"You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it." Order of the Phoenix
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Harvey doesn't snoop into people's lives. Honestly, he doesn't know or care what most people do after they interact with him. It's like those venn diagrams he had to learn about in fourth grade – circles intersecting at one small point and then bridging out into separate spheres.
There were exceptions. He sincerely cared about Donna, who'd been with him for years and who was the foundation for most of his professional life. He had a younger brother, who he'd always adored. And there was something about Mike Ross that made him want to either shake the kid or give him a hug.
Like the day when Harvey had gotten tickets to ball game. He'd been planning to go with a girl, of course, a girl he was going with half-heartedly and had broken the date at the last minute, apologizing profusely as she got on a plane to visit an aunt who was going through chemo. "She needs me," the girl had said, kissing Harvey's cheek.
"I understand." Harvey replied, wondering what the hell he would do with two tickets.
He doesn't really understand why he asked Mike to come with him, except that he'd walked past the associate's cubical and had watched him being harassed. Again.
"God, Ross, my dog dresses better than you," One of the interns, admittedly not the brightest crayon in the box, had teased, looking at Mike's scuffed shoes.
Mike had opened his mouth, about to retort and probably land himself in a deep pile of shit, when some impulse made Harvey toss out the ticket he had buried deep in his breast pocket.
He picked the kid up early, looking up at the sky and trying to judge if the game would be called on account of rain. "They actually do that?" Mike had asked when Harvey aired this fear.
"Please don't say things like that," Harvey groaned, "I was varsity baseball in high school."
"Of course you were. I bet you were Mr. Popular."
"Damn straight."
They made it into the stadium and into some really good seats before it started to rain. And what a rain! Suddenly the lack of a ballgame seemed like the least of their problems. Harvey ran out of the stadium calculating the odds of them drowning in a storm.
"Enjoy the game, Harvey?" Ray asked once they slid into the back seat.
"Just get us back to my place," Harvey snapped, looking over at Mike who had his sweatshirt-clad arms wrapped around his torso and was shivering so violently Harvey could actually hear his teeth chatter. "If you take off the sweatshirt you'll be warmer." Harvey said grudgingly, only because he couldn't stand how the kid's paleness brought out the dark bruises under his eyes, the tight pinch to his lips. He didn't like how the wet sweatshirt clung to Mike's body, only accentuating the fact that a lawyer for one of the biggest firms in New York couldn't really afford to feed himself properly.
Mike just pursed his lips and dug himself further into the seat, offering a small polite smile that did little to hide how really cold he was. Harvey sighed and decided to wait on the battle until they were someplace with hot showers and warm blankets.
"You could have just dropped me off at my place," Mike said, dripping water on Harvey's doorstep.
"I promised you a ballgame. Maybe Chicago didn't get as much rain as we did." Harvey flipped through the channels and then muted the White Sox – Rangers game so he could focus on the thing that was ruining his apartment.
"Will you just get out of that thing?" Harvey rolled his eyes and pulled the Yankees hoodie all the way off his associate and then, as Mike protested, stripped him of his T-shirt for good measure. "Shower's through the first door on the right," He was saying, then stopped suddenly as the shirt came off and Mike whipped around.
They stared at each other for a moment, the young, half-naked man with old scars littering his back and the lawyer who was suddenly speechless.
Mike's entire face changed, and when he spoke his voice was low and dull. "I'm sorry," he said, reaching a hand out for the shirt that Harvey was still holding, "I'll just…yeah. Go."
Harvey's hand suddenly flipped and caught Mike's wrist. Mike tried for a second to pull away and then became eerily still. "Where are those from?" Harvey asked, his voice detachedly curious, as if he was asking Mike how fast he could run a mile or how many times he'd seen Empire Strikes Back.
"It was a long time ago, Harvey." Mike didn't try to pull away, but did look over his shoulder, casting a longing glance at the door. "I should leave."
"You'll drown." Harvey pointed out, which wasn't really like stopping him but damn he wasn't expecting this. Hadn't he heard somewhere from someone that Mike's parents had died in a car accident when he was young? That he'd been brought up by a sweet old grandmother who was now eating up whatever money Mike was able to make? "Take a shower." He turned around and stared at the game as if he could be more interested in something happening states away than in what was going on with the shivering young man leaving his living room.
Mike didn't know what to do, so he took a shower. His apartment got lukewarm water at best, so he allowed himself the luxury of just standing under the jet and letting steam fill the room. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been this warm…and then he stepped out the shower to find a towel, a pair of worn but clean sweatpants, a sweatshirt (emblazoned with the word HARVARD, of course) and a note.
Harvey liked notes. Mike still couldn't figure out why, because most of the time it seemed like the lawyer was allergic to paperwork and everything that went with it, but he liked to leave Mike notes saying things like If you're late to the Peterson trial tomorrow I actually will fire you or my god, princess, will you just eat something already? I know you're trying to save your figure for marriage but what I really don't need is an associate passing out on me or I'm pretty sure I saw that suit at a Halloween store for a buck fifty.
He left them everywhere. Never on Post-Its – Harvey was above useful sticky pieces of paper. No, it was always an eight by ten piece folded over, with Harvey's neat, clear block letters squarely in the middle of the inside. Mike took one look at it and decided to put on the clothes first, soaking in the warmth of the fabric and the air before jolting painfully back to reality.
I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TRYING TO HIDE FROM ME, KID, AND I REALLY DON'T CARE. THE PAST IS IN THE PAST, RIGHT? BUT IF IT EVER INTERFERES WITH YOUR WORK I WILL MAKE IT MY BUISNESS TO FIND OUT.
They weren't especially kind words, or even especially cruel ones, but Mike pinched the bridge of his nose before the tears managed to really well up in his eyes. He wasn't going to cry. He really wasn't. It's just that anyone who saw the scars were either disgusted or perversely fascinated. The fact that Harvey was neither, that he really, honestly didn't care, was the greatest gift he could have ever given Mike.
He went back out into the apartment and spent a good minute watching the rain fall outside. The huge windows that gave a fantastic view of Manhattan were also great for showing the power of the storm. Raindrops hurled themselves against the glass like they had something to prove, and Mike felt himself feeling sorry for any poor schmucks who had to be out in the weather.
The smell of…something…led him to the kitchen. "I didn't know you knew how to cook," Mike said, raising an eyebrow at Harvey's back. Somehow, he had never pictured the older man in anything other than a suit, but now Harvey was clad very similarly to Mike. He looked…normal. Not at all like the demi-God he portrayed himself as on a daily basis.
Harvey glanced at him and snorted. "You look about ten years old."
"It's the hair, isn't it?" Mike rubbed his hands vigorously through his hair, trying to shake the water from it. "Are those hotdogs?"
"Ballpark franks," Harvey said, "I promised you a game, right? You can't do baseball without hotdogs."
"Boiled hotdogs?"
"This is how my mother made them!" Harvey defended, "But if you don't like them you are welcome to scrounge something from my garden."
"You have a garden?"
"No. God, you're six stories up, how in the world do you think I would support a garden? You're so dense. I was making a joke about you going out in the rain."
"Oh. It wasn't a very good joke."
They sat on Harvey's couch only after the lawyer had quoted the exact price of the furniture and made it quite clear that if Mike got any mustard on it he would not be paying for a replacement
They watched the Rangers win in a surprisingly sunny Chicago and were just getting into a Red Sox –Rays game when the words started spilling out of Mike's mouth. "Thanks for not making a big deal about…about the scars."
Harvey muted the game and gave him a long look. "I tried not to. Are you going to make it a big deal?"
"No. Like you said, it's in my past. But I will tell you if. You know. You want to know." Mike rushed on, words tripping over each other as they scrambled out of his mouth. "It's just that you usually want to be thorough and I don't mind telling you." Mostly because he didn't ask for the story, and this was one person who Mike really, really wanted to know everything about him. He wanted Harvey to understand where he came from.
Harvey sighed and looked longingly at the sixty-three inch screen built into his wall. "You remember me saying that I don't really give a crap about you?"
"You never said that," Mike pointed out, already drawing a leg up to the couch so he could face Harvey head-on. He was settling in for a story. "And I'm not asking you to care. I'm asking you if you want to know the story."
Harvey couldn't deny that he did, in fact, want to know. One of the biggest attractions in being a lawyer was that it was in the job description to know every side of the story. And he felt like he didn't even know one side of the story that was Mike Ross. "Proceed."
"Thank you, that's very kind." Mike quirked a familiar smile, and it occurred to Harvey that he really did look like a kid, swimming in Harvey's too-big sweatshirt, with his hair plastered to warmth-flushed cheeks. "So, you know about my parents? They were killed in a car accident when I was eight." He said this as nonchalantly as possible, but it was also in a lawyer's job description to catch onto minute tells. Like the fact that Mike clenched his fists when he said killed. Like how his eyes shuttered closed at the mention of parents.
"Well, I lived with my grandmother after that. She was really great – raised me by myself, you know? But she was always sick. Better back then than she is now, of course, but the dementia set in pretty early on. I was twelve when I was placed in foster care. It was only for a year, and only because grandma had done a couple of old-people things. Caught the curtains on fire because she left the stove on. That kind of stuff. Nothing bad, not really.
"Anyway, they sent me to live with Keith and Michelle in Boston. I hated Boston – I was raised here in the city, and everything from the weather to the baseball team drove me absolutely crazy. And Keith and Michelle…they were really into the whole spare the rod and spoil the child thing, you know? I guess it's New England childrearing or something. I dunno. But it wasn't long before being sent to bed without supper turned into being smacked around and that turned into beatings and being locked in the basement. Their marriage was falling apart, you know? I was the last foster kid they ever took in." Mike stared at Harvey, who hadn't said anything, hadn't moved.
"It's not like they were awful people. They'd take me to museums and the zoo, stuff like that. I just screwed up a lot. I wasn't exactly he most pleasant child at twelve. Angsty, you know? A nerdy, angsty kid with an eidetic memory. I was a real smart-alec, too. Kept trying to one-up everyone. Maybe they were good for me in the long run. I definitely learned how to control myself in that house." He shrugged, sighed. "After ten months my grandma had finally gotten through all the red tape and got me back. Keith and Michelle gave me a book. You ever read Watership Down? I still have it, that copy. That and the scars."
Harvey still didn't say anything, so Mike just kept talking. Kept trying to fill up this silence. "I'm not an abuse victim or anything. I pretty much had all of it coming to me. And I bruise like a peach. The only problem is now I have to keep my shirt on, like, all the time, because people get freaked out by the scars. Especially girls. They start treating me like I'm some kind of kicked puppy."
Now he'd officially run out of things to say and suddenly felt embarrassed to be sitting there in Harvey Specter's apartment wearing Harvey Specter's clothes with Harvey Specter looking at him so intently. He wrung his hands together (a nervous habit he'd picked up while enduring the beatings with Keith and Michelle, actually) and got his leg off the couch.
"Thanks for sharing that, princess. I don't know what I would have done if I'd gone my whole life without hearing such an amazing story. If you wrote it down it could be the next great American novel. But you should totally include some later stuff, too. Like how you got a gig as a lawyer because you didn't want to be caught with weed."
"Don't be an ass." Mike said, his voice so low and frustrated that Harvey did shut his mouth and un-mute the game so they could both pretend to watch it.
He didn't know where the words had come from, because while he'd been listening to the story Harvey had been thinking: My god, his parents died when he was only eight. In a car accident. I wonder if he was in the car with them.
He was thinking: My god, he's making excuses for them. He's actually trying to rationalize this.
He was thinking: My god, Donna was right. I really did just take in a lost puppy.
Because when Harvey stared at the profile of Mike Ross, his resolute chin and hurt eyes almost blending into the rain-lashed window and murky darkness beyond, all he could think about was how if he'd known Mike back then, he could have never let anything like this happen to him.
And now he was thinking: My god, what's happening? Am I really getting attached to this kid?
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