For a while Grammy just left it alone. She wasn't asking and I wasn't telling about my one…and hopefully only…actual heartbreak. She didn't ask how his eyes had rolled when I said I needed something more or how he had reacted when I gave him the ultimatum that we go past sex or he loses me. She never asked about how he put his image above my heart. Sure he could put everything on the line with Jessica, with his career for my career, but his private life… Harvey Specter was not gay.
Every kiss, every touch…every softly whispered praise as one hand held my hip down into his mattress and the other ran through my hair while sweat beaded on his collar bone and other unforgivable sins progressed. Lies. At least that was what I was going to chalk it up to.
But if I wasn't the liar that I've, somehow in my downward slope, become I would admit that he wasn't lying. Harvey Specter really did… really does love me. Just not enough. Not more than he loved himself. Who did he love more than himself though?
He was his own god.
Even though when I made just the exact right noise, bit down in the exact right way, whimpered at the proper moment, came when he said to, he would give me a look like I was his god or close enough to it.
But I knew the calm would end with Grammy.
"Michael?" she asked softly, easing into it. I looked up at her, reassuring her it was okay to ask, even though it wasn't. "Why, of all people, him?"
A smirk took over my face and I coughed out a laugh. Grammy never ceased to surprise me. That hadn't been what I was expecting her to ask. But I tried to answer anyway, leaving out the bits she wouldn't like, forgetting to add in the part that really didn't matter to anyone but me. "he was brilliant to say the least." I started, leaving out that on small occasions he would admit to being wrong, or not and then do something stupid and small and sweet to make up for it. "He was cool and suave." But no one else had ever seen him play air guitar in his boxers in his living room or stumble into a kiss or forget to button a button. And, even with all the girls he slept with, none of them knew how loud he snored, or how much he liked frozen dinners, or how much he actually hated Harvard. "He was sincere," not in the sweet way, in the way where he told you exactly what you needed to hear, he was always bluntly honest for your own good.
"He was a fraud." Somewhere along the lines my eyes had escaped her, traveling to the cufflink on my shirt that Harvey had bought for me, but at those words my eyes snapped back to hers.
"No." And even despite how angry I was that he had slipped away from me, that the small moments of intimacy had been stripped from my life, I knew I couldn't let anyone else think he was the bad guy. He wasn't. I had tried to force things to go my way, make him give something he wasn't ready to. He was an asshole, and yeah he forced clients into things, but he never forced me, not in our personal lives together to do anything that I wasn't ready for. Nothing. But, I had. "I was."
At work we acted just about normal, but the touching was gone. No more 'good boy's or 'puppy' analogies. I was his associate and nothing more. And then he slipped up. We slipped up. It happened in the file room at approximately 11:30 pm.
"Mike. Briefs. Where are they?"
"Black dresser, second drawer down." I responded instantly, smirking until I looked up at him, head cocked to the side lips parted the smallest amount and eyebrows pulled toward each other, and then I went flush, knowing I had struck a nerve.
"What?" he asked softly. "Did you really just… forget it. Those briefs you're working on where supposed to be on my desk…"
"Exactly two minutes ago. Why are you all hard pressed for this? You don't even need them until Wednesday. It's Saturday." I responded going back to our normal mocking and rude banter, trying to smooth things over. Harvey stared at me. Same expression as earlier. "Can you stop looking at me like that?"
"No." he replied keeping his mask on.
"What's wrong with you?" I asked. He stopped, turned on his heal and started out, but I rushed from my seat and beat him to the door. Harvey doesn't run. It's unbecoming.
"What?" I pressed.
"Stop it."
"What was that?"
"Mike." His voice was dangerous and I was in trouble.
"You're the one who taught me to press until it hurts. Well, it hurts doesn't it?" he looked away Harvey style, just above the head with a flick of his eyes and looked bored, then back to my face. "Admit it."
He leaned forward, finger running over my tie and locked eyes with me. "What exactly is it you want me to admit, Mike?" he loosened the tie a fraction. "That I miss how cool your skin is when we finish up and the air conditioning in my apartment hits the water on your skin, that I, by the way, made you sweat." a little looser, but I stood my ground. "Or the heat from your mouth wrapped around something other than your fucking highlighter, that time in my office." He smirked, knowing he was winning. I took a deep breath as he pulled the tie completely apart and let it hang around my neck. "Or the way I can make you scream and thrash and beg." He unbuttoned the top two buttons of my shirt. "Mike, yes, I miss the sex. I miss your body molding to mine. I miss the innuendos, the constant eye contact, and the touches you thought I didn't really think a lot about. I even miss how god damn needy you were." I swallowed as he leaned forward, just in reach, but still too far away. "But I also taught you not to fold when you're holding a pair of aces." He backed off, taking more than a couple steps away. "Move, Mike."
"Wait, what?"
"Move. It's not a hard command." Harvey reassured. "Puppy."
"What aces? You can't get anything out of this, you're not the one who wanted something else, you liked the way things were."
"I have my reasons."
"What?"
"When it gets bad enough, when you realize that you're thinking about me the second you slip inside Rachel the paralegal, when you realize you can't even get off without me, it'll hit you."
"I'm not sleeping with Rachel." I argued, trying to win the only battle I could.
"Really?" He asked like he wasn't aware and then smirked again. "You should try. She'd let you, and then you can get this out of your system, figure it out, and tell me what the real agreement you want to make about this" he gestured between the two of us "is."
"Harvey."
"Mike." He deadpanned back to me. "Or you can skip it, admit you were wrong, I'll tell you what really should've happened, and we'll go back to my place, I won't pretend to wine and dine you, and you'll fall asleep in my bed, where you should've been sleeping pre usual the past few weeks."
"You're not holding aces." I was hoping he was bluffing and me calling it wouldn't end up with him calling mine.
"I am." But he did and then pushed me softly, one handed from the door, laughed a little and walked out into the dark hallway.
"Cheater."
"I heard that, rookie."
"Mike, woah, slow down." Rachel gasped from where she was pressed half naked against her door. "Mike." She said again, and finally I looked at her. "What's with you? You're like an animal."
"Yeah." I said trying not to get distracted. I wasn't doing this because I wanted her I was doing it to prove a point to Harvey, that I didn't' have to think about him when I was with someone else, especially Rachel. Rachel was my friend, this was friend sex.
"Mike, hold on." I stopped kissing her neck and huffed out a breath. "Are you okay?" She asked softly her hands on my bare shoulders. No. I wasn't even hard. "We don't have to do this." I leaned back to look at her. "I get it. I've seen the looks." She knows about Harvey? "It's Jenny right?" a surprised laugh burst from my lips.
"No. not even close." I murmured pushing away from her and moving to pick my shirt up off the ground, throwing hers to her at the same time. "Please don't hate me for this."
"I could never hate you, Mike, especially not for this." I nodded, slipped my shirt on, kissed her long and slow and left, going the opposite way from my house, headed straight to Harvey's.
"So you took my advice?" Harvey asked after opening the door and looking at my rattled appearance. "Almost-sex looks good on you. Not as good as I look in you, but still good." I pushed my way into the apartment, walking straight to the counter and pouring a glass of whiskey, that would soon be left sitting.
"Harvey."
"You know, I could've saved you a lot of time and a poor girl's broken heart if you'd just…" zoning out.
"Harvey."
"But you just never listen to me…" still zoning.
"Harvey."
"We could've already taken care of you if…"
"Harvey!" I yelled. "I give." I finished more quietly as he stared at me.
"Good." He moved toward me, thrust me against the counter and his lips pressed firmly against mine.
"Harvey, tell me." I pushed him away.
"I don't need to." He admitted, moving back toward me, but I turned my face away.
"Yes you do."
"Fine, Mr. I-can't-figure-it-out. I told you that you would think about me when you tried to have sex with Rachel. So you went to have sex with her to prove me wrong, only to prove me right because you wanted so badly to prove me wrong that I ended up being all you could think about." He smirked. "you even get hard?"
"You planned this?" I ignored his question. But, no.
"I plan everything." He laughed. "Come on, Mike. Remember when we first met, what you said to me when I asked what you would do if I went with someone else? You said 'I'd say that's fair, sometimes I like to spend time with some people that aren't that bright, you know, just to see how the other half lives.' Well, now that you've spent your time with the not so bright people and have realized they just don't cut it, at least not after being with me…"
"You're an ass."
"You're easy."
"Find a new associate."
"Why, you'll never really quit."
"You wanna bet."
"I would say put your money where your mouth is, but right now, I want to put something else where your mouth is." The fighting, this is what made me want him in the first place. He leaned forward again, and this time I let him. His lips locked with mine and his hands rested on top of mine on the counters ledge. "Kiss me like you mean it." He murmured as he took a breath. I finally got involved, opening my mouth a little, battling with his tongue. And he moved his attention to my throat. I pushed him off a little. Wanting him to argue a little more. "what now."
"This doesn't fix anything."
"mike, we've been in a relationship from the first time we slept together. Apparently you're just a little slow on the up take."
"Then why did you end things."
"I wanted you to realize what you really had, not take it for granted. Because I didn't. I couldn't."
"That makes no sense."
"Think of it as a hostile take over."
"Don't lawyer me right now."
"Don't tell your boss what to do." He leaned in and I pushed him away, a question forming in my head.
"Wait, you said a pair of aces, what's the other ace?"
He genuinely smiled. "You still want me."
"That's weak, you may as well have just been putting in your ante."
"Want me to raise the stakes then?" He raised his eyebrows.
"What could you possibly do to raise the stakes?"
"Oh, I was thinking about going all in."
"Going all in?" I mocked.
"I love you."
Our eyes locked, intensity building, this was the fight I had been looking for, the one that I could lose and still win. He was the only person who could make me feel like that. "I fold."