Work Text:
Harvey Specter's favourite quality about Mike Ross was one that he would never admit to. Jessica thought it was his amazing brain, capable of sifting through what most associates couldn't manage in a week in just a few short hours. Louis thought it was Mike's ability to outsmart anyone who had anything they thought they could use against him – an extension of Harvey, if you will. The parallel, Rachel Zane, clearly thought Harvey kept Mike close because of his undying devotion to Harvey's every whim, if her smirks and relentless jibes at Mike were anything to go by. Donna was the closest, of course. She thought Harvey esteemed Mike for his fierce loyalty.
They were all right, in their own ways. Harvey liked all of these things about Mike, but none of them were the thing he liked the most. Even Harvey didn't know what the thing he liked most about Mike Ross was until the day of the accident.
: : : : :
Mike stepped off the elevator on Monday morning and Harvey promptly pushed him back in and joined him. Harvey allowed Mike three seconds to gather his wits about him and stop spluttering about having to drop off his bag in his cubicle. When he finished allowing Mike the luxury of being completely undignified, he gave his associate a once-over.
"Is that a checkered shirt?" Harvey demanded, appalled. Mike blinked and looked down at his shirt, which was indeed the most horrendous baby blue and white checkered pattern that Harvey had ever had the misfortune to observe. Even if he had to admit that Mike's eyes popped a little from the colour. Damn kid could get the same effect with a solid blue shirt. Checkers were best left on the tablecloths of 1950s suburban homes.
"Er, yes."
"When you get home tonight, throw it out," he told Mike firmly. "Or use it to make a tablecloth for your family of dolls."
"See, that's funny because it implies that I'm a little girl."
"You're catching on, rookie," Harvey admitted, eyeing Mike's less-than-amused expression. Time for a little mentoring. "What I'm about to tell you is pure gold, puppy, so listen up. Your shirts remain one colour. You do not wear patterns to the office. The wildest you are allowed to get with your clothing choices is a herringbone pattern and it damn well better be on a neutral colour, understood?"
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," Mike rolled his eyes. Harvey smirked because, really, what was more adorable than his rookie thinking he had the upper hand?
"Of all the appropriate movie quotes available to that mind of yours, you go with Gone With the Wind?"
"It was a period romance based on a Pulitzer-winning novel," Mike defended. "An American classic."
"Uh-huh."
"What would you have gone with?" Mike asked in his usual cocky manner, obviously secure in his self-appointed position as Best Movie Quoter. Harvey smirked.
"You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could've been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am."
"I'm not a bum!"
"Could've fooled me," Harvey chuckled, looking pointedly at Mike's checkered shirt. Mike huffed.
"Shut up, Terry Malloy."
They slid into Ray's car – after Harvey shooed Mike to the other side with a glare and a dismissive wave – and Harvey slipped Ray today's music. It was a disc of Duke Ellington's best and Harvey sank into the seat, letting the sound of wind instruments and piano wash over him. Mike sat quietly, seatbelt buckled and staring ahead.
Three minutes into their ride, Mike lunged forward and shouted, "Stop!"
There wasn't even enough time for Harvey's face to form his usual irritated look, reserved for Mike's stunts such as this, before the car lurched and went abruptly from thirty miles an hour to zero in a split second. Harvey – having leaned forward to inform Ray that Mike's instructions were not law – was braced against the seat and it jostled him uncomfortably, but he knew immediately that he wasn't hurt.
"Everyone okay?" Ray asked loudly over the sound of a shouting driver and honking horns. Harvey assured him that he was fine and looked over to Mike's side, but the kid was gone.
"Mike?" he called, like his associate was hiding somewhere in the car and was waiting to be called upon before showing his face.
Harvey's door opened and he found himself being hauled out of the car and slammed into the side of it. And then, inexplicably, hands. Hands everywhere. He batted at them and briefly wondered what the odds of a car accident and a physical assault in the same five minutes were before he noticed the hair bopping frantically in front of his chest – wild, unruly blond.
"Mike?" he asked, pushing at his associate's shoulders to free himself from roaming hands. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Are you okay?"
"Mike, stop –"
Mike began to furiously unbutton Harvey's dress shirt, at which point Harvey decided he had had enough of this, whatever it was.
"Mike, stop assaulting me for a moment, please."
Mike stared up at him with wide, terrified eyes. His face was pale in most places and red with adrenaline in others. He kept his hands clutched on the sides of Harvey's suit jacket, wrinkling it beyond even what Harvey's most accomplished drycleaner might be able to fix. He shook and his teeth clattered and he breathed in short, violent bursts of breath.
"Stop hyperventilating," Harvey ordered. Mike stared at him, unblinking and uncomprehending. "I'm okay. Are you okay?"
"Okay?"
"Yes, Mike, are you okay?"
Mike collapsed onto him, hands resting on the edges of Harvey's shoulders and his forehead pressed under his chin. For a few minutes, Mike clung to him and Harvey stared at Ray in confusion. Then he reached up with one arm and held Mike to him as the poor kid trembled and tried to breathe. Eventually, Mike pulled back and looked marginally more in control of his basic motor skills and bodily functions, such as breathing, blinking, and standing still with his hands to himself.
"Sorry," he muttered. He was silent, then, "Wear your God damned seatbelt, okay?"
Mike trudged away in the direction of a uniformed cop. Once there, he started talking and pointing and nodding. He was giving a statement, apparently, and Harvey was confused as to how Mike instinctually knew what had to be done in this situation.
Then he remembered. Mike's parents. Well, damn.
They'd be having that discussion later, when Mike was done trembling and pulling at his hair.
: : : : :
Three hours later, they were finished giving statements and Jessica had told them to go home, ignoring both of their protests and threats of simply working from home. She took their laptops, locked Harvey out of his own office, and sent them packing for the rest of the day. Donna cut them off at the elevator, punching Harvey in the arm and pulling Mike's head down to her chest in a strange head-hug show of emotion that rarely happened.
"Erm, Donna," Mike said awkwardly, having his cheek smudged into his nose by Donna's left boob. She planted one of the top of his head and released him. He coughed uncomfortably.
"Next time you endanger his life, you bring him straight to me," she ordered Harvey, who stared slack-jawed. She crossed her arms and raised one eyebrow, to which he immediately surrendered.
"I see how it is," Harvey sniffed with a smirk. "You've traded me in for a newer model. Enjoy being a trophy wife, Mike."
"What?"
"Sorry for endangering the life of your beloved boss' even more beloved associate," Harvey apologized with plenty of sass (though it sounded much more dignified than sass might sound on anyone else). Donna gave him a look like 'you better be sorry'. "I say this because I love you and I don't want you leaving me for Mike."
"Love means never having to say you're sorry," Donna mocked him, to which Mike smirked.
"I never said sorry," he pointed out. Donna smacked his ass. Mike jumped about four feet in the air and stared wide-eyed at her.
"Here's looking at you, kid," she said smoothly before turning on her pin-point sharp heel and stalking back toward her desk. Mike blinked.
"I think Donna just left me for you," Harvey told him with a smile. Mike nodded. "Let's go, rookie. Time to get some food into you before the shock wears off. You're going to crash hard."
Mike winced at the wording, but followed Harvey into the elevator. They walked to Harvey's apartment because Mike took one look at a taxi and appeared to fight the urge to vomit. He walked on the side closest to the road and clutched at Harvey's sleeve each time they reached a crosswalk, as if he didn't trust him enough to cross it safely by himself.
Back at Harvey's apartment, he force fed Mike three slices of pizza and a banana. Satisfied his rookie would make it through the afternoon, he grabbed himself a glass of scotch and Mike a beer (he kept it there for Mike, God forbid the kid ever find out). Once they were sitting on the couch, Mike began to twitch again. He tugged on his sleeves, ran his hands over his suit pants and toed off his shoes. Harvey sighed.
"Would you like a fresh set of clothes?"
Mike stared at him. He nodded, turning pink. Harvey brought him a pair of pajama pants and a Harvard t-shirt, well aware of the fact that Mike was probably just uncomfortable in his stiff and confining work clothes. He handed the t-shirt and pants to his associate, who clearly had no qualms about stripping down in front of his boss or all of New York City, judging by the floor-to-ceiling windows of Harvey's apartment.
"Mike, there's a bathroom down the hall," Harvey chuckled. Then he noticed Mike's chest. He stopped chuckling immediately. "What happened to you?"
Mike unconsciously traced the six inch scar down his sternum, but the others that littered his torso, arms, and back were left open to Harvey's eyes. He counted eleven of varying sizes, from a little over and inch to maybe just shy of four. They were of all shapes, too. Long and thin, jagged and round, some pink and some whiter than Mike's skin.
"The accident," Mike tells him without discomfort. "When I was eleven."
"You were there?"
"In the car? Yes."
Harvey's heart sank because both times he'd heard the story of Mike's parents' death, it sounded like Mike wasn't there. He'd heard it from Mike once and been told that his parents were rushing home to him because he was sick. He'd heard it from Donna once, too, who told him that Mike had just said it was a drunk driver. He'd never thought…
"I'm sorry. I always thought you were at home."
"It's easier to let people think that," Mike admitted. "They treat you differently when they find out that you're the kid who was stuck in the back seat while his parents died in front of him."
"I won't."
"I know."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Mike pressed his lips together tightly, the surrounding skin turning white from the pressure. His shoulders relaxed and he sighed.
"Yeah," he confessed, flopping down beside Harvey on the couch. "It was October 14th, 1992. It was 10:34pm and it was raining. It was on the corner of 36th and Lex, where we were coming home from Stern College for Women, where my mom worked. We'd been out really late at a restaurant celebrating my dad's promotion and she had stopped to pick up paperwork to do over the weekend. We'd only been in the car about a minute and a half when a drunk driver ran a red and t-boned our Camry. It was a black F250. A 1988 model. When everything stopped being so damn loud, I could see my dad was halfway out the driver's side window and my mom had a – a pole through her side. I don't know what it was from."
Harvey closed his eyes and let Mike scoot closer to him on the couch. He paused for a moment to think about what a curse Mike's mind would have been in that situation. He'd been just a kid, barely eleven-years-old, and unable to forget a single detail about the horrific death of his parents.
"I wasn't wearing my seatbelt when it happened and flew out the window. I got pinned between the bumper and a lamp post. It crushed my chest in. I had to have open heart surgery."
"Fuck, Mike, I never knew."
"I never told."
They were silent for a few moments before Mike broke down into tears, head hung between his knees as he gripped his hair. The sounds he made twisted in Harvey's heart like a knife.
"She was alive, you know," Mike said wretchedly. "My mom. She was alive for a few minutes before the police got there. She kept screaming for me. I couldn't answer her because I couldn't breathe. She died think – thinking that I was dead, too."
"Mike…"
"I was so afraid today," Mike sobbed. "I just kept thinking…I can lose someone else like that. I can't do it."
"I'm okay, Mike," Harvey said softly, resting a hand on Mike's shaking shoulder. Mike leaned into the touch and took a deep breath.
"I know. I know," he said tremulously. "Thank God."
He wiped at his face furiously and then, "I love you, you know. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me."
That took Harvey a little by surprise, not that he'd ever admit to such a thing. But he leaned back into the couch and processed. He was two seconds from lying his ass off and living the rest of his life in a fraudulent happily-ever-after with Mike just so he wouldn't break the poor kid's heart any more than it already was.
"God, Harvey, not like that," Mike chuckled through his tears. "Oh, fuck, your face! Priceless. I meant that you're like this stabilizing influence I never had. Like a brother, or something."
Brothers. Yeah. He could work with brothers. He smirked at Mike.
"Does this mean I can tease you mercilessly, embarrass you in front of your colleagues, and order you around?" he asked sarcastically. "Oh, wait. I do that anyway."
"Oh, you're a regular comedian."
Harvey just grinned down at the tear-streaked, too-young face of his associate and clapped a hand onto Mike's back.
"Here's the deal, kid," he told him. "I'm going to be whatever you need, okay? Because you're whatever I need all day, every day at the office. So if you need anything, ever, you call me."
"That was almost sweet."
"It's quid pro quo. Nothing sweet about it."
"Keep telling yourself that, old man."
"Old man?" Harvey repeated, affronted. Mike smirked. "You talkin' to me?"
"Oh, for –" Mike rolled his eyes and shoved Harvey's shoulder. "You and your clichéd movie quotes."
"You got a better one for this situation?"
"Yeah, Dead Poet's Society."
"Let's have it, then," Harvey demanded. Mike leaned back into the couch and for a moment, they were just two guys sitting on a couch quoting movies.
"Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary."
Harvey smiled. "I'll do you one better."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," he grinned. "Listen to me, mister. You're my knight in shining armor. Don't you forget it. You're going to get back on that horse, and I'm going to be right behind you, holding on tight, and away we're gonna go, go, go!"
"Am I the knight in shining armor here or am I Katherine Hepburn?"
Harvey shot him a look. Mike sighed.
"Katherine Hepburn, it is, then."
Harvey squashed the rush of joy he felt at having Mike sitting beside him, quoting movies, and learning a little more about his past. He knew then. He knew what his favourite thing about Mike was.
It was his ability to wear his heart on his sleeve and make other people's lives better for it without letting himself look weak.
Mike was one of a kind.