Harvey: Haven't I told taught you that there is more than one response to someone having a gun to your head? There's not even a gun in here.
Mike: No, it's not in here. It's out there roaming the halls, and when it sees me, it's going to start shooting.
.***.
Mike was really getting on Harvey's nerves today.
The kid had picked up a late-summer cold and was just...off his game. He'd come in late looking so pale and out of it that Harvey didn't even have the heart to lecture him, just piled papers into his hands and sent him off to his desk, shouting a reminder that they had a court date this afternoon, and could he please try to look human before then?
Mike grunted, collapsing into his chair and just staredat the pile of papers for a second. He was sick in that awful half-assed way that colds usually do. He felt like he wanted to spend the day in bed, popping Nyquil and not moving much. He also felt like he wanted several blankets, and at the thought his skin crawled uncomfortably. He glanced at his arm and tugged down the shirt sleeve, even though it was already mostly covering his burns. All summer he'd been unwilling to wear short sleeves because...God, he looked ugly.
At that thought he just felt worse, and gave a huge, hacking cough. At least it was a chest cold, not a head cold. He hated swimming in snot. He rubbed his chest and opened the first folder, staring down at the five-syllable words uncomprehendingly. Instead of his brain focusing on the task at hand, he was remembering last week when he had stayed late, surrounded by books and folders and papers. It had been hot and he took off his shirt because no one was there.
Until Harvey was, until he walked in bearing a pizza and another stack of folders. "Before you say anything," Harvey had insisted, "This isn't because of any care you think I show towards you. It's because I need those briefs by tomorrow and you never order any food for yourself. Which probably explains that body." He nodded at Mike's admittedly undersized physique but Mike didn't notice, he was already struggling back into his shirt, face aflame with embarrassment over his hideous scars.
When his face emerged from the shirt, he saw...something...smeared all over Harvey's face, "God, kid. I saw you in the hospital. It was a little worse than this."
"I just..." Mike didn't know what he was 'just' doing. He just knew that he didn't want anyone looking at him the way Harvey was looking at him now.
"Like it or not you're stuck with those scars kid. For forever. You think you can hide for the rest of your life?"
"I can try." Mike said fiercely, sending a little pang to Harvey's heart. After all, he was the one who'd sent Mike to that unsafe building in the first place. He was the one who sent him to get burned. But he left Mike alone with his pizza, because the truth was he couldn't stand to look at the blotchy red skin. Not because he thought it made Mike ugly, or made him any less of a man. It was because the sight of them made him feel so guilty he felt like punching something. Or screaming. And neither was an action suitable for the best closer in New York City.
Mike was thinking of that night, of how Harvey had taken one look at his scars and thrown the files on the table and just...left. And he was remembering his brain screaming at him for being stupid enough to think that maybe Harvey of all people wouldn't mind.
Harvey jerked him out of his revere at noon, when he came over to find out why his associate wasn't waiting for him downstairs at the car for him. "Did you get that brief done?"
Mike looked down at the paper, where somehow words had miraculously been written on the page. he handed it wordlessly over to his boss, who scanned it for a second, then nodded. "It's have to do. You coming or not?"
"Coming." He stood up and automatically tugged down his shirtsleeves. If Harvey noticed he didn't comment, just jerked his head in the direction of the exit and left without another word, leaving Mike to follow in his wake.
"Why are we meeting at a bank?" Mike asked when they'd finally arrived. He'd spent the drive over in a state of numb delirium, staring out the window and thinking about cough syrup and a hot shower. It was only when they actually stepped foot onto the streets of New York that he realized they were outside the biggest bank in the city.
"Because our client is a banker?" Harvey raised an eyebrow at Mike, waiting for the witty retort. When none was forthcoming, he blamed it on summer sickness and made up his mind about something. "You're not coming up." Harvey said, putting a hand on Mike's chest to stop him from following Harvey up the stairs. The look of confused incredulity on Mike's face made the older man smirk. "Do you really think getting our client a taste of that cold you're nursing is the best idea?"
"I don't have a cold!" Mike protested, then launched into a coughing fit that left him breathless. "Well...if you knew I was sick why'd you drag me down here in the first place?"
"Because that's what you do to associates. You make their lives miserable." Harvey went up the stairs, knowing he'd just given Mike about an hour of reprieve from work. If the kid was smart, he'd find a quiet corner in the large, cool bank and take a nap without having to worry about Louis or the other associates bothering him.
Harvey thought he was actually being the good guy in this scenario. How was he know that the next time he saw Mike, there'd be a gun pointed at his head?
.***.
Mike actually did find a cool bench to sit down on. He loosened his tie and threw himself onto the seat near the teller, looking at the line of people that approached the little counter, looking beyond it at the huge safe. He knew that he'd once seen a Discovery channel program about banks, and somewhere in his mind was the amount of money kept in the average high-end banking establishment, but it was always on days that he was feeling under the weather that he couldn't quite access that information, at least not as fast he would have been able to while well. By the time his brain had extracted the necessary information, he was already thinking about something else and so let the very large number slip away again.
The time passed in that way it does when you're sick, a haze and blur of discomfort, if not outright pain, and suddenly Mike was very glad Harvey had brought him to this cool place with cold marble floors. No one was bothering him and his head nodded once...twice...
He didn't see the large man and small man walk into the bank, or else he would have noticed how they were looking around like they were nervous about who was watching. He didn't see them approach the counter, one of them reaching into a bag to pull out guns. He didn't notice that they were wearing ski masks, or that they were already causing people look at them in that way a deer looks at headlights - alarmed, and unable to do anything about the problem that was heading their way.
No, Mike was dozing because he hadn't slept well since he'd gotten sick (well, since he'd gotten stuck in that fire, really) So he didn't notice the problem until it was right on top of him. Until the men with masks and guns had made it to the counter and demanded money. They decided to use people as human shields, as captives. The shorter one grabbed a very young woman who was probably new in town and probably still in college and was terrified, absolutely terrified. Her screaming made Mike open his eyes a split-second before a beefy arm wrapped around his neck and pulled.
Harvey had once told him there was more than one response when you have a gun to your head, but he couldn't think of any other responses, couldn't think at all except oh my God he has a gun. Mike stumbled with the man over to the counter and tried to focus, to get his brain to think, but everything was happening so fast...
...The woman, the other captive who couldn't have been older than twenty was screaming, crying, and Mike felt his panic surge with her panic. Her screams were nearly drowned out, though, because the men holding them were shouting, waving their guns around. "Get on the floor!" "Get down or we'll shoot!" "Give us the money or they die!" And Mike recognized vaguely that the they included him. That's when he decided he needed to get out of this situation.
For a split second, Mike winged a prayer of thanks up to whoever wanted to listen. Thanks that Harvey wasn't in this room, int his situation. Thanks that Harvey was safely tucked in a room upstairs, and he had more brains then to come into a firefight. Because there were already sirens to be heard outside the building. The cavalry had arrived, and this wasn't going to end well.
Haven't I taught you there is more than one response to someone having a gun to your head? Why did that voice sound like Harvey? Why was Harvey the one he was thinking about when he had a gun to his head? Questions for a later date...
He could struggle. He could elbow the man in the kidneys, whirl, and try to knock the gun out of his hand like they do on TV. He could talk to them, plead for his life or offer some sage advice about not ruining everyone's lives. He could just give up and let himself die.
None of the options sounded particularly promising, and he didn't have time to dwell on it now. A flurry of motion was happening all around him but all he could focus on was the grand staircase Harvey was standing on top of.
Like a camera zooming in, Mike could suddenly see every detail of Harvey's face as he surveyed the chaos below. Incredulity, surprise, his eyes darting around trying to find something, trying to find Mike. And then he did find him, and their eyes met, and...Mike had never seen Harvey panicked before. Not like this. Over jobs and other people's money, over cases and winning and track records. But when lives were on the line...when a gun was pointed at his associate's head Harvey froze, his face a mask of pain and concern so palpable Mike could sense it across the room. He tried to shake his head a little, a warning to not come down, to not to anything stupid.
That minute shake of the head seemed to remind Mike's captor that he had a captive, and suddenly the large man whirled towards the doors that a single police officer had come into, hands held up in surrender. Even Mike could see the bullet-proof vest he had on under his shirt. His captor, upon seeing this lone savior, cocked the gun. Mike had never heard a barrel slide into place before, but he recognized the sound instantly as one that usually preceded death on those TV shows he then swore to never watch again. "You try to stop us and he dies."
Mike must have imagined the strangled moan he heard from across the large atrium. No way would Harvey ever sound like that.
"We're ready to meet any demands if it means getting everyone out of here safely." And even Mike could hear the lies all over his voice. The gunman holding Mike and the gunman holding the young woman exchanged a look. A scared teller pushed a bag of money over the counter, then another one. Mike could feel, couldn't see, the man behind him shrug a bit.
Then a bullet shot at point-blank range tore through Mike's leg.
It was worse than the pain of burns. Worse than any pain Mike had known. He heard the gunshot and fell and thought solemnly so this is what dying feels like. He lifted his head and waited for another bang, waited for the poor college girl to be shot too, but all he could see was a flurry of feet and shouts, maybe another shot but by then he'd reached his hand down to feel where the bullet was. His fingers came back dripping blood.
He'd been shot. In a bank robbery. That would be one to tel his grandchildren. He smiled at the thought, smiled a little sarcastically because those who died in bank robberies didn't get to have grandchildren, and passed out before Harvey could get to him.
.***.
Donna sat next in the chair, finally giving up on trying to get Harvey to rest and just nursing the cup of coffee between her long fingers. Harvey hadn't said much since she'd arrived, just barely pushed out some words about Mike being shot and then continuing to walk back and forth in front of the doors that ran to surgery.
"Where was he shot?"
"In the leg. They hit an artery. The blood..." But Harvey closed his mouth again. Shook his head. Continued pacing.
At one point, Donna had left to get coffee. Mike had been in surgery for six hours. When she got back, Harvey had finally collapsed in a chair and was just staring at the doors as if he could will them to open and bring out the good news. "Want to tell me about it?"
Harvey shook his head, accepted the coffee, and then slammed it down on a side table with so much force that the liquid jumped out and would have burned his hand if hospital coffee was anything more than lukewarm. "I swear to God I didn't know this would happen. I thought...you saw him. He was out of it. Looked like Hell. Sick as a dog. I thought I could give the kid a nap time while I finagled with Lawrence. I didn't know..."
"No one could have known." Donna said quickly, but Harvey shook his head again.
"When we got the call...it's Lawrence's bank, he knew as soon as it started. I didn't even have to look to know that Mike was in trouble. He has the worst luck I've ever seen. But when I saw that gun to his head..." He took a sip of coffee to force himself to stop talking. "I couldn't do anything to help him. I had to just...watch."
"He'll be all right." Donna soothed, but she'd seen Harvey when she first walked in, standing in the waiting room looking like an extra from a slasher film. Blood on his arms, his pant legs, his tie, his jacket. Blood everywhere, and all of it coming out of Mike's rather compact body.
It was another four hours before Mike got out of surgery, another eight before they could watch him sleep. Harvey stood in the doorway and stared. "He'll be out of the woods soon." A doctor had promised, suppressing a yawn. "It wouldn't be so bad but the poor guy's got a cold. Wreaking havoc with the drugs we're trying to give him."
Harvey nodded like he understood, then went home and got changed. Jessica already knew he wasn't coming into work, but he didn't think Mike needed to see his own blood all over his boss's clothes.
Twenty-one hours after being shot in a bank robbery (a bank robbery? this could not be real life!) Mike opened his eyes to a fearful Donna and a sleeping Harvey. He tried to open his mouth but found that he was too tired, so instead he just flapped his hand a bit uselessly and it landed on one of Harvey's, resting, for some reason, on the side of the bed.
Harvey blinked and was instantly awake. When he looked down and saw that Mike's eyes were open, a look of such tenderness spread over his features that Mike felt his tired lips twitch into a smile. "You're trying your damnedest to die on me, Mike? Cause I'm still not going to let you quit."
"Just seeing how many grey hairs I can give you." Mike yawned, already falling back into the black abyss.
Harvey had so much more to say to him, wanted the associate to talk and laugh and reference old Sci-Fi movies so he was sure, was quite sure that he was okay. But Mike's eyelids were fluttering. He had only a few more seconds to say something important.
"I told you there's more than one response to a gun to the head." Harvey tried joking, already swearing to never use that expression as a teaching method again.
"You're prophetic, Harv." Mike said, using that old family nickname again. Before Harvey could call him out on it, he'd succumbed once again to the allure of drugs, his hand still wrapped around the man who claimed he didn't care.
.***.
okay, we'll admit that these situations are a bit extreme...but they're too fun to stop. hope y'all don't mind the mindless h/c. there's not enough of it on the show.
