Hi everyone! Here's the second one-shot in this series. This one takes place during the 8 month gap between chapter 19 of tbah and the epilogue of tbah, so Mike's still 14 here and Harvey hasn't officially adopted him yet but they're living together. Let me know if you guys want a more specific timeline for anything in this universe- I have a really specific mental calendar of everything, like down to specific dates and stuff haha so if anything is confusing, just let me know and I'll try to clarify. I should also disclaim that I don't know anything about medicine or the geography of upstate New York. Hope you enjoy some good old-fashioned h/c and sick!Mike.

Mike's age: 14½

When it's black take a little time to hold yourself

Take a little time to feel around before it's gone.

You won't let go but you still keep on falling down

Remember how you save me now from all of my wrong

-From "I Won't Let You Go" by James Morrison

Mike wasn't feeling well at all.

Not that he'd ever actually admit that to anyone who asked, though. He had been looking forward to this camping trip for months and he wasn't going to miss it over some stupid cold, damn it!

Which was why he was currently hiding out in the filing room of Pearson Hardman— it was Thursday afternoon, and he just had to make it until tomorrow without being found out and then he'd be in the clear. By some miracle, Harvey had actually agreed to take off work early Friday afternoon so that they could drive upstate to go camping for the weekend in the same neck of the woods where he and Paul had gone camping every summer when they were kids, and Mike wasn't about to risk the trip getting cancelled just because he felt a little under the weather.

This was mainly because Harvey was weirdly excited about the whole endeavor and Mike didn't want to be the one putting the kibosh on their weekend plans—he had never imagined his guardian to be much of an outdoorsman (after all, spending more than 2 minutes outside meant that there was a possibility of Harvey's precious suits getting wrinkled), but when they had gone to Chicago in April for Easter break and Paul had suggested that the three of them should go on a camping trip at some point over the summer, Harvey had jumped at the opportunity and descended into a whirlwind of planning. He had gone all out and (despite Mike's protests that he was going completely overboard) had bought them both brand new hiking backpacks, sleeping bags, and a whole host of other random supplies that they would probably never need in upstate New York during July.

Like helmets with headlights (they weren't going spelunking). Or climbing harnesses and ropes (Mike didn't know where Harvey thought they were going to find mountains to climb in the forests of upstate New York). Or ice picks (he couldn't even hazard a guess about the potential necessity of this one).

Harvey had also taken to driving down random side streets in neighborhoods that Mike wasn't familiar with, handing Mike a compass, and forcing him to use it to direct Harvey wherever they were going. According to Harvey, this was supposedly "an exercise to hone Mike's orienteering skills for when he was out on the trails" but according to Mike, it was stupid. Harvey wouldn't budge, however, and Mike had been late to school twice during the school year as a result. It had been difficult to explain to his NYU professors that he had missed class because what was normally a 10 minute drive from the apartment to campus took 2 hours when Mike got them lost in Harlem after he threw the compass out the window and off a bridge in frustration (after that they had both just given up on making it to school/work and stopped at a café to get pancakes for breakfast).

So needless to say, Mike didn't want to put a damper on this camping trip since it seemed to mean a lot to Harvey for whatever reason. He initially figured that it was just because Harvey wanted to return to his old childhood haunts and remember the long-lost summer days of his childhood with Paul—the two brothers had become closer lately, and Mike could tell that Harvey liked being a part of Paul's life again.

But a small part of him also suspected that it might have had something to do with an excerpt from one of Harvey's parenting books (which, of course, Harvey completely denied owning or reading) that Mike had happened to glance over a few weeks ago when he and Harvey had been drafting bylaws in the kitchen. Harvey had sent him to his bedroom to look for the publishing information of a certain law book that he wanted to cite and Mike had been digging through Harvey's crowded bookshelf when he had found a book about helping adopted children integrate into families buried between several thick law tomes.

He had skimmed through some of it briefly, laughing at the hokey pictures on the cover and rolling his eyes at how contrived and corny some of the text was. But then he stopped at a section that Harvey (er, sorry, not Harvey—Harvey didn't read parenting books) had marked with a post-it note about 'family bonding,' and read the excerpt that not-Harvey had underlined with a strange warm feeling in his stomach.

"It might be helpful to take a brief family trip so that the new family member(s) can spend time with you, the new parents. Try to go somewhere away from the hustle and bustle of daily life; away from your cell phones and facebook and email. That way you can all focus on being with one another in a neutral, welcoming, and fun setting."

Well, the middle of the woods in upstate New York sure was far away from the hustle and bustle of daily life at Pearson Hardman. And there probably wouldn't be enough reception for Harvey to check his email or field thousands of calls from worried clients that he was trying to close, so it all fit the criteria of the book. Of course, it was probably just a coincidence—surely Harvey wouldn't plan a ridiculously elaborate camping trip just to make Mike feel more 'integrated' in the Specter family (whatever that meant)…right? After all, Harvey was just his guardian. Even though Mike thought of Harvey as a father-figure in the privacy of his own mind, he didn't want to presume anything about Harvey's possible intentions with this camping trip.

But either way, Mike didn't want to disappoint Harvey by wimping out—and not to mention that Paul had come all the way out here from Chicago for the weekend. So when he'd started to feel ill last night, he'd just gone to bed early, fervently hoping he'd wake up and feel all better— after all, maybe it was just a stupid little summer cold that could be cured by a good night's sleep.

But then Mike had woken up this morning feeling much worse, and at this point he had to concede that, okay, maybe it was a little more than just a cold. He was currently sitting at the small desk in the filing room and pretending to be proofreading files for Harvey. But in reality, he was just staring glassily at the walls, completely unable to concentrate—his head ached, his throat was sore, his chest was tight, and he was starting to feel nauseous. And to top it all off, he was freezing cold; despite the fact that he knew it was a sizzling 90 degrees outside.

But he was still holding out on the hope that Harvey wouldn't notice how bad he felt. And that tonight he could go home and get a really good night's sleep and then also sleep during the drive up to the woods tomorrow. By that point he'd probably be all better and nobody would ever have to even know that he'd been sick. It was the perfect plan, but he just had to make it through the rest of the day so he could go home and crawl under his covers.

Unfortunately, this was proving to be easier said than done. As excited as he was to go hang out in the woods with Harvey and Paul, crawling under the desk to sleep seemed a lot more tempting at the moment—although it would probably ruin his façade of being in perfect health if he were caught sleeping in the middle of the day. Luckily Harvey had been in meetings all morning and he was in court this afternoon, so Mike didn't have to worry about hiding his illness from his guardian— that was why he had chosen to come into the office today to work on his internship instead of going to Grammy and Henry Morris' apartment to hang out like he'd originally planned—Grammy would know that Mike was sick in an instant if she saw him, but when Harvey was this preoccupied with court stuff, Mike could usually sneak things around him.

Although a small part of him kind of wished that Harvey had noticed when he hadn't eaten breakfast that morning or had heard Mike's deep, chesty coughs echoing in the shower— at 14 years old, he didn't want to be babied when he didn't feel well; but he didn't want to feel alone in his illness either, and it was always nice to have someone give a damn that he was sick.

But he told himself to stop feeling miserable for himself—he was the one who had decided to hide this so now he was going to have to deal with it on his own.

He knew that he should probably start reading the files Harvey had given him so that he could at least pretend to have been slightly productive, but his eyelids were so heavy and it felt so good to close them; it made the pounding in his head recede slightly and the room stop spinning around him. He shivered and rested his hot cheek against the cool wood of the table, his eyes drifting shut again of their own volition….

"—Mike? Wake up, Mike," a female voice was saying in his ear an unknown amount of time later.

He blinked fuzzily, wondering where the hell he was and what was going on and why he felt so awful.

He saw a flash of red to his side. "Donna?" he croaked, his throat aching and his chest burning.

"Mike, honey. How long have you been feeling sick?" Donna asked, her miraculously cool hand coming up to feel his forehead. Her face swam into focus in his vision, and he noticed that her mouth was taut with concern. It was probably not a good sign that she had instantly known upon seeing him that he was sick—after all, he was supposed to be able to hide this; to control this.

"I'm okay, Donna," he whispered, his stomach rolling unpleasantly. Donna frowned at him and looked like she was about to open her mouth to give him a lecture about hiding things like this from her, but before she could start talking, Mike made a dive for the garbage basket and emptied the contents of his stomach into it.

Donna dropped to her knees next to him and rubbed soothing circles on his back as he retched. When he was finished he sat back wearily, dimly realizing that his cheeks were slightly damp with tears and that he somehow felt even worse than he had before.

"It's okay, sweetie," Donna was saying next to him, her voice low and calming in a way that made Mike suddenly miss his mom.

"Where's my dad?" Mike croaked out, barely conscious of what he was saying. He grabbed onto the sleeve of Donna's dress. "Where's Harvey, I need Harvey…"

"Shh," Donna soothed, smoothing the hair back from his forehead. She made eye contact with Mike, who was currently weaving in and out of coherency and finding it rather hard to concentrate.

"Mike," she said and Mike did his best to meet her gaze. "I'm going to go find Harvey, okay? I'll get someone to come sit you with and then I'll call him. It's okay, Mike— I'll go get your dad." When Mike thought about the incident later, it would all be a muddled, feverish haze—but he latched onto the words "I'll go get your dad" in that moment and clung to them, letting them anchor his troubled mind and hold his feverish, fractured thoughts together.

"Okay," he mumbled miserably, curling up into a little ball on his side. Just keep waiting, he told himself. Donna will go get Harvey and it will all be okay then.

He felt Donna's hand leave his hair and then he heard her talking to someone in the hallway before he heard the sound of her heels clicking away from the filing room.

"Oh, hey, Mike," a new voice said and Mike blinked wearily.

Louis Litt's face swam into his line of vision and Mike groaned and shut his eyes again.

"G'way, Louis," he grumbled. "I don't want to do your paperwork."

"Jeeze, Mike, I'm only here to help," Louis said. "You should know that I have a medical kit on me at all times. But if you're not willing to accept my help and you'd rather wallow there in your germs then so be it. But this is how plagues begin—"

"Louis," Mike interrupted after Louis spent 10 minutes explaining how the Bubonic plague had spread throughout Europe in a step-by-step process and how Mike was probably going to be responsible for starting the next pandemic. "Can you get me some water?"

"What? Oh, sure," Louis said, mercifully disappearing into the hallway and leaving Mike alone, curled up under the table in the filing room.

He fought back a sudden wave of tears as he wished fervently for Harvey's comforting presence. He had a feeling it was going to be a long weekend….

2 days.

That's how long it took before Mike's fever finally broke, and it was a long 48 hours.

After Donna had found Mike sleeping in the filing room Thursday afternoon, it had instantly become apparent that whatever Mike was fighting with was more than 'just a bad cold', as Mike had weakly claimed from the backseat of the town car. Harvey and Donna had brought Mike to the apartment and Harvey had called in a favor with a client of his, Joel Murray, who was a doctor who Harvey had defended the year prior after he'd been falsely accused of malpractice (he'd then added 'find Mike a permanent physician' to his to-do list).

Joel had come over to the apartment to check Mike out, and after taking Mike's vitals and examining him, had shrugged and told Harvey that it was just a nasty summer virus and that there was nothing to do but to keep Mike hydrated and wait it out. He had given Harvey strict instructions to bring Mike to the hospital if his fever got noticeably higher or if he couldn't keep anything down without vomiting for more than 24 hours straight.

Then he had left and Harvey, Donna, and the newly-arrived Paul had settled in for the weekend to take care of Mike. It really wasn't a 3-person job, but Donna claimed that she couldn't abandon Mike to the likes of Paul and Harvey, and Paul had refused to leave and go back to Chicago when he had landed in New York and found out that the camping trip was a no-go. Instead he had parked himself in the kitchen and obediently cut up vegetables with Donna to make chicken noodle soup.

Even though Harvey knew that it was just a virus, Mike almost seemed more sick this time around than he had when he'd had pneumonia back in the winter. Maybe that was because the pneumonia had mostly just affected Mike's lungs, while this virus was taking its toll on Mike's entire body—but he had thrown up two times more, was shaking with fever chills, and coughing miserably. Sometimes he'd ramble senselessly; other times he'd sleep fitfully.

Harvey soon discovered that a delirious, virus-ridden Mike was an emotional, clingy Mike. He had woken up a couple of times, crying out from nightmares of his time at the Jensens and the death of his parents. Though Paul and Donna had each tried to comfort him, Harvey's was the only presence who could calm Mike down enough to go back to sleep.

But it was heartbreakingly difficult for Harvey to watch Mike feeling so awful and not be able to do anything to fix it or make it better. He was a closer; a man of action—he didn't just sit by idly and allow bad things to happen around him; his job was to fix things. But he couldn't fix a summer virus—all he could do was sit helplessly with Mike through his nightmares and rub his back while he vomited.

He was relieved when Mike finally fell into a deep sleep on Saturday night after sleeping restlessly all afternoon and evening. Feeling like he had the situation slightly under control at the moment, he sent Donna home for the night, gave Paul his bed, and settled himself on the couch to do paperwork with Mike's bedroom door opened so he could hear if Mike needed anything or had another nightmare. As the wee hours of the night ticked by and all was quiet from the direction of Mike's bedroom, Harvey began to relax—if Mike could sleep peacefully through the night, maybe that meant his fever would break soon.

He was so engrossed in his paperwork at 3 in the morning that he didn't notice that Mike was up and out of bed until the kid's hoarse, croaky voice jolted him from his reverie.

"I'm cold, Dad," Mike said, shuffling out into the living room where Harvey was sitting. He then plopped himself down on the couch right next to Harvey and curled up against Harvey's side, resting his head on Harvey's shoulder. "And I keep having bad dreams. Why is it so cold in here?" He asked, shivering lightly.

Harvey frowned at this— he could feel the heat radiating from Mike's body and attributed Mike's unusual willingness to initiate physical contact and use of the moniker 'Dad' to the high fever— and reached over with his free arm to grab Mike's favorite blanket off the back of the couch. He wrapped it and an arm around Mike, effectively drawing him even closer to his side.

"You should be in bed," he said, bringing his free hand up to feel Mike's forehead, which was still just as burning hot as before. "It only seems cold because you're sick."

"'m not sick," Mike mumbled in an attempt at defiance, but the way that he nestled further into the combined heat of Harvey and the blanket counteracted any success he had at sounding not-sick. "What? I'm fine. You didn't even notice anything was wrong all day on Thursday—I would have been fine for camping. I'm just tired."

"You're right," Harvey said. "I didn't notice. But I should have. And that won't happen again. You need to tell me these things, Mike," Harvey rebuked him gently. "It's okay to be sick."

"Nahh, I'm okay," Mike said, shivering and huddling closer to Harvey with a big yawn. "Let's go camping now."

Harvey barked out a quiet laugh at this. "Sorry, Mike. It's already Saturday night. I think we'll have to wait for another weekend."

"But you want to go camping, so we should go," Mike said, looking up at Harvey with concerned, fever-bright blue eyes. He began twisting and pulling at a loose thread of the blanket with his fingers.

"What do you mean, I want to go camping? Did you not want to go?" Harvey asked curiously.

Mike coughed and shook his head quickly, his blond hair tickling Harvey's neck. "No! I wanted to go, of course—but I thought you wanted to go more. I mean, you bought all that stuff and now we're not even going to get to use it."

"That stuff will keep, Mike. We can find another weekend and use it all," Harvey pointed out, not seeing the problem.

"But you already had everything planned for this weekend. You and Paul could still go, you know. I can go stay with Grammy and Henry Morris for the weekend while I get better and you and Paul can go up there if you want," Mike offered hopefully, clearly just trying to find a way to please Harvey. It made Harvey's heart ache that Mike was so determined to find a way to get him to go camping just because he thought that was what Harvey wanted—and it was made even worse by the fact that he thought that Harvey would abandon him when he was sick just to go camping.

"Don't be ridiculous," he said gruffly. "Paul and I wanted to go on this camping trip with all three of us. That was the whole point—to get out into the woods and spend some time together. There are plenty of weekends left in the summer to go camping, but there's only one Mike."

Mike's fingers stopped twisting the blanket and he looked up at Harvey. "Do you really mean that?"

Harvey rolled his eyes. "Of course I do. Do you see any other Mikes that live here?"

"No," Mike said sleepily, eyelids drooping. "Where did Paul go? I need to tell him I'm sorry that he came all the way out here for no reason."

"He's sleeping in my bed. He didn't care at all, so don't start feeling bad about him too," Harvey cautioned firmly. Paul had sat with Mike and chatted with him for awhile earlier in the evening, but at this point Mike's fever was high enough that it didn't really surprise him that Mike didn't remember the conversation. "He said something about starting a Monopoly tournament with you tomorrow, so I wouldn't worry about him being bored this weekend. And he said he'd be back in town in August for a week, so we'll go camping then. Okay?"

"Okay," Mike yawned, closing his eyes. "Goodnight, Dad."

"You have a bed, you know," Harvey pointed out inanely, ignoring the warm feeling currently blossoming in his stomach (the warmth was probably just due to the heat of Mike's fever). But a little part of him couldn't help but think that maybe it was time that he started brushing up on New York adoption laws.

"That's nice," Mike murmured, waving him off and shifting closer as he drifted off to sleep.

Harvey rolled his eyes and reached for his files again with the arm that he didn't have around Mike. Paul was in his bed and Mike was slowly monopolizing more and more of the couch, so it seemed unlikely that he was going to get any real sleep that night. He might as well get some work done—or as much work as one could get done with an ill 14-year-old draped over their side.

He worked for a good while but his eyelids began drifting shut of their own accord as the hands on the clock drifted closer and closer to 4 in the morning. He valiantly struggled to keep his eyes open because he knew that he'd never hear the end of it if Paul or god forbid Donna should come in and see him essentially—he cringed just thinking of the word—snuggling with Mike on the couch.

But, he told himself as he dropped his stack of files on the floor, maybe he'd just close his eyes for a bit and be content with the moment. Mike was sleeping peacefully, his fever-induced nightmares nowhere to be seen for the time being. So maybe he'd just close his eyes for 5 minutes and join Mike in a cat nap for a bit.

And maybe tomorrow Mike would wake up and his fever would break and he'd go back to calling Harvey 'Harvey' instead of 'Dad' and he would still flinch away from Harvey's touch with slight wariness instead of initiating physical contact like the easy embrace that they shared right now. And that would be fine—it would be great actually, because Harvey wanted Mike to get over this virus and feel better as soon as possible, of course.

But for now Harvey had a teenager who implicitly trusted him to take care of him and protect him from the demons of his dreams; whose terrible nightmares and skeletons of the past were held at bay by Harvey's mere presence; who spoke to Harvey candidly and openly regarded him as a father figure.

And that was okay too.

Paul woke up Sunday morning feeling distinctly disoriented, just as he had the past 2 mornings. At first he wondered why he wasn't in his bed with Alicia in Chicago and then he remember that he was supposed to be on a camping trip with his brother and his…well, whatever Mike was. And then he wondered why he wasn't sleeping in a sleeping bag on the cold hard ground of upstate New York before realizing that he was sleeping in Harvey's bed because Mike was sick and they weren't camping.

It was ungodly early for a Sunday—barely 7— but Paul got out of bed anyway. He'd gone to sleep early last night and he knew that he should probably offer Harv the chance to crash in his own bed for a few hours—his older brother had been sleeping on the couch since Thursday night when Paul arrived and that probably wasn't too good for anyone's back, much less someone who already had shoulder problems from old baseball injuries.

As he padded into Harvey's kitchen to make himself some breakfast, he froze and did a double take when he saw the couch, choking back a guffaw. Harvey Reginald Specter, his tough big brother, was sleeping on the couch in a weird half-sitting-up position, his mouth wide open and his head bobbing every so often. Mike was curled up against his side and the two of them were somehow sharing the plaid couch blanket that Paul had noticed Mike favoring all weekend. Mike looked much better, even in his sleep—his cheeks were no longer flushed and his breathing seemed much easier. Hopefully his fever had broken in the night.

Paul smiled as he pulled out his phone to snap a quick picture of the two of them. He hadn't been upset at all about missing the camping trip—he was a pretty easy-going guy and it wasn't like Mike could help being sick. And after all, there was still half the summer left to squeeze a camping trip in. But this, this was the ultimate clincher; this just sealed the deal of his non-anger. In fact, he doubted that he'd ever be able to be angry with Mike over anything—anyone who could get cold, closed-off Harvey to let his guard down like that deserved a medal and Paul's unfailing support and admiration for life.

To be honest though, Harvey himself probably deserved Paul's unfailing support and admiration too. He had really changed over the past year or so since their father's death and since Mike's arrival in their lives. Asshole-associate-lawyer-Harvey had been so different from childhood-Harvey and law-school-Harvey, who had bankrupted himself to pay for Paul's medical bills when he'd gotten sick.

But now new junior-partner-lawyer-Harvey was much more open and he was reaching out to try and be closer to Paul. He was a good big brother. Hell, he was a good father. Paul didn't know how that had happened— he'd certainly seen the hints of it beginning over Christmas and Easter when he'd observed Harvey and Mike's interactions. But then he'd watched the two of them this weekend and he'd seen things he never thought he'd see from his older brother.

Like the way the Harvey had worked for months to plan this camping trip as a bonding experience for the 3 of them, only to instantly throw it all out the window when Mike had gotten sick, no questions asked. And Donna had told Paul that Harvey had practically ran out of open court to get back to Pearson Hardman when she'd come to find him and tell him the Mike was sick.

But the moment that stuck with him the most was when he'd seen Harvey wipe Mike's tears away when Mike had wept after a nightmare and brokenly begged Harvey not to give him back to the Jensens— and Paul didn't know who the hell the Jensens were but he knew he'd never forgot the anguished expression on his older brother's face at Mike's pain and the way that he'd easily comforted Mike like he'd been doing it his whole life instead of for 9 months. Paul had had to look away; it had seemed like such an intimate moment and he felt like an intruder on the bond between the two of them. And even though Mike's feverish mind might not remember the incident afterwards, Paul would.

Their dad would have been proud.

But, Paul thought to himself as he buttered his toast and set about looking around for the Monopoly board so he could entertain Mike for the day before his flight back to Chicago that night, just because I can concede that Harvey's a good big brother does not mean that I can't use this picture of the two of them cuddling as blackmail for the rest of my life.

So that's that! I totally made up that quote from the parenting book; I have no clue how to be a parent. Next chapter I think we'll be seeing some 20-year-old Mike (unless I have a sudden change in inspiration for what I want to write next). I welcome any suggestions or requests :D And I'm honored by all the people who have reviewed/favorited/followed after just one chapter. You guys are the best- hopefully I can live up to all of your expectations!