfortable with telling you this, I wouldn’t tell you. I trust you”, he says and gives Harvey a sad smile.
Harvey’s hand goes up from Mike’s back to shoulder, neck and face, where he places it and starts stroking his cheekbone with his thumb softly. His eyes don’t leave Mike’s. “Wherever they are right now, I’m 100% sure they are extremely proud of their son, who became this amazing, brilliant, smart, lovely, caring kid. I know that because I’m also proud of you. You do know that, don’t you?” Mike nods slowly and Harvey gives him a little smile, catching a single tear with his thumb before it falls down. “You are incredible, Mike. I’m happy I know you.”
“Are you?”, he asks in a low voice.
“I am”, Harvey answers without hesitation. His eyes flicks to Mike’s mouth and he knows what he wants to do right now, what he needs to do right now, but he also knows it’s not right to take advantage of Mike like that. Even though this looks like the perfect moment to kiss him, there’ll be anoth—
Harvey’s thoughts are interrupted as he feels Mike’s lips meeting his own. He doesn’t respond to it for the first three seconds, still thinking about the respectful thing to do, and Mike seems to notice that, because he murmurs “It’s okay” on his mouth, and moves closer to Harvey. The other man stops the debate that is going on on his head and reciprocates the kiss, finally enjoying the pleasure of touching and kissing Mike. They keep it simple for a little while, until Harvey takes a risk and licks Mike’s lips slowly. The other man responds to it by opening his mouth so that their tongues can meet each other in a slow synchrony, a small detail that makes the kiss way much better than seconds ago. Mike moans when Harvey deepens the kiss and moves a hand to his blond, and messy hair, moving his short fingernails from his nape to his hair, and vice-versa. Harvey feels Mike’s hand making their way from his chest to his neck, then back to his chest, stomach and…
“Wait, wait, wait, Mike”, he breaks off the kiss and Mike stops on his tracks, hands on the waistband of Harvey’s pants. “We should take it slow. Now it’s not the moment to do that”, he says gently and Mike just take his hands off Harvey and leans forward, hiding his face on the crook between the other’s man neck and shoulder. “What is it?”, Harvey asks, frowning and moving his fingers through Mike’s fluffy hair.
“I’m embarrassed”, he murmurs.
“Why?”
“Why? Because I almost cried then kissed my boss!”, he answers, still leaning on Harvey, who just laughs.
“There’s no reason to be embarrassed by that, Mike. Unless you didn’t want to…”, Harvey trails off, now uncertain of what really happened. Mike did want to kiss him, right? He didn’t feel like he had to do it, right? Right?
“I did!”, he says lifting his head and meeting Harvey’s gaze. “I wanted to kiss you”, he completes and blushes, and Harvey just want to kiss him again for being so adorable. So he does. It’s a brief kiss, who ends with a lot of other pecks until Harvey stops and just looks at Mike, taking in every little detail of him he couldn’t notice but now that he’s so close, he can. The little freckles on his nose, the way his blue eyes are even more beautiful from this far and everything else. Mike just stares back, amazed that this is happening, that he’s just kissed Harvey and that - thank God! - he was kissed back.
The silence is broken when Mike asks, “What did you tell Jessica about me?”
“A lot of things. You have to be more specific, I taught you that already”, he says with no real heat on his voice, while caressing the side of Mike’s face.
Mike rolls his eyes, but explains, “Jessica told me you were right about something. What were you right about?”
“Well, wouldn’t you like to know?”, he says, smiling.
“Oh, come on, Harveyyy! Tell me!”, Mike whines.
Harvey looks at Mike for an instant, pondering if he should say it or not. The answer comes quickly when Mike starts pouting. “I told her I’ve fallen for the most amazing person in the world.”
Mike stares at him speechless and then throws his arms around Harvey’s neck, pressing his lips on the other man’s again, until he breaks it off and says, “I could say the same thing.”