Disclaimer: See chapter 1

Chapter 2

Mike looks a mess.

He has a bad case of bed-head hair. His shirt is only half tucked in to his pants, one side hanging down in rumpled creases, as though he'd been disturbed halfway through getting dressed.

That's not first thing Harvey notices. It's the fact that the kid looks openly distressed.

"Harvey," Mike says, almost pleads and then strides forward with an intense intent as though no one was present apart from the two of them. His voice sounds cracked and weak and Harvey instantly knows that whatever happened is bad enough to derail the young associate and he straightens up from Donna's desk and faces him full on, searching him for obvious answers.

Both Louis and Jessica part like the red sea, allowing Mike through, anger and jubilation ebbing away to show down-right concern. Louis showing concern for anyone apart from himself or the firm meant Mike's little melt-down was coming across as bad and worrisome, which only worried him further.

"Mike?" Harvey asks. Mike comes to an abrupt stop in front of him and Harvey becomes acutely aware that the kid's already moist eyes suddenly spill over and leave a messy damp track down his cheek. Harvey's worry rapidly turns to alarm and he steps closer to him as Mike waves his hand around a little and mumbles something incoherently against his lips. "Hey, kid, what's wrong?"

Mike's little ramble gets louder, more audible and he lets out a squawk of hysterical laughter before waving his hand around between them incredulously. "He came to my place. I mean it can't be true, Harvey. It shouldn't be true. But she told me it was. It can't be, but it is. I was so mad at her that I shouted... Oh god."

Mike clutches a hand against his chest, right over where his heart should be and bends a little. He looks ready to drop.

"Oh god, oh shit-" Mike repeats, voice ricocheting up the panic scale. The hand not against his chest snags against the bottom of Harvey's jacket and twists. "Harvey, please."

Harvey has no clue what Mike is asking from him but he's propelled into action because the puppy is a babbling mess of distress. He snakes a arm up and around Mike's smaller frame and pulls him close so that he can steer him in the direction he wanted (the office).

"Okay," Harvey breathes as Mike falls back into the same litany from before, quieter this time, and sees Donna's wide eyed and equal look of distress. "Okay. Just take it easy, kid."

He walks closer to his office, feeling the blatant shaking trembling throughout his associate, Mike not once releasing his death-hold on his once-before immaculate jacket. Once by the door, he glances at Mike, who's back to waving his hand around in gesticulated mannerisms and mumbling to himself, and then back at the trio staring after them.

"I need some alone time with Mike,"he tells them. He knows Donna will take this for what it means ('so, scram already.')Donna nods and he sees her discreetly (but not to him, because he knows her every move) turn her intercom off before she gets up and ushers Jessica (who suddenly wants to talk about Donna's skirt) and Louis away (who has no choice at all in the matter).

xxx

Harvey tries to push Mike on to his couch but the kid resists, twisting Harvey's jacket between his tense fingers. He is still rambling to himself, eyes wide and panic filled, an air of hysteria filling the space up between them.

"Kid, I know my suits are above your pay grade," Harvey tries to break the ice. "But can you refrain from abusing them? This is one of the good ones."

Ha!As if he actually had any bad ones.

Mike doesn't seem to register Harvey's attempt at humor and continues to babble, voice hitching, then breaking, before falling to a whisper.

"Mike, tell me what's wrong?" Harvey tries again.

He's never seen the kid like this before, so out of it and on the verge of some break down in the middle of his office. Mike, it appears, seems to be on another level of the various Mike Ross' he has seen before and apart from when he had turned up only a few minutes before - eyes locking on him and saying his name as though he was begging for some sort of reprieve - he hasn't actually acknowledged his presence since.

"Mike?" he prods again when it becomes obvious Mike's not actually going to answer. He gives him a little shake with a subtle squeeze to the shoulders that causes Mike to squeak and whimper a little. Harvey's eyes are drawn to the way his lips quiver and wobble.

"I... he... I..." Mike tries to get out to no affect at all because it's pretty obvious the kid can't get a breath in between the hyperventilated words. "Oh, god. Harvey."

Harvey's not sure if it's the way the kid exaggeratedly tugs at the hem of his jacket or the way Mike clearly is one word away from passing out in his arms that makes him step back and strike the kid across the cheek with his open palm.

Okay, so if anyone asks, he'd say it was because Mike was committing crimes against well-tailored suits but in truth it was because Harvey needs the kid firing on all cylinders. He needs rational and calm Mike, or at least a Mike he could work with. He didn't like this version and it wasn't just because it required Harvey to be somewhat caring and touchy and all that crap.

It has a desired effect almost immediately.

Mike shuts up, mouth opened in startled surprise, and releases his Vulcan death grip to his suit. The jumbled hysterical words were gone and in its place was an open vulnerability that chilled Harvey to the core. For a second Harvey thought the kid was going to cry - which would have been funny if it had only been a passing thought until the kid got a hold of himself - but the solitary tear from before was soon replaced with multiple hot tears that filled his eyes and spilled over as his face crumpled with what ever monstrous weight he was carrying.

Harvey had seen many sides of Mike before now, but only glimpses of the vulnerability that now encompassed his associate. He'd forgotten how young Mike actually was. So, yeah, he was 26 - not actually a boy, but Mike had to grow up fast and it had in affect, meant that there were parts of Mike's life that he'd been stalled - what it meant to be a child, to be a dependent, to be innocent and vulnerable. Harvey knew that Mike was all of these and yet also none of them. Or he hadn't been able to afford to.

And here he was now. Open and exposed. A bleeding heart and tears to go along with it.

"Oh," Mike says, sucking in his lip, breath more evened. Despite the tears that remained leaking out of his eyes, the crumpled face, and the way his voice choked on the words, Harvey recognises the rationality to Mike's tone. "I'm sorry."

Harvey actually rolls his eyes at that and shakes his head.

"It's okay. I'm sorry I had to do that," Harvey reassures him. Mike may have let go of his jacket but Harvey's hands remain firmly on both of Mike's shoulders. He lowers his gaze and forces Mike to look him in the eye. "Are you with me now?"

Mike shakes his head and then nods with a shrug and Harvey manages to get in a off-kilter grin before another round of hot tears fall from the kid's eyes.

"Oh, shit," Mike says, face flushing in mortification. He ends up burying his face into his hands and Harvey hears a muffled - "Stop being nice to me."

Harvey does manage another eye roll at that because Harvey doesn't consider anything he does as being 'nice' but on Mike's scale of not nice to caringhe could see this being somewhere in the middle of it.

"Hey -" Harvey starts to say and then gives up, pulling the younger man by the shoulders into his side. Mike stiffens once before letting his body fall, seemingly melting into his side. "C'mere, kid."

It wasn't a hug, per-se, more of a semi-hug but it was as far as he was willing to go (although for the briefest of seconds, with Mike's distress literally weeping out of him and slapping him in the face like a wet fish, he had considered going for an all out hug) but he was sure both Mike and Donna would say otherwise.

He checks just to make sure that Donna wasn't back, with her feet on the desk and eating her way through a tub of popcorn, or a camera at the ready. When he was satisfied she wasn't he looked down at the younger man who's buried his face into Harvey's suit, hiding from the world's scrutiny. The only scrutiny he'd have to worry about now was Harvey, though, and he wasn't going to let this one go without some answers.

"Are you ready to tell me what this is all about?"

Mike coughs and nods against him.

Harvey pulls back to study the kid who looks startled at the sudden release. He looks up at him with big watery blue eyes shining with the wetness.

"Here," Harvey says, walking him backwards a few steps until he could push the younger man into the couch behind him. "Sit down."

Mike immediately drops, and without Harvey's chest to shield him from further scrutiny, buries his face back into his hands.

"Hey," Harvey says, sitting on the coffee table in front of him. He catches one of Mike's hands in his own and tugs, trying to see his face. "What's this about, kid?"

He manages to wrangle a hand away and Mike pulls the other back in defeat, blinking at him, as he tries to suck in a breath.

"I... it's..." Mike tries again. Harvey can see, since the slap, Mike seems calmer. In a defeated and bewildered way but he catches the way his tone changes, how his breath speeds up with simple words as panic tries to seize him again.

"Slow and easy breaths, Mike-" Harvey informs him. He keeps his voice purposely low and steady. He releases Mike's hand because anything longer than two or three seconds is touching on weird, but their knees are just a breath apart from each other. "Even you can manage that."

Mike gives him a sour look and Harvey can't help but give him a a quirk of his lips. He gives him a nudge of his knee with his own. "Try again, kid."

Mike, diverting his eyes to stare intently at the floor, takes another breath, sucked in between his lips that tremble and quiver tightly as though he's only now just realised he'd been crying hysterically in front of him. Harvey should be the one mortified, however, considering his associate has managed to trigger some sort intrinsic emotion (and he can feel himself choking just thinking about it) that in turn had actually compelled him into a reaction.

Harvey half expects, seeing how Mike now looks incredibly awkward and red-faced, to shake his head and laugh it off, apologise profusely and run, but there's still a level of shakiness that keeps the kid rooted to the spot and Harvey catches the way he rubs his palms nervously against the side of his pants.

Mike sucks in another breath before talking in a quiet voice. It was controlled in a way that probably meant Mike was terrified he might still lose it.

"I was getting ready for work. I would have been early-"

Harvey snorts at that because despite the fact that the kid was a hysterical mess only a few minutes before, he might as well keep his part of the interaction as normal as possible – he needs the kid to be able to talk to him and that probably wont happen if he realises just how freaked out he was at seeing how unravelled Mike had become.

Mike looks mildly offended.

"On time then. Satisfied?"

"Not really, but it's a start," Harvey says, with a nudge. "What happened then?"

"I was only half-dressed and there -" Mike pauses and gulps. He rubs at his throat as though it hurt him to speak. Harvey has the urge to grab at it again and fold it between them but he alone had already agreed that wasn't an option. "- there was a knock at the door."

Mike stills for too long and gulps again. The redness has faded leaving a pale and pasty face and Harvey wonders if the kid might hurl what little food he has in him on his shiny and buffed designer shoes. He very discreetly tugs them back and tucks them under the table.

"I asked Jenny to get it for me," Mike continues. It comes out in a rush, thick with panic and fear and conflicted confusion. He watches as Mike nervously flutters his fingers up and down against his pants before they suddenly twist the material in such a painful and intense way that skin must have been pulled along with it and Harvey thinks god-dammitbefore finding himself reluctantly catching the wrist attached to the hand in his own, fingers wrapping around it. He could feel the pulse thumping wildly against his fingers. "- and he was..."

Mike stops and terrified eyes lock on him again.

Harvey. Please.

"Who?" Harvey asks, clearly confused. "Trevor?"

It triggers some response out of him because Mike's suddenly laughing – chuckling to himself – in a clear tense and hysterical way before sobering up and shaking his head. "No, not Trevor. I swear, Harvey."

Harvey nods then, only now he's even more worried. He really had hoped it was Trevor (because that he could deal with) but deep down he knew it wouldn't be. As much as Trevor was an anchor he never thought in a million years he'd work Mike up into this level of hysteria. Which meant Harvey was working with a completely unknown threat.

"Not Trevor," Harvey says in confirmation and squeezes Mike's wrist in reassurance, urging him to continue. He wasn't sure how long before they'd have an audience back. "So, who was it then?"

Mike wipes his free hand wearily over his face and when he looks back up Harvey can see fresh tears spill again.

"Who, Mike?" Harvey asks again, softly spoken and gently weird to his own ears. He tightens his fingers around the wrist in his hand.

Mike diverts his look again and ends up staring at his own wrist and Harvey's feels the muscles tense beneath his hand.

Harvey barely hears him.

Soft and wet and bewildered confusion.

"I thought he was dead."

"Who?" Harvey asks, eyes clouding in confusion.

"My dad. It was my dad."

xxx