A.N. Wrote the start of this out of boredom in my 3rd block, while eating chicken tenders and talking about prom with a couple of friends. Don't own Suits :[BTW! I know sociopaths are connected to killing and blablabla...Harveys my GOD, so ignore all the faults in this fic about the usual concepts when it comes to sociopaths. This is just a fun little ficlet, so yeah. :) ENJOY!
Harvey doesn't care about anyone.
No, really.
He doesn't.
He's a sociopath. So it's not that he doesn't care because he doesn't want to. He's simply not capable of it. Of course, in a job interview one doesn't say 'I'm an Aquarius; my hobbies include reading and golfing and oh, I'm a sociopath.' Instead, he chooses to say he doesn't care.
Because he doesn't.
Up until recently it didn't matter to others that he didn't care.
Jessica was impressed by his casual indifference and his ability to manipulate their firms' opponents. Louis begrudgingly respected the senior partner for his case success rate, and tried to one up him on various occasions.
And Donna-Donna had Harveys entire life in a planner stuck between a lipstick and a can of pepper spray inside of her purse-she was his version of God and they both knew it.
So one day, right after making senior partner, he's told to hire an associate; and Harvey could not have dreaded the idea more. He was a loner-some might call him anti-social even. Having others brought him down, it was rare anyone could keep up with him. So out of the bunch of Harvard drones, nervously pulling at their suits, adjusting their ties, sweating like pigs out there, he chose the anomaly.
He chose Mike Ross.
Mike was quirky. Yes, that was the word. Quirky.
Mike liked to smile and laugh and fist bump and indulge in back and forth banter. Mike looked like a mix between a small puppy and a college undergraduate. Mike rode a bicycle to work at a prestigious law firm and ate lunch on the run all of the time. Mike was different.
Not because Mike was completely deaf from a car accident that had occurred more than a decade ago, either. The kid could read lips so expertly he rarely needed to use sign language to communicate amongst his peers-his speech was sometimes an octave too high or too low, but he usually managed to correct that if Harvey pointed it out to him.
No, the thing that made him stand out so much was that Mike cared. Openly.
Not only about the people involved in their cases, but about Harvey.
Mike brought him slices of pizza from that deli around the corner Harvey really enjoyed when he had neglected to eat due to a pressing case at hand. Whenever Harvey fell asleep sitting upright, uncomfortably on his couch in the middle of reading several documents, he'd wake up a few hours later, in his office, laying in the fetal position, shoes tucked beneath his desk so that he was comfortable, a suit jacket-a familiar suit jacket with a familiar scent-always draped over his upper body for warmth. His papers would be stacked neatly on his desk, the important parts high lighted in neon yellow for him.
Harvey chooses never to acknowledge any of this, however. Because he doesn't care and after two months Mike Ross should know that.
Donna thinks their relationship is adorable, and she says as much.
"Love the homo-eroticism." the redhead says off-handedly when the two men come out of Harveys office one day, personal space not a factor in the least as they quote Star Trek to each other heatedly.
Harvey scrunches up his nose, not at the comment, but at the fact that she interrupted their debate, and Mike just smiles unabashed, before excusing himself, "Pro bono case.", and he lightly taps Harveys shoulder, a subtle 'good bye', and runs off to the court house to meet with the client.
"Your bromance is epic." Donna tells Harvey once Mike is out of sight.
Harvey just tilts his head, raises one brow, and offers to pick her up a latte on his way back from lunch. Instead of prayers, it was Starbucks coffee that kept his God happy and attentive, he knew.
Harvey didn't seek out intimate relationships with people. No, scratch that. He did. He sought out sex. But that was all it was; a long string of one night stands with women whose names he couldn't remember in the morning.
He didn't seek out relationships that required work. Like the one he had with Mike. They'd gone out for drinks one night at a tavern and Mike had introduced Harvey to one of the women eying him as his "friend", and even though that womans' tongue had been savoring his mouth for the better part of that night, Harvey had kept shooting speculative glances over at Mike and his own date. No one had ever called him that before.
Harvey does not dwell on it though. Because he doesn't care, and he thinks he's made that quite clear around the office, until Mike starts badgering him about it.
"Awe, you so care." he says one late night, stacking files on Harveys desk in alphabetical order for lack of any real work to do after their last big case.
Harvey doesn't bother looking up from his card game on the computer, just automatically replies. "Not even sort of." in a monotone.
"Oh c'mon. We just saved an entire neighborhood of families from getting evicted from their homes! All those stories on the stand? Heart-breaking!" Mike goes on, then pauses. "You know, if you had a heart in place of that scary black hole in your chest." he deadpans.
Harvey grins. "Glad to know you're finally getting it."
Mike rolls his eyes. "You're so full of yourself."
"Rightly so." is all Harvey says, before standing up after a long and stressful day in court and offering Mike a ride home. "Don't need you getting mugged riding that dingy bike of yours this late at night."
"'Cause you care?" Mike persists, as the two walk side by side out of Pearson Hardman, where a dutiful Ray is waiting for them by the limo.
"Of course not." Harvey denies truthfully. "If you go home tonight on that contraption the percentages of you getting mugged and possibly killed in some dark alley on a Friday night are ridiculously high. Do you realize what a pain in the ass it would be for me to find yet another associate? A huge pain." he answers his own rhetorical question, thanks Ray when the door is opened for him and slams it shut, telling Mike with a cheeky smirk to get in through the other side.
Mike falls asleep two minutes into the car ride and Ray can't help but smile warmly at the sight in his mirror. The kid has a tendency to grow on people, and Ray was no exception. It was the Mike Effect. He and Donna were hooked. Harvey was starting to warm up to the young associate though, Ray could see that much.
"Mike, wake up." Harvey forgets he's deaf for a minute and turns his eyes upward at himself. He shakes the blond awake and watches him yawn and stretch exaggeratedly before he opens his large owlish eyes and blinks up at him.
"This isn't my apartment." he says, a few octaves too low so that Harvey has to lean in to hear him properly.
"No shit Einstein. It's my condo. You're bike is still back at the building. Stay the night; it'll be more convenient for all of us when Ray comes to pick us up tomorrow morning." Harvey doesn't wait for a reply, simply gets out of the car and expects Mike to follow. And he does and he thinks it's basically the best decision he's ever made in his life.
Three month later Harvey tears up Mikes apartment contract, and tells the landlord the movers will be back shortly for his associates' things.
Mike is outraged. "Harvey, you should have asked me!"
"I assumed anyone with half a brain would rather live in a condo than in that crummy sad state of a neighborhood, in a broken down apartment." Harvey argues, standing his ground. Because he's right. He's always right. Even if he didn't go about it nicely.
"It was my broken down apartment, in my crummy sad state of a neighborhood! We've been dating for three months, Harvey, we never even discussed me moving in with you." Mike flops down on Harveys couch in his living room, feeling as if this conversation is absolutely fruitless. Trying to get through to the older man was like smashing your head against a solid titanium steel door and expecting to make a sizable dent. Mike sighs loudly and rubs the heels of his palms against his eyes.
Harvey frowns and shoves them out of the way, saying, "You can't understand me if you're covering your eyes like that." but it's more in the form of a question.
Mike looks up at his unofficial boyfriend of three months. "You're giving me a head ache you inconsiderate jerk. You don't just move someone out of their apartment all wily nilly and expect them not to be angry." he explains, feeling like he's attempting his best to tell a toddler why it's wrong to eat glue.
Harvey looks a little bemused for a moment. "You're always complaining about the place breaking down. Two weeks ago after that freak storm hit Manhattan, you came into the office half an hour late whining on and on about the ceiling in your shit apartment dripping puddles of water from the rain onto your hardwood floors. A month before that you walked into my office half-battered after a run in with the defective elevator in your apartment. A few days before-"
"Alright alright, I get it. Still, I don't see why you would-"
"Because I wanted to. I want you here all the time. It's a hassle having to come pick you up all the time. You're more useful to me here." Harvey interrupts.
"You're such a romantic." Mike smiles, because in Harvey-dialect everything he just said summed up to: 'You've become an important fixture in my life and I kind of sort of need you.' So he gets up and kisses a befuddled Harvey senseless until they can't breath right.
Not much changes after the couple moves in.
Donna notices the change immediately though.
She notes the fact that the two get into work at the same time now a days. When Mike accidentally spills the contents of his messenger bag in front of her desk in a rush one day she helps him gather his things and comes across a key that looks familiarly like the one on Harveys baseball key-chain strapped discreetly to the loop of his pants under his expensive suit jacket. She doesn't say anything though, just smiles sweetly at the pup, sends him on his way, and gets on her phone.
OMG why did you not tell me?
Wed, Sep. 27 8:23AM
From: Donna
Harvey raises his eye brows at this text, looks up from his phone and across the room, through the glass doors, and at the red head with a questioning 'have you finally snapped under all the pressure?' look on his face.
Donna looks back, phone in her hand, points to it with out a word and turns back around, pretending to do busy work.
Harvey sighs and rolls his eyes.
Tell you what?
Wed, Sep. 27 8:25AM
From: Harvey
You and Mike! I knew you guys were doing the horizontal mambo, but LIVING together? How's that working out? I bet he's great in bed... ;D
Wed, Sep. 27 8:29AM
From: Donna
He's a regular Martha Stewart. And he really is. Would ROCK your world.
Wed, Sep. 27 8:30AM
From: Harvey
From his desk, Harvey grins when the redhead squeals in her seat and honest to God giggles like an adolescent school girl.
"I'm kind of in love with you right now!" Donna shouts into his office.
Mike watches the spectacle as he comes in through the elevator. He can't hear a single thing but it's clear Donna can't stop laughing, face red, and Harvey's in his office grinning like mad, and Mike has a strange feeling he's somehow involved, but shrugs it off and continues to read the current case files for a loophole.
And they called him a kid.
A.N. This was just for fun. No real plot. Just this... Review anyway? Might write more of this, just to like...specify he's a mild-mannered sociopath living with a deaf associate who's head over heels for him, if anyone's interested. (I know that probably doesn't exist but it's fan FICTION so roll with it, yeah? :( Make Harvey our one NONE serial killer sociopath! :D)