This is my first time in the Suits Fanfiction, and I'm not really sure where this came from. I know that I caused myself emotional pain writing it though, so sorry about that.
Deathfic ahoy, beware.
The first time Harvey gets any indication that something is wrong with Mike is when the kid walks into his office and his eyes clench for a moment at the change in lighting. It's easy to brush off, being half six in the evening and Mike had been there for going on eleven hours already. Headaches are common when you work long hours in high stress situations like they do.
He tries to convince himself that Mike's increasingly frequent headaches and the few times he's been caught getting sick in the bathroom aren't concerning him, instead trying to believe they are as a result of the insane hours they have been putting in for the newest big client, until Donna closes the door behind her and takes a seat at his desk. Something she only does when she is concerned, or asking for a raise.
"What can i do for you?" Harvey asks with a smirk, putting his pen down because Donna demands nothing less than his full, undivided attention.
"Mike-"
"Is currently at work in the file room, or at least, he should be." He cuts her off, causing her to scowl at him harshly.
"Was in the bathroom ten minutes ago throwing up and groaning like his head was about to implode." She stares at him, trying to convey her worry through her always expressive eyes. It would be admitting something he doesn't like to admit to, but he can feel something akin to worry forming in his stomach.
"Again? What did he say this time?" The last few times he'd been caught he'd brushed it off as a rough night, or food poisoning, or the patented Mike Ross 'I'm fine' bullshit line.
"Nothing, he just got out of there and went back to the file room. I tried to ask, but he just brushed past me. Harvey-" Donna leans forward in her chair. "Something is wrong with him. Fix it."
It results in another stare-off until he relents and nods, and Donna stands and goes back to her desk. A few signatures on the bottom of a file and he follows her out, heading towards the file room to find Mike and figure out what the hell was going on.
A walk through the associate's bullpen reveals titters about how tired Mike looked, how maybe he wasn't cut out for the job. He even encountered a hushed 'maybe that's Harvey on his way to fire him right now!' as he passes through. It makes him angry, the disrespect Mike is put through by his peers on a daily basis. It brings out a protective side he hadn't known existed for anyone but Donna and his younger brother.
Mike isn't in his usual spot when Harvey finally gets to the room of dusty, dirty boxes. He isn't hunched over a file at the well-lit table in the back of the room, isn't hovering at the copy machine. It takes five minutes of searching the isles before he comes across the curled up form of his associate in the dark corner of the very last row.
"Mike?" Harvey is frozen about halfway down the row of boxes, unsure of what to do. He only gets a pained moan in response and it kicks him back into gear, urging him down the row until he is crouched beside his associate.
"Mike, what's wrong?"
"Harv-" Mike cuts off with a whimper, clutching at his head tighter as Harvey reaches out a puts a hand on the other mans shoulder.
"Hey, i can't do anything until you tell me what's going on? Mike?" There are many aborted, half-assed movements until Mike is somewhat sat up, panting and leaning back against the wall. He is pale, sweating, still pressing the palm of his hands into his eye sockets and scratching at his scalp with his fingertips. The strain of even sitting up is showing, as Mike rocks, trembling and shaking, even sitting against the concrete wall. There are tears on his associates cheeks, and so much anguish in his eyes when he raises them to squint at Harvey that it makes a knot of fear clench in his stomach.
"Hospital." Is all Mike manages to choke out before his eyes roll back and he starts slipping to the side. Harvey manages to catch him before his head hits the floor, phone out of his pocket and calling for help the moment he has Mike propped up somewhat on his lap.
The operator tells him the ambulance will be there in ten minutes.
Harvey tells them to be quicker.
The doctors and nurses won't say anything to him, or Donna when she turns up, about what is going on with Mike. They had demanded symptoms and times from him when they had first arrived but he had been left in a waiting room ever since. That was two hours ago, and the need for information is becoming overwhelming.
Donna has dragged him into a seat, clasping one of his hands between both of hers, by the time a doctor emerges.
"Harvey Specter?" The doctor who rushed away with Mike unconscious on a bed is stood in the doorway to the wards, clipboard in hand and looking around the waiting room. Harvey is out of his chair the moment he see's him, striding over with Donna close on his heels.
"That's me. Where's Mike?" The doctor, who introduces himself as Dr. Mitchelson gives him a sympathetic smile and tells him Mike has been asking for him. They are lead along a white, sterile corridor and into a lift, heading for the fifth floor, Donna still with them like an unspoken acceptance.
"I have to warn you, Mike isn't looking too good right now. He says you can be a hardass, but i need you to go easy on him." He wonders when, between admittance, waking up and being checked out, Mike had the time to have a casual discussion with his doctor about Harvey, but nods in agreement anyways and steps through the door as the doctor opens it for them. He doesn't follow him through, just closes the door behind him with a nod to Mike and leaves them too it.
His associate is pale and fragile looking, swallowed in blankets and a wide bed. There are two IV's in his arms, a heart monitor beating off to his right and a nasal cannula across his face. He has never looked more vulnerable, more tired and young as he does right now. Donna sighs sadly, clicking her way across the room to hover over him, brushing his sweaty hair away from his head.
"You gave us a scare, kiddo." She smiles down at him, getting a apologetic turn of his mouth in return.
"Sorry." Mike murmurs, voice croaky. Another sigh escapes Donna as she sits on his bedside and takes one of Mike's hands in hers, like she had with Harvey not ten minutes ago.
"Just don't do it again." Mike nods his agreement to her, but it's not particularly convincing, before he glances over at Harvey, still frozen halfway into the room.
"Can you give us a minute?" He asks Donna, who gives Harvey a glance as well before agreeing and hopping down, pressing a kiss to Mike's forehead and declaring she is going for coffee.
"What's going on?" Harvey asked softly, moving to sit in the chair beside Mike's bed. The associate had watched him all the way to the chair, tired, pain filled eyes following his every move before they turned to stare at the white wall opposite his bed.
"I'm sick." Mike tells him, like it isn't the most obvious this.
"Well, yeah Mike. That's a given, since we're in a hospital." He replies, the humour meant to lace his words falling flat.
"Really sick, Harvey." Mike's voice is small, childish. There is a part of Harvey that wants to tell Mike to cut it out, get back to being the most intelligent, annoying associate he's even had the inconvenient pleasure of hiring. There is a bigger part though, that wants to pulls Mike to him, hide him away and safe from the world and all its dangers.
"How sick?" Harvey manages to whisper out, trembling hands stuffed into his jacket pocket to hide them.
"I'm dying." Mike replies, voice breaking. He turns to look at Harvey with tears in his eyes. "Pineoblastoma. Terminal, inoperable, aggressive brain cancer. Most common in children, really."
Harvey leaves.
He walks, and walks, and keeps on walking. Harvey isn't proud of leaving the hospital, but the moment the words were out of Mike's mouth he just couldn't be there.
It had to be wrong. Intelligent, remarkable, infinitely young Mike could not be dying. Not of brain cancer. Not at all.
Harvey finds himself back at the office, sitting at his desk with no real recollection of how he got here. When he comes back to himself, a check to his phone shows fifteen missed calls and nine texts from Donna which he is scared to open, and Jessica is stood in his doorway watching him with concern.
"How's Mr. Ross doing?" Jessica asks, coming further into his office.
"Dying." He replies coldly. Jessica stops where she is, head cocked sideways like she is trying to figure out whether he is being over dramatic or telling the truth. Whatever is in his face, in his voice, in the trembling of his hands must give her an answer as she moves further into the room, takes the same seat Donna had taken that morning.
It felt like a lifetime ago. Finding Mike in that room. Like ten years had passed since his associate being unconscious to him being marked for death.
"Of what?" Jessica prods gently, watching Harvey with a guarded expression, like she isn't sure whether he is going to break on her.
"Brain cancer." He chuckles mirthlessly. "Of all the things." He breathes out, and then there are tears streaming unbidden down his face and Jessica's arms wrapped around his shoulder's.
It's the only time he cries between the day he finds out Mike is sick and the day Mike dies.
Once Harvey had pulled himself together, thanked Jessica for her help in his embarrassment and cleaned up a bit, he was ready to confront the biggest challenge he might have ever faced.
He sent Donna a text, telling her he was sorry and he'd be back in a couple of hours. She made him feel guilty by telling him Mike was still crying.
He told her he would be there in an hour.
Harvey filled the time with research. Symptoms, causes, treatments. Anything and everything.
It didn't look good. And neither did Mike, when he returned forty five minutes after texting Donna with an apology and printed pages of treatment options.
Mike shoots them all down.
Experimental operations? Risk to his memory.
"It's all i have, Harvey. I can't risk it."
Chemotherapy and Radiotherapy? Would just prolong the inevitable.
"The chemicals just kill off cells, to slow down the process of already dying. So much pain for the same end result. What's the point in that?"
"How long until the inevitable without treatment, Mike?"
"The doctor says i have about four months before my motor functions fail. After that, about two. So, maybe six months at best."
"Fuck."
Mike leaves the hospital two days later, after a platelet infusion and being loaded up with enough painkillers to put down an horse.
They don't talk about treatment again.
Mike lasts another month at work, staying in Harvey's office with a very minimal work load. Donna mothers him, Jessica and Louis look at him with pity and sympathy. Since Rachel found out, she hasn't been anywhere near Mike without a look of pain and anguish on her face, and these days she avoids him. Harvey wants to hate her for it, but Mike tells him he understands, so he leaves it alone.
After that, Mike's sight is too blurry, he see's double and constantly has headaches and light sensitivity. Harvey visits him every night once he leaves the office, reads case files to him and helps Mike eat and get to bed properly, gives him his evening painkillers.
It works for a while, until Mike falls and Harvey comes around an hour later to see Mike covered in bruises all along his left side that appear much too easy. Mike tells him he needs another platelet transfusion. They go to the hospital, and when Mike is released, he moves in with Harvey without argument.
It's difficult, looking after a man who is slowly, oh so slowly, wasting away right in front of you. A month after Mike had moved in with Harvey, three months after Mike had collapsed in the file room, he has a feeding tube inserted because Mike throws up anything he eats. And he hardly ate at all anyway.
There are nurses in twice a day, administering Mike's controlled drugs. Namely- morphine. They had talked over end of life care, moving him to a hospice. They had refused, and Harvey had organised with the local cancer trust to send trained professionals out instead of taking Mike to them.
Between himself and Donna, they had all of Mike's other needs covered. Harvey's office was converted into a spare room, new air filters and clean equipment included. Harvey helped the poor kid bath when he became too weak to do it all by himself, and Donna read to him, helped him change for bed, coerced him into a wheelchair and took him to the top of the empire state building.
Four months after the file room incident, Mike discovers he can't stand by himself at all. He tries to get out of bed one morning only to have his legs collapse right underneath him.
Harvey takes him to the hospital. Mike is given another transfusion, offered chemotherapy once again, and then discharged when Mike refuses.
They still don't talk about treatment.
Or anything else important, really. Not the elephants sitting in the room. One labelled 'Mikes imminent death' and the other 'unresolved feelings between a man with cancer and his boss'.
One of those, they should probably talk about, the other would be cruel to admit to. This close to losing Mike, Harvey doesn't think he could take knowing what they could have been, if this hadn't happened.
Two weeks after that, Mike can no longer hold a pen. His pain levels are impossible to manage, and he no longer gets out of bed.
Harvey takes a leave of absence from the office, sits with Mike as much as he can. Reads to him, asks him questions, tries to keep that wonderful, impossible memory alive for as long as he can.
It doesn't work. Mike forgets the name of his nurses, first. Then his Grammy's real first name. It's not the big, important things, but it's enough for someone who has never forgotten a thing in his life.
It's been exactly five months and fifteen days when Mike calls Harvey into his room. He has managed to sit up slightly, and his eyes are brighter than Harvey has seen them in what feels like forever.
"What's wrong?" Harvey asks quietly, checking over the equipment to look for any differences. Mike's blood pressure is a little low, his heart beat a little fast, but nothing too bad. He sits in the chair by Mike's bed, takes the hand that his associate manages to extend to him.
"Not gunna make six months, Harv." Mike tells him.
"Yes you will." Harvey insists, clutching tighter at Mike's hand before remembering that this kid bruises so easily now. "You will, don't say that." He hates that his voice is breaking, he won't let the tears in his eyes fall, but the lump in his throat is hard to talk past.
"It's okay." Mike tells him. Head back on his pillow, eyes closed. "It's okay, Harvey. It won't hurt anymore." Harvey has nothing to say to that, instead closing his own eyes. He brings Mike's hand up to his mouth, presses the fingertips against his lips in an imitation of a kiss.
"It's okay." Mike tells him again. He sounds sleepy.
"Mike." Harvey chokes out, dropping his head down so that his forehead is pressed against Mike's cold, thin hand now.
"You know, right?"
"Please don't." Harvey tells him.
"You know i love you." A pained noise escapes Harvey, but he still doesn't cry. Instead, raises himself up and brushes Mike's thin hair away from his forehead, he presses a long, gentle kiss against Mikes clammy skin as he fights with his emotions.
"You don't have to say it. I know you do to Harvey. I know you do." Mike murmurs, and Harvey hates him a little bit. Hates him for saying it when they've been avoiding it for months. Saying it when they both know there is no time to do anything about it, no time to make up for all the things they haven't said or done. Hates Mike for being braver than he is, for being able to say it.
"Go to sleep." He whispers against Mike's hairline, mouth still pressed to his skin. There is a murmur of agreement from Mike as his eyes fall shut again, and Harvey pulls away reluctantly. He watches his associate sleep for a while longer before he can't anymore, before the slow, shallow rise and fall of Mike's chest is too much. Harvey drinks too much scotch that night, falls asleep on the sofa with the sound of an old baseball game on the TV.
Harvey wakes up in the morning.
Mike doesn't.