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It is 8:47 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, and Mike Ross is already on track to have what might be the worst day of his life. And yes, that’s counting the day he almost walked straight into a drug-busting operation with a briefcase full of bud. That had actually turned out pretty well for the overall trajectory of his life and his wardrobe, now with a 500% increase in neatly ironed two-piece suits (Harvey had laughed in his face when he’d asked when three-pieces were in his future).
The pain had started last night as an irritating stabbing sensation in the lower right side of his stomach, something that Mike chalked up to the typical unexplainable aches of a body running on an ill-advised amount of sleep. He took a Tylenol, sucked it up, and went to bed at the reasonable hour of one a.m., hoping that the solution was sleeping it off.
The solution was not sleeping it off. In fact, the morning had brought with it a new throbbing that accompanied the sharp stabbing pains spiking whenever he moved wrong. It had made getting ready seem like an insurmountable task, but he and Harvey were closing a deal at 8:45 a.m. sharp. If he had called in sick, he might as well have kissed his job goodbye.
Now, in a pristine Pearson Hardman conference room, Mike is actively fighting for his life. Fuck Harvey, he thinks, gritting his teeth and funneling all concentration towards not letting out a pathetic squeak of agony escape through his bitten lips. The pain has climbed steadily from a moderate five when he’d shrugged his jacket on an hour ago to an all-encompassing 9 now, bad enough that he can’t make out whatever legal jargon Harvey is spewing and instead can only identify the steady cadence of his business voice.
The man in question is sitting right next to him, their elbows almost touching, and going on and on about covering bases and circling back to areas of liability while Mike is on the verge of slow, painful death. Fuck Harvey, and fuck the client, and fuck the millions of dollars on the line, because holy fuck his stomach hurts.
There’s a cold sweat breaking on his left temple and he’s one wrong move away from vomiting all over his own cheap second-hand dress shoes. He can only imagine the looks Harvey is shooting him in between subtle flattering comments about Mr. Wilson and the simply exquisite nature of his pocket watch, but he can’t find it in himself to care. Really, the only thing he can focus on is making sure the bacon egg and cheese he’d scarfed down this morning stays in his stomach rather than ending up somewhere…less pleasant.
“Isn’t that right, Mike?” Harvey’s voice breaks into Mike’s inner monologue, which is less of a monologue and more of a mantra that consists of two words: Don’t. Puke.
Mike swallows the spit gathering in his mouth. The pain in his lower abdomen is worse than anything he’s ever experienced in his life. Post-Taco Bell bathroom trips are child’s play in comparison. This? It’s a hot knife twisting in his organs, tearing and cauterizing just to tear all over again.
“Ahem. I said, isn’t that right, Mike?” Okay. That’s Harvey, again, decidedly less happy. A Harvey repeating himself is not a Harvey Mike wants to be around, just out of self-preservation, so he musters up all the focus he can direct away from keeping his breakfast down, looks up to meet Harvey’s sharp, disapproving gaze, and promptly keels over sideways, sliding off his chair and falling onto the (thankfully carpeted) floor.
The last thing he sees before losing consciousness is Harvey’s face, vaguely distorted. Mike manages to think that his delirium must be the explanation for why Harvey looks almost concerned, his mouth forming the shape of Mike’s name and his hands clutching Mike’s shoulders like a lifeline, before his brain logs off completely.
Mike registers two things: his alarm clock going off and a pressure digging into his nose bridge. Groaning, he reaches out with one hand, searching blindly for a snooze button. Instead, his arm, which feels conspicuously heavy, knocks into a metal bar. Ow.
…Sorry, what?
And now that he thinks about it, the beeping he hears is nowhere near the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive,” a.k.a. the ringtone he’s begrudgingly dragged himself out of bed to every day since junior year of high school. Instead, it’s a high pitched, clear tone that keeps a slow, steady beat.
It’s this revelation that finally prompts him to crack one eye open, a choice that he immediately regrets when he’s met with harsh fluorescent lights beaming like the sun straight into his pupils. He groans again. He’d complain, but he feels like someone dunked ten cotton balls in sewer water, wrung them out, and stuffed them into his mouth. In other words, he can’t.
Suddenly, mercifully, a cloud passes over the malevolent lighting. No, not a cloud. A shadow. A person.
“Sleeping Beauty finally wakes,” a voice comments drily.
“Harvey?” Mike tries to say. Instead, what comes out sounds more like ahh-ee? Oh well. His point seems to have gotten across anyway, going by the wry chuckle that emanates from the blurry figure leaning over him.
“The puppy’s awake,” Harvey says. His voice ricochets around Mike’s head like a ping-pong ball. Or a Frisbee. Dog analogies, you know. “Had a big day, didn’t you, champ?”
Mike furrows his brow. “What happened?” he tries to ask, but again, all he manages is a mess of sticky vowels. The oxygen mask strapped to his face is partly to blame, so he takes the same hand from earlier—hey look, there’s an I.V. stuck in it—and attempts to pull it away. A hand, Harvey’s hand, warm and calloused and large enough that it basically envelopes Mike’s in a single gesture, prevents him from messing with any equipment.
“Settle down, rookie. I’m gonna get one of the nurses in here. You just sit tight and don’t make a bigger mess than you already have.” Though the words are slightly acidic, Harvey’s voice is warm. If Mike didn’t know the man better, he’d use the word fond.
Mike wrinkles his nose and tries to speak again, enunciating the word carefully. “Woof.”
Harvey makes a sound like he’d been on the way to a laugh but took a U-turn back to his aloof persona before he got there. The hand over his disappears, and Mike mourns the loss a very moderate and normal amount.
The air moves as Harvey leaves his bedside, presumably to call a nurse. Mike would watch him, but his eyelids feel unbelievably heavy, like he’s been up for forty-eight hours studying for a case again instead of having just woken up five minutes ago.
He trusts Harvey to take care of things. Harvey always takes care of things. Don’t send a puppy, Harvey always says. Plus, Harvey can always wake Mike if he needs him.
It’s with faith in Harvey to clean up his mess that Mike lets himself drift back off into a dreamless, colorless sleep.
The second time Mike wakes up, it’s like being launched from a cannon straight into a circus of humiliation.
He keeps his eyes closed longer than it takes for him to return fully to the land of the living, because the drugs have worn off and he’s significantly more embarrassed this time around. Like, he’s talking an exponential increase. And he knows for a fact that Harvey’s still in the room—has he left at all between Mike’s interludes of lucidity? How long has he been out this time? And seriously, what the fuck happened?
He thinks back to his last clear memory…and shoots up in a panic, ripping the oxygen mask off his face. His abdomen flares with dull, throbbing pain, but he pays it no mind, because: “The deal!”
His eyes dart around the room, taking it in. Harvey’s sitting in the plastic chair parked up against a stark white wall, holding a Styrofoam cup of what Mike assumes is cheap, oily hospital coffee. Everything in the room is dripping in the fluorescent, medical-grade light he’s intimately familiar with from his hours spent at his grandmother’s bedside.
“What?” Actually, Harvey’s no longer sitting. He’d sprung up right when Mike had, phone shoved haphazardly into his pocket and expression spooked like he'd seen a ghost. Or been shocked out of reading e-mails by his bed-bound associate spouting nonsense.
“The—the deal,” Mike repeats, agitated. “Did we close it? This morning?”
Silence. The beeping from Mike’s vitals monitor continues steadily. Mike stares at Harvey. Harvey stares back. Mike doesn’t think he’s ever seen Harvey speechless before, but that’s the word he’d use now, as Harvey’s mouth opens and nothing comes out for a solid five seconds.
Finally, Harvey finds his voice. “You passed out in the middle of a conference room and you’re asking if we closed a deal?”
Mike blinks. “Um. Yes.”
“That’s your first question. Not, what happened? Or, where am I?”
“...Is that a no?”
“Your priorities are in complete disorder,” Harvey grinds out, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Mr. Wilson agreed to reschedule, as any reasonable person would when we were in the middle of rushing you into an ambulance.”
“Ambulance?” Mike looks down, finally cataloging the pain in his body. He’s in a papery hospital gown, and when he lifts it to try and identify the throbbing ache in his stomach, he discovers an angry red line slashed diagonally under his belly button, cut through with stitches. “Did I get surgery?”
“Your appendix exploded in the middle of a meeting,” Harvey deadpans. “Yes, you got surgery.”
Mike inspects the incision a little further. Notes the slight bruising around the wound. Looks up again. Grins.
“Spit it out,” says Harvey warily. “You look like you’re gonna explode next if you don’t say whatever nonsense you’ve got on your mind out loud.”
“So you do care,” Mike crows, feeling disproportionately victorious considering he’s just had a life-threatening medical event. Whatever; in this line of work, he’s learned to take his wins where he can get them.
Harvey just gapes at him, incredulous. “I—what?”
“You give a shit. Rushed me to the hospital and everything.”
“It’s called not letting an employee die on the floor at a company I have stakes in. Can you imagine the hours of paperwork?” Harvey shoots back, but Mike can tell his heart’s not in it.
“Yeah, yeah.” Smugly, Mike watches Harvey’s throat bob as he swallows. “Deny it all you want. I know the truth. Harvey Specter’s got a heart.”
“Bite me,” Harvey says. It’s the equivalent of a surrender when speaking with Harvey, who knows Mike knows it. He’s letting Mike have the win this time.
“Maybe I will,” Mike says mildly, settling back into the pillows. He moves slowly now, trying not to jostle his wound. “Since I’m a puppy and all.” When there’s no immediate sardonic response, he glances over at Harvey, who’s migrated over to his bedside again. Instead of the cocksure look that’s Harvey’s default, there’s a crease that’s wormed its way in between his brows, one that Mike has to resist the urge to reach out to smooth away. Fuck. The drugs must still be lingering in his system. “What?”
“You should’ve said something.” Harvey’s voice is lower, closer to a murmur than his typical speaking voice. One of his big hands twitches where it rests on the railing, like he wanted to reach out but thought better of it.
“We were in the middle of something.” Mike tracks the movement in his peripheral vision. “What would I have said? ‘Let’s stop, my tummy hurts?’ I’m sure that would’ve gone over well with Mr. Wilson.” He snorts at the mental image. Forget a ruptured appendix; he’d have worse than that to worry about at the hands of Harvey Specter if he ever said something like that in front of a client.
Harvey blows out a sharp breath. Starts to say something, pauses, and instead settles on, “Some things are more important than the job.”
Pause. What?
“Did you just say ‘some things are more important than the job’?” Mike echoes back stupidly. Really not scoring any points in the whip-smart Harvard-trained associate category in this conversation, but he’s got leftover anesthesia to blame. Sue him.
Harvey raises an eyebrow. “What, are you hard of hearing?”
Mike shrugs. “Just never thought I’d hear those words coming out of your mouth.”
Harvey’s working something over in that brain of his—Mike can read it through the tick in his jaw, the bob of his Adam’s apple. Mike lets him chew on it, watches him turn it over in his head before he finally speaks again. “Scared the shit out of me.”
Okay. Not what Mike was expecting. A lecture, maybe. A light scolding on proper health maintenance in order to remain at optimal efficiency. This is something vulnerable, a soft side of Harvey he barely ever sees making a rare appearance. It’s something to be approached carefully, like one would a skittish animal.
“...I’m sorry.”
Harvey scrubs a hand over his face. He suddenly looks older, more tired. Not haggard, just closer to his real age, which is a decade greater than what Mike can boast. Usually, he carries himself with a sort of timeless swagger that prevents a person from placing his years too precisely: he looks young enough to think fast under pressure, but old enough to have the experience that clients want to rely on. Now, though, under the harsh hospital lighting, he looks less infallible. More real. An ache in Mike’s sternum yearns to reach out and touch his chest, or his shoulder.
“Don’t be. I just…” Harvey trails off, uncertain. This is the first time since they’ve met that Mike can recall seeing Harvey at a true loss for words. Not shocked or calculating, truly casting out a line for a way to express what needs to be said. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
Mike furrows his brow. “Okay, I’m not following.” Maybe he hit his head on the way down to the floor this morning, too, because nothing else can explain the glimmer of something in Harvey’s gaze, something that has the foolish romantic in Mike’s chest banging at his ribs to be let out. It’s a look that calls back to the countless times Harvey’s hand has lingered just a millisecond too long on Mike’s shoulder after dusting away invisible lint, or his steady, encouraging presence at Mike’s side when Mike stands to deliver an argument. It awakens the greedy voice inside Mike he’s tried too many times to beat into remission: maybe. Maybe. Maybe it can be more than just a fantasy.
Another silence as Harvey’s eyes trace Mike’s face. He can feel Harvey’s gaze like it’s a physical touch, as clear as if Harvey had reached out to caress his face with a hand. It draws a line from Mike’s face to the arm that’s laid protectively, albeit unconsciously, against his injured side. “God, Mike, what you do to me.”
Mike wishes he had a quip. Or a knife. Something to cut through the tension building between them. “What?” he murmurs. “What do I do to you, Harvey?”
Instead of answering, Harvey leans down, face level with Mike’s. They’re past anything that could be explained away as a concerned mentor watching over his protege. Mike can read the stories of hundreds of smirks and frowns carved into the corners of Harvey’s eyes and mouth. He can feel Harvey’s breath against his skin.
There’s a mole right above Harvey’s right eyebrow, stark and absolute, which is what Mike is looking at before Harvey’s eyes flick up to meet his, and oh, they’re kissing. Okay. Yep.
Harvey’s lips are irritatingly soft and taste like expensive lip balm, and it figures. He probably keeps a stick of it in every suit pocket like the pretentious bastard he is. He’s also a really fucking good kisser. Like, mind-blowing. Mike’s brain has to reboot before he figures out how to kiss back, and then, somehow, it gets even better. Like, finding-your-wallet-in-the-car-when-you-thought-you-lost-it good. First-bite-of-a-perfectly-cooked-steak-on-a-Friday-night good.
Harvey does a thing with his jaw, and Mike’s capacity for similes and metaphors flies out the window. A tongue traces the seam of his lips, easing them open before slipping into his mouth, and all higher brain function ceases to perform. All Mike can think about is how Harvey feels, how he smells, how he tastes, HarveyHarveyHarvey.
When they finally break apart for air, Mike’s chest heaving and Harvey without a single hair out of place as always, Mike swallows and says, “If I’d known all it took for you to do that was get myself hospitalized, you would’ve seen me in this stupid gown weeks ago,” and he watches the tired yet genuine smile bloom on Harvey’s face like tulips through hoarfrost.
“I’m gonna kiss you again,” says Harvey, leaning in.
“Yeah, okay,” breathes Mike. If he had a tail, it’d be wagging.
Their lips move against each others’ lazily, and it’s somehow even better than the first time. Harvey puts a warm hand on Mike’s jaw, guiding him gently, and Mike raises his free hand to fist in Harvey’s perfectly crisp white shirt.
“And, Mike?” murmurs Harvey against Mike’s mouth. He feels it more than hears it, but pulls back slightly nevertheless, giving Harvey a questioning look. Harvey licks his lips, lets his eyes flicker up and down Mike’s face. It sends a thrill through Mike’s body.
“Yeah?”
“Never pass out in front of a client.” Harvey nips at his bottom lip, sharp but playful. “Not an effective strategy. I can’t believe you need me to tell you that.”
Mike stifles a laugh. “Yes, sir.”