As my friends know, I am a "Suits" junkie. Like big time. So it was no surprise that I started this.
Not gonna lie, this came from a dream. As everyone knows, Harvey's...well...a ladies' man to say the least. Maybe, just maybe, there was a slip up or whatever. They happen all the time -starts grinning evilly-. And voila~!
Enjoy, I am just enjoying giving Harvey Specter hell! "Don't play the odds, play the man."
Harvey started the day with no event. No exciting thing that made him think that particular day was going to be any different. At the firm nor anywhere else. He had made his usual jab toward Louis, nodded to his outstanding secretary, Donna, and called his associate, Mike Ross, about fifteen times about an update on a case they were working on all on his way in that morning. He had even amused Jessica in telling her what she wanted to her mixed with something that seemed to displease her. All in all, nothing about this certain day was different or extraordinary.
He began his day answering emails and making phone calls about the major case he was working on with Mike. Thinking up plans that were always one step ahead of the other lawyers and minds of people. Thinking up of almost every surprise was his specialty. That was why he was the best closer in New York.
Well, all surprises except for...
"Harvey, you have a visitor," Donna's voice came through the intercom of his office as he worked on a case.
Harvey sighed and ran his hand down his face with force. He really didn't have time for this. He wanted to work on his case, get it over and done with, and move on. "Not right now, Donna."
Donna answered back almost immediately, her tone different than usual. "You want to see this one."
Harvey sighed. Must be one helluva damn good reason, he thought with a tone in his thoughts. "Fine, send them in."
Mike stared at the girl before him. Deep blonde waves and curls and those piercing eyes he knew from somewhere. He knew those truth-seeking, no bull shit eyes that could probably cut a deal with a bat of her eye lashes and a smile he knew was how she could make someone do whatever the hell she wanted with either her physique or her well-witted mind that he just knew she had.
"And your name is?"
"Charlie," she said with a short tone to her voice; saying nothing more afterwards like most would around him. Mike was used to it, but not from someone as young as she was.
Donna just sat back in her seat, taking in the striking resemblance that this "Charlie" held. Normally, most gave her a last name with their first name, but this one didn't. This was a weird thing for Donna. The hair of this girl fell in some curls and waves, while the other bits of her hair was soft, more graceful for someone who looked like they saw their own funeral. Her hair was almost the same tone as...
"Donna," Harvey's booming voice called from his office door, walking toward her when Donna widened her eyes and nodded her head a little as a silent beckoning, "what the hell are you thinking having me walk out of my office when I am working on a...case." Harvey took in what looked like the teenage, more female version, of him. Before he could think before speaking, he asked in a surprised tone, "Who the hell is that?"
"I could ask you the same thing, but I hate redundant questions," she said with the same ease he had when he was at trial. She even stood straight like he did, carrying an aura about herself that made her seem almost regal.
Mike and Donna blinked with surprise in the same second. Donna's eyebrow's rose as Mike's mouth slacked open. This was no average teenager.
"I'm Harvey Specter; come to talk to me about your parents in some class action lawsuit?"
She scoffed, rolling her eyes. "I wish he was, but now I see him, it's no wonder I've never met him until just now." Even her tone was not amused by Harvey, when usually girls were noting how handsome he was and fawning themselves over him.
She turned around and walked away with her curls flying with her, letting her walk show her displeasure in the whole situation. This made Harvey blink a couple times in surprise. Harvey looked to Donna, silently asking what to do now. He wasn't used to teenagers, girls, acting like this around him. True that he was used to girls with attitude and confidence, but getting from someone who looked like high school was still a nightmare she had to endure was the part that caught him off guard. After her lips told her to stop him, Harvey walked after her briskly. Catching the oddly familiar girl at the elevator, he took a firm hold of her arm, much like a father would when trying to scold a child. She snapped her look to him, giving him a glare.
"What the hell was that?" Harvey asked with a pointed tone, as if their performance back at his secretary's desk was a plan they had that she had veered from.
"My hello to the one person I can't stand at the moment." She sounded venomous.
"Who is that?"
"Apparently," her voice was laced with venom, "meeting the father I didn't know I had until about two days ago." She tilted her head to the side, letting her piercing eyes stab into his.
Oh, this girl was well rehearsed in the look I've mastered doing this job, Harvey thought casually. But the thought faded, making him really think about what she said. It was two words that caught him off guard: "meeting" and "father". Please say her father is Mike, he immediately thought, please say her father is...Wait, Mike is too young to be her dad. That means...
"If you're wondering who my father is, he's the bastard who is still holding my arm," she said with a small sneer.
As Harvey's eyes widened and his breath hitched almost unnoticeable. This gave Charlie the opportunity to shrug out of his grip and walk into the elevator. She couldn't press the button fast enough. She had to get away from him. What had her mother seen in him in college? But she could see why her mother had kept her biological father's identity a mystery for her whole life until her untimely death.
The one thing Charlie couldn't get out of her head, no matter how hard she tried, was the stoic look she had gotten from the lawyer who held her mother's last will and testament, which was signed by her mother and an ex-husband, whom her mother had long since divorced and pushed from their lives. The stony face and soulless eyes that haunted her dreams for the last two days. Charlie ran her fingers through her hair, gripping the soft locks at the roots as she fought back the tears, leaning against the wall and railing of the elevator as it moved. Three days since her mother's death, and two days since the funeral. The day before was spent with the state watching her as she packed her things, forced to say good bye to the only home she knew. Not to mention the police and the lawyer telling her the awful news just minutes after the memorial service for her mother. This week had been shot straight to hell with no intention of stopping.
Charlie had hardly stepped through the elevator doors before she was stopped by Pearson-Specter security, and dragged into the security office without so much as an explanation. She hardly protested, her mind still out of it from her elevator ride. It was becoming a usual thing for her now was for her to space out in thought, when before this week happened, she'd think about a few things at the same time.
"Why do I feel like I am getting arrested?" she asked as the security guard again as he guided her toward his office with no words said to her other than, "Miss, you need to come with me."
"Wait there while Mr. Specter comes down," he said as he walked into his office, letting her go enough to pull out a chair. Charlie knew she could have taken her escape, but she was smarter than that. Her mother taught her better than that.
She was shoved into a simple metal and plastic chair with the security guard standing at the door to make sure she wasn't going to escape. It only made her feel like she was in a cage more. Trapped to do the bidding of everyone around her but herself. Yet another thing that made this week just hell.
"Hell no," she said in a weak protest, knowing it was worth a shot to at least show her displeasure in the situation. After all she was seventeen.
"No choice."
Charlie tensed at the sound of those two words. It was the same two words that the lawyer had told her just forty-eight hours ago with the same dispassionate, expressionless tone the lawyer had used. She was still a minor for a few more months and couldn't live in the house she wanted, or the town. New York City was too big for her. She liked the suburbs where she knew almost everyone in her neighborhood. Before she knew what had happened in that attorney's office just a mere half hour after her mother's services, she was being seated in a chair in the security office.
Not too long after that, Harvey Specter strolled into the security office, asking Rick the security guard to give them some privacy. He had thought about this girl on the way down after phoning the security guard to stop her. Of course he wanted an explanation after that bomb she just dropped on him. He wanted proof!
Charlie eyed the suited man, feeling a slight chill in the air now that he was in the small room. He towered over her with his one hand in his pocket as she sat in the security chair. Well, if this didn't strike the "I'm so being interrogated and going to prison" chord, she didn't know what would.
Harvey scanned her, seeing the Specter eyes and the looks she gave. The looks reminded him of his late father. But her ivory skin and soft appearance looked like a girl he had went steady with in college for a while. A girl named Robin. Robin Atkinson.
"What's your name?" he asked as calmly as he could, even though he wanted to blow up like he had done with his associate often.
"Why should I tell you?" she asked with a pointed tone, obviously fed up with something.
"So I can look up your background. Pro-bono of course." Harvey was at least going to offer her that much. But the background was more information on her...and perhaps to find out who her mother was and to see if there was some possibility she was his without the Specter features staring back at him.
She rolled her eyes at the words. Charlie didn't want to hear another lawyer talk to her like she was merely a client. "Why should I?"
Harvey sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose to show his impatience. "Just do it. It will get you out of here faster."
"Charlie."
Harvey smiled internally, thinking she had some power of cracking him, testing his patience like his brother, Marcus, had, yet his impatience showed a little. "Charlie what?"
"Charlie Erismia Specter," she uttered with the heaviest mix of a sigh and a groan he'd ever heard.
Harvey's face slacked in shock, making him blink in disbelief yet again. "Your last name is WHAT?"
"The same as yours," she said impatiently. "Mom believed that I should share the last name of my father when I was born." The girl stood up, still unknowing of why her mother gave her that tid-bit of information but never her father's name.
"How does she know you're even mine?" Harvey asked, still wondering for sure who her mother was, and why no one had told him before.
"Because she only had one steady boyfriend and/or fuck buddy she had in Harvard before dropping out." Charlie's tone didn't mean to sound as harsh as it was.
"Your mother's name is?" Harvey was even more skeptical of this teenage girl and her accusation of her being his. Maybe all she wanted was money. But why go through this ordeal just for some cash?
"Her name WAS Robin Atkinson." Charlie fought back a breaking voice and some tears when she mentioned her best friend, her mother, physically flinching at her memory with the encased disbelief that her mother was actually dead.
"Was?" Harvey tried to keep the question from his voice, but it came anyway. The word was past tense, but Robin, as far as he knew, wasn't dead. So why would this girl say "was"?
"She died a few days ago. Cancer." Charlie wiped some tears, trying to compose herself. She had been both relieved that her mother had died, but also devastated. At the moment, she didn't know what to feel about the loss. She just knew she wanted to stop crying. She wanted to be all cried out, but she wasn't.
Harvey's heart skipped a beat and nearly dropped to the floor, causing his stomach to churn. He couldn't have imagined Robin of all people getting terminal cancer and dying. She had always been the saint of the two of them, wanting to be a lawyer to help the world. Going to Harvard for a more noble act than the reason why Harvey was attending, and he had a full-ride.
"So why are you here?"
"State ordered to stay with next-of-kin until I am of-age. Since Mom's parents were never talking to her, disowned her as soon as they had found out she was going to have me, and I don't have any other relatives, I am sent to you, a man who just realized he had a seventeen year-old daughter." Now Charlie sounded stoic, having pushed back tears, putting up a wall, and covering her true face with a mask.
"You're seventeen?"
"Yeah, I turn eighteen in a few months." Charlie pushed back the memory of celebrating her seventeenth birthday with her mother in the hospital while she had chemotherapy. No one even remembered it was her birthday, and she didn't want to stoop so low as to remind people. All that mattered to her was getting her mother better so she could go back to the firm. Something like turning another number, a year older, meant nothing to Charlie. It really didn't mean anything when the doctor gave them the grave news that her mother wouldn't see Christmas, New Years, or even her birthday let alone Charlie's eighteenth.
Harvey rubbed the back of his neck, pinching the nape of it with his palm to make sure he was still in reality. So you really couldn't be Mike's, he thought casually, still disappointed that it couldn't be. At a loss for words, he ended up saying before he could think, "I want a paternal test."
"Go ahead. The most hospitals here have my blood on file because I was my mom's match for bone marrow and blood in case of transfusions."
Harvey scanned her over again, taking in the girl known as Charlie Specter. He shook his head, trying not to see who she looked like more, her mother or him. She had her mother's soft features, but his personality and eyes and hair color. It freaked him out. But he didn't know what freaked him out more, Charlie's striking resemblance to him or the fact that she might actually be his.
