Mike: So are we a team now?
Harvey: I wouldn't move my things into Wayne Manor just yet.
Mike: So, what, are you Batman now?
.***.
Years later, Harvey would realize that he put the five worst days of that terrible year in order of how hurt Mike Ross was at the end of it.
Okay, so Harvey didn't figure this out himself. Donna pointed it out to him when she was breezing by his dest one day and saw the list idly sketched out on a post-it.
"Is this in any particular order?" Donna asked after they laughed at how (not) funny it was that the year had had so many horrific days.
"Yeah..." Harvey said, glancing at the list over Donna's shoulder. "Five is the...well, I guess the least bad one. One is The Worst Day."
"Huh." Donna said, in that voice that obviously means she had noticed something interesting and Harvey was too dense to figure it out.
So he took the bait. "What?"
"It's just...well, the accident with your brother is number five."
"Josh is in number one, too." Harvey said, trying hard not to dwell on the series of events that had culminated in The Worst Day.
"Yeah, it's just...well, I thought those would be numbers one and two."
"They were barely hurt in the car thing!" Harvey defended. "What about five? Or the Lawrence incident?"
"Woah, Nelly." Donna put two hands up, the universal sign to back the hell off. "No need to get offended."
"Are you offending him, Donna?" Mike asked, walking into the office with a folder under one arm. "You know you're supposed to call me when you do that."
Harvey tried to move the Post-It before Mike could see it, but the wunderkund caught a glimpse. For an eiditic memory, a glimpse was enough.
"Are you ranking my injuries?" Mike said, because he didn't think of them as days at all but events that eld up to more hospital visits.
"Cause I would put that thing before the court thing last."
"Are you kidding me?" Harvey scoffed, "That was way worse than the fire."
"And I can't even think of where that gun thing would go." Mike said, shuddering, "That was terrifying."
"Well, at least we agree on the best and the worst," Harvey said dryly.
"I wouldn't call me and Josh almost dying a 'best.'"
"Donna," Harvey said, grinning before this got too serious, "Which is number four? That's the fourth worst day of this past year?"
Donna got that mulish look she wore when she didn't want to do anything for anyone, then straightened up, "The fire. The worst for me was the fire. I was the last person Mike spoke to before it broke out."
Both men dropped their grins. "Oh yeah," Mike murmured, "I forgot."
"Lucky you." Donna said, brushing by him on her way out.
.***.
The day was already hot, and it was only seven am. Mike stared at his ceiling, not willing to move in this heat. All he really wanted to do was plunge into a cold pool, and he remembered summers as a child, splashing in Trevor's tiny above-ground pool every day. It wasn't much, but for restless, sweltering teens it could have been the ocean.
He smiled, remembering how Trevor used to dunk him under the water, how he, Mike, would dive for the bigger boy's ankles and they'd both end up submerged, laughing. then he remembered Trevor urging him to sell pot and he hoisted himself out of bed.
The shower was mercifully cool, and Mike revelled in the reprieve from the sticky heat of the city, only reluctantly turning off the cool stream. He was not looking forward to the bike ride to work, sure that he would be a hot mess by the time he arrived. He could only hope that Harvey wouldn't send him on errands and he could spend the day enjoying the Pearson-Hardman air conditioning (his apartment, of course, had no AC of any sort.)
But luck never did like Mike Ross, and he had no sooner gotten settled at his desk, trying not to sweat through his suit, than Harvey came up to him, looking pissed. "What are you doing here?"
"Is that some kind of trick question?" Mike muttered, already slinging his bag back over his shoulder. Somehow he surmised that he would be going out again.
"I told you to go downtown and check with the contractor about the Mendelo property!"
Mike groaned, remembering. "I can't ride all the way to Brooklyn, Harvey. I'll melt. I'm actually the Wicked Witch of the West you know."
"That's why grown-ups buy cars. And the witch melted because of water. It wasn't like she was made of wax."
"It's over a hundred degrees! And that condemned factory is going to be a sauna!" He knew he was whining, but god he hated summer.
"You've hit on the reason I'm not going. Why are we still talking about this?" Harvey left Mike staring at the elevator like a condemned man.
The bike ride was unbearable. A hundred degrees in suburbia, where Mike had grown up, was nothing like a hundred degrees in the city, where the sky-scrapers pushed the heat down and the asphalt pushed the heat up, trapping unwitting humans in the middle.
If Mike had been a hot mess arriving to work, he was a diaster by the time he got to the old factory across the bridge. His jacket was draped over his handlebars, and he'd lost his tie somewhere ten blocks back.
"Mike Ross, representing Pearson Hardman." The beefy contractor looked at him incredulously and Mike couldn't blame him. He wasn't anyone's idea of professional right now.
But the contractor showed him the condemned property anyway, the property Harvey's client had sold them without mentioning the ridiculous lapses in fire-safely code. "I can't put guys to work in here. If something catches fire, God forbid, there probably wouldn't even be enough water in the city to put it out." New York was in the grips of the one of the worst droughts on record.
Mike nodded, ignoring the twinge in his stomach at the words. Because that would be his luck, wouldn't it? To be one of those poor bastards caught in a fire in the middle of a drought...
His phone rang as they climbed to the top floor of the building. "Sorry, one second." The foreman nodded, wandering over to a window and looking at the skyline of NYC arrayed in front of them, hazy in the heat.
"What, Donna?"
"Is that how your mother taught you to answer the phone?" Donna demanded. Mike could not care less. He would peel off his skin if he thought it could cool him off. "Harvey wants an update."
"This is the most unsafe building I've ever been in." Mike declared.
Unbeknownst to him, almost as if waiting for him to say it, the contractor experimentally turned on one of the work lights scattered around the room of the old factory, causing a spark five floors below to jump off its wire.
"That's not what Harvey wants to hear." Donna reminded him unnecessarily, and Mike groaned. Below him, an abandoned pile of two-by-fours ignited like the dried wood it was. From there, the condemned place never had a chance.
"Don't I know it," Mike said, rolling his eyes. A wall caught fire, a floor, another wall. The inferno was spreading, and the foreman was still looking disappointedly at the work light, which had turned on for half a second before blowing out. "I'll be there soon." He hung up, turning back to the contractor and trying to smile. He was too hot to smile.
"I know," The other man said sympathetically, "We're nearly done. You know, I'm from Minnesota. Used to say I'd love to experience a real hundred-degree day." He laughed a little and Mike did too, thinking of diving into a pool, wishing for those old summer vacations.
The second floor caught fire, and Mike caught a whiff of it. He glanced out the window and saw black smoke coming from below, hoisted on the wind like pirate sails. "I think the building's on fire." Mike said to the contractor with a calmness he didn't feel. All Mike could think was that his skin already felt like it would soon drip off his body. Even the thought of fire made him wince. Burns and death and even more heat...just what he needed.
.***.
"Donna, didn't you buy that puppy a leash yet?" Harvey glanced at the clock. Nearly two. Mike should have been back long before now.
"He's probably taking it slow. You did send him on a three mile bike ride on the hottest day of the year."
"Kid has money," Harvey said, refusing to acknowledge the twinge of guilt he felt, "He could buy a car." But he was thinking of heat stroke, which he'd experienced first-hand thank to a truly sadistic baseball coach in high school. He got a Gatorade out of his fridge to drop on the puppy's desk.
"Please tell me you didn't resort to arson, Harvey." Jessica crossed the bullpen, glancing at the blue drink Harvey had just deposited on Mike's desk.
"Huh?" Harvey said eloquently.
"The Mendelo property? Just went up in smoke? Do you ever watch the news?" Jessica was teasing him, of course (well, mostly). So she didn't expect him to turn pale, to grip the cubicle he was standing over so hard his knuckles turned white. "Harvey, what -"
But Harvey was already pulling out his cell phone, "I sent Mike to that building this morning." He said, his voice steady but his fingers shaking as he tried to call his associate. "He called Donna and said he was on his way back...he's probably just going slow."
"It's hot out," Jessica said reasonably, mostly to cover her own shock. Shock that a young man she knew might have perished in a fire, sure, but more shock at the fact that the notorious tin man had found his heart, and it might have burned up in the flames. "I'm sure he's-"
"He's not picking up." Harvey said, then rounded on Jessica. "What did that news report say? Anything about-?" But he choked on the word deaths and left the sentence to be interpreted by the very intelligent woman standing across from him.
"I...I don't think so. But it was a short blurb, just highlighting that its so hot fires start from the smallest thing. It was an abandoned factory. No one was supposed to be in there."
"Which means that if Mike was, no one would go in to help him." Harvey was already striding towards the elevator, Jessica running to keep up with him.
Donna hurried up to them, worry smeared across her face, "Harvey! The Mendelo property!"
"I heard. I'm checking it out. Stay here. If he shows up call me and I'll push him out a window." For scaring the Hell out of me. And God, did he hope Mike would show up sweaty and disgruntled. He hoped the kid would step out of the elevator and be attacked by Donna. He hoped Mike would see the news story and laugh a little hysterically and rub the back of his neck and say close one, huh Harv? And Harvey would swat him and think that no one called him Harv except Josh, ever, but somehow he didn't mind it from Mike.
But luck was never on their side, was it?
Harvey would have walked to Brooklyn if he thought it would get him there faster. There were so many cars on the street that Harvey was impressed Ray could move anywhere - no one wanted to walk in this heat, and so people were springing for taxis.
"Have you tried calling the hospital?" Ray asked, looking at Harvey in the mirror, and Harvey shook his head. He wanted to believe Mike was whole and safe and unhurt. Calling a hospital looking for someone was a last resort option, and Harvey didn't want to believe they were at that point yet.
Of course, he was heading towards the possibility that Mike had just...died. Just burned up in a fire on Harvey's watch. And anything was better than thinking that the kid who'd made a Wizard of Oz reference this morning was a pile of ash in that ruined building. So he flipped open the phone and prayed that Donna would call him right now and put Mike on the phone to tell him everything was fine.
That didn't happen, because luck had a thing against Mike Ross. So instead Harvey used the little device to call Peter Kettering, a man who lived in his building and also happened to be a doctor at one of the biggest hospitals in the city. A hospital close to Brooklyn. The hospital Mike would have been transported to if...
"Hello?" A harassed-sounding voice came over the phone, and Harvey recognized Peter Kettering - who he liked to get drinks with if they got to the apartment building at the same time, two intelligent, high-achieving men talking about life - at once.
"This is Harvey Specter. Sorry to interrupt you at work, Peter. I was wondering if you got any of the people from the fire on Brooklyn?"
A sigh, and Harvey felt his heart clench. "Harvey, I can't disclose any-"
"One of my guys was in that building." Harvey was working hard to keep his voice level. "Just...did you get anyone? Were there any survivors?"
"One was DOA. The other...well, he's in bad shape." Hope bloomed, sudden and uncontrollable, in Harvey's heart. He thanked Kettering and told Ray to go to the hospital. There was nothing left for them in that shell of a building.
.***.
Two days later, Mike was awake and staring at his right arm, which had been badly burned as he tried to haul the contractor out of the building. "I told you, Harvey. I don't want to talk about this."
It was late, and Harvey had gone to the hospital directly after work to check in on his associate who was improving by the hour. No longer did he look like a badly cooked hotdog. He almost resembled a human being. "Well, you need to talk Mike. Jessica wants you to see the company shrink -" Mike blanched and Harvey nodded in agreement. "It's them or me, kid."
"What am I supposed to say? It was a hundred degrees, there was no moisture anywhere in the building and so it went up like a bunch of matchsticks. I barely got to the window before it crawled up the stairs, and the contractor was right behind me. He knew the building. He knew there was a fire escape - I actually used a fire escape to escape a fire, Harvey."
"Revolutionary."
"Don't be an ass." And Mike looked so pathetic that Harvey resolved to not be an ass. He still remembered bursting into the hospital, thinking that there was a fifty-fifty chance Mike was alive, thinking that he'd caused this, all of it, by sending Mike down to an unsafe condemned building. When he'd seen Mike as they wheeled him to surgery he offered the younger man a smile, even though he was out cold, and then collapsed into a chair, shaking. He wouldn't stop shaking until a man came out of surgery and said Mike was out of the woods.
"Anyway," Mike continued, oblivious to Harvey's musings, "The contractor - I should learn his name, he saved my life - he pulled me onto the fire escape just as there was a big fireball. Like in the movies. He kind of covered me with his body, so he got burned pretty bad. All I remember was that it was really hot, but I felt cold. I guess that's the adrenaline."
"I guess. How'd your arm get burnt?"
"Well, the fire was everywhere, and even though we were outside the building the contractor, he was part way inside and his legs were getting burnt bad. He was screaming..." Mike's voice trailed off and he looked at a point just above Harvey's shoulder. Harvey let him muse for a moment before clearing his throat. "Right. So I reached inside and tried to pull his legs over this little ledge, but he was jammed and he kept screaming and he was about three times the size of me. That's when my arm got burnt, I guess. I don't remember."
"Adrenaline."
"Yeah. I got him out to the ledge, Harvey, but then we needed to go down...fire was coming out of the building and I couldn't...I mean, I couldn't look at it. I couldn't think about it. I just had to move. I...I left him behind, Harvey. I felt so tired, and I could barely get myself down. I kept getting burnt. I told myself that I could tell the fire department where he was, and he shouldn't get too hurt, they could rescue him. But I guess I knew that he'd die if I left him there. And I just..."
Harvey was alarmed to see that Mike was on the verge of tears. He didn't do tears. "It's not your fault. Robin's not supposed to be the hero."
"I'd like to have seen Batman do better." Mike said, his words round with tears.
"Batman couldn't even have done any better. You did what you had to do. You got yourself out of there alive."
"And scarred for life." Mike looked morosely at his hand, touched his face where angry red patches spread like a rash, though the doctors assured him that these would fade in time. "Don't forget scarred for life."
"I'm proud of you, Mike." Harvey said, and something in his flipped when he saw how immediate the effect of those words were. Mike straightened up and smiled, and Harvey reminded himself that they had to work on Mike's need for praise...and then just reminded himself to dole it out more often so he could see Mike, despite the burns and the guilt and the heat, smile as if he didn't have a care in the world.
.***.
in response to those who asked...there's five parts to this. five really bad days. thanks for all the great reviews - it's always nice to know there's people out there enjoying reading this as much as we enjoy writing it.