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Shutting Down 14/17
WC- ~4970
A/N - I've finally finished this! You've all been wonderful. I really appreciate the feedback. It was my first fic in the Suits fandom so needless to say I was nervous - thanks for making it so fun. There's a couple more parts and I'll post them tomorrow as soon as I proofread them. This one is a little standalone-ish, but I think it's still relevant. I actually wrote it before some of the earlier chapters, but I feel like it's important to the story and think (hope) this is a good place for it.
-s
WARNINGS/TRIGGERS: noncon/consent issues (I've put dubcon up to this point but I personally feel like this is noncon, though I welcome other opinions on it because this particular TW seems to be a slippery slope with fics. Anyway, better to err on the side of caution), coercion, verbal/emotional abuse, implied drug use, descriptions of cutting/self-harm, blood.
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Mike decided to test his theory that Harvey only loved him in a very sick way and on a very conditional basis, which seemed to contradict the very definition of love, though Mike wasn't certain, since he'd never felt it before.
One day, he walked into the office and told him he wasn't going to take on the Rivers case or the Clarkfield pro-bono either, because he was up to his neck with the Steer briefs as it was. He disposed of the files on Harvey's desk with an ungraceful thud.
"Too busy with the Steer briefs," he announced. "Sorry, not doing these."
"Yes, you are."
"I guess you didn't hear me," Mike said. He sounded surprisingly confident at work those days, even when he was talking to Harvey, because hadn't completely fallen apart yet, and being there gave him a somewhat valid (though brief) sense of safety. "I'm not doing them, Harvey. I don't have time and I don't want to screw up again. And you can tell me to do them, you can order me to, but I won't. And you can take me in the file room, if you want, and kiss me and say you love me, but I'm still not doing them."
Harvey was annoyed, but also amused at Mike's willingness to put his foot down. It was cute. "You're only talking to me like this because we're at work, Mike."
"And you're only keeping your cool for the same reason," Mike fired back. "You're pissed off and you know it, and you're only still sitting down right now because we're not at home, and there's too many witnesses and not enough walls."
"Do the damn cases, Mike," Harvey said, glaring up dangerously. He flicked the stack of files.
"No."
"You know what? Do them, don't do them, I don't care. They're for Jessica, not for me. But if you're not going to, then I suggest you walk down to her office and let her know. Because you're the capable associate whose hands she requested they be put in. And I'd really hate to see her in the morning if these aren't on her desk tonight. Wouldn't you?"
"You're bluffing."
"Maybe I am," Harvey shrugged. "Maybe I'm not. Why don't you leave them here, find out tomorrow?"
Mike huffed, "Forget it," he said. He grabbed the files – all of them – and stormed out. "You win."
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Mike was standing in Harvey's living room, looking at the coffee table that was stacked with papers he had left to go over from the Steer case that he, of course, got behind on while trying to finish up the other two that, of course, turned out to be for Harvey and not Jessica. Of course.
He was still standing there when Harvey wandered over, slid his arms around his waist and chest and pulled him back against him, tight.
"Scared?" he asked, when Mike flinched more than a little. He was starting to consider that it might more appropriately qualify as an actual jump.
"No."
"You're a horrible liar. We need to work on your poker face."
"Maybe you could just help me work on the case, instead," Mike suggested. "Since it's your fault I'm behind now."
Harvey nipped at his neck, "Are you trying to piss me off again, Mike? Because look where we are. No witnesses. Lots of walls. I should throw you against one for what you said in my office today."
Mike scoffed, "But you won't." There was false bravado in his tone – calling Harvey's bluff never worked out too well for him since Harvey always followed through on his threats.
"How do you know?"
"I just do," he gave it a shot anyway. "Plus, it's playing dirty. Like badgering the witness."
"Badgering the witness doesn't work because it angers them. It doesn't scare them."
"So, you're trying to justify using fear as a motivator? In that case," Mike started to recite, from memory and an old law book, "Fear as a tactic is vindictive and ineffective..."
Harvey put his hand under Mike's jaw and tilted his head back, so it was resting on his shoulder, exposing his neck. "Ineffective? I think it depends who you're using the tactic on."
"A witness, client, jury..." Mike rattled off, though it was difficult to talk with Harvey's mouth on his throat. "I don't think it matters. People don't usually respond to fear with honesty, leaving their actions and answers – if any – unreliable. Which is why it's ineffective. And it's cruel, which is basically the same as vindictive."
"But," Harvey countered, letting go of Mike's jaw and running his hands up his chest. "What if you don't need honesty? What if you all you need is compliance? Then is fear a good tactic?"
"Maybe," Mike replied. He tensed under Harvey's touch – it was rough and spiteful. "But it's still unethical."
Harvey yanked Mike's shirt over his head before he could object. "I always hated ethics," he said. "Seriously, my least favorite class in undergrad. I think I got an A minus."
"I'm sure you broke an academic sweat," Mike snapped. "Give me my shirt."
"Not really." Harvey laughed, and when Mike reached for his shirt, he grabbed hold of his wrists instead. "No shirt."
"Let go!" Mike said, but his voice didn't hold up like it had earlier in Harvey's office. It faltered quickly under the duress. "I have to finish the Steer files. I'm not doing this."
"Oh, you're not doing this? Just like you weren't doing the Rivers and the Clarkfield cases? Give me a break, Mike. You do what I say, when I say it, one way or another," he pulled Mike against him by his wrists, kissed him slowly, and then said, much softer, "Come on. I love you."
Mike wanted to believe him. He really, really did. He wanted to relent, wanted to give in, wanted to kiss him back, forget the bad, move on with the good, wanted to pretend that the side of Harvey that really did give a shit about him existed in more than just fleeting moments on fleeting days. But he couldn't, not quite, not this time, because it hurt too much. He thought about everything Harvey had said, and everything he'd done, and how he was always either angry or cavalier about Mike's existence, and he thought about his wrists and how they probably couldn't turn any darker, that maybe this time they'd just break, and when he thought about all of that, he couldn't give in. He couldn't melt into Harvey's arms and pretend none of it was true. He could just stand, rigid and unwilling, and try to make a case.
"No you don't," he said, meek. "Not really."
Harvey sighed, spun him around and pushed his hair back. "I do, Mike. But if you don't believe me, you don't believe me."
"I don't believe you because you say one thing and you do another, Harvey! You say you love me, then you give me eight billion cases to work on. You say you love me, then I leave for ten minutes and you forget I exist. You say you love me," Mike looked down at his arm, still encased in Harvey's right-hand grip. "And then you do this."
Harvey concentrated on his breathing, pressed their foreheads together, tried to stay calm despite Mike's impressive summary of a man whose actions quite clearly contradicted his words. "You didn't used to fight me on this, Mike," he said quietly, sliding his hand behind Mike's belt.
"It didn't used to hurt," Mike said, but his voice barely registered, seemed to die as it hit the air. His whole body tensed.
Harvey stopped. He considered Mike's words, wondered how much truth there was to them. Which isn't to say that he thought all that much about it, or that he'd have changed if he did, but he liked to think he would've. He liked to tell himself he wasn't that impossibly cruel. If there was anything he admitted to, to himself, it was that he was tough, but fair. And maybe—maybe—coercive. Maybe he coerced Mike into doing a lot of things, but he was convinced he never strayed too close to force. Unfortunately, the line between the two was thin, blurring quickly, and Mike was having a difficult time telling the difference.
There was a nauseating sensation of mild guilt twisting around in Harvey's stomach and he changed the subject in an attempt to make it go away. "When are you going to finish these?" he asked, nodding toward the files on the table.
"Tonight," Mike promised, a little confused, but he stayed and waited for the worst. When it didn't come – when Harvey let go of him, just said 'Good' and walked away – Mike took a deep breath, ran into the bathroom and locked the door behind him.
He turned on the faucet, sat down on the floor and cried.
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It would serve no purpose to fully anthologize every day or week or month. It would be redundant; you know – same song, different verse. Another fight, another mistake, an hour of the cold shoulder, Harvey treating everyone else like they had the capacity to be hurt while treating Mike like it didn't matter if he did or not. It was another day of disappointment, desperate need for validation that Mike got soclose to getting but always seemed to fall short of. Another night of no-means-yes, crying, arguing, sitting against the bathroom wall carving open his legs because it was so much easier to deal with the kind of pain that was physical; the kind that he could see and touch and that eventually went away.
It was a new boxcutter blade he'd swiped from work, it was Harvey's bathroom, it was Saturday. He swore he'd had enough. He was two weeks into snorting cocaine, and it was almost a daily occurrence, though here-and-there stalled in part by the infrequent escapes he was able to make to his own apartment. He hadn't started injecting it yet. Sucking it up his nose seemed to be holding him over for now, though he'd eventually notice that the high came on fast but was gone even faster.
Of course, it was hard to snort coke in Harvey's apartment, and when Mike came down off of it the last thing he wanted to do was face the level of anger and disappointment that would undoubtedly await him if Harvey were to find him in that condition in his apartment or if Mike had the audacity to bring the drugs there in the first place.
But on Saturday he was somewhat trapped. His bike was at work. He couldn't walk that far. His whole body was sore, and whether or not it was from cocaine or Harvey was a toss-up. He just knew that if he didn't do something to at least try to cope with the impending dread he felt, the complete lack of feeling that had somehow evolved into a feeling itself – and a terrible one, at that – he was going to lose his mind for good. He had to do something about the battle he was waging with himself; something to free himself from the weight he felt was suffocating him, something to numb him to that absolutely empty, worthless, useless, unwanted, unloved, used, discarded, bruised, damaged feeling.
Something was cutting. He couldn't remember how he ended up on the cold tile in Harvey's oversized bathroom – back against the wall, knees in front of him, silver blade in his right hand – but he had, which was all that really mattered. He'd been doing it for a while now – at least longer than the cocaine – so he had a steady hand, made deep, decisive cuts, one after another, in descending lines from the bottom of his pelvis to just before his knees. He tried to use up as much as space as he could. No one saw him there except Harvey anyway. Most of the time, if he wasn't wearing a suit, he wasn't wearing anything.
He started to hum after a while, which was usually a good sign, because it meant he'd started to zone out. It was the peak he was trying to get to, where he hummed and the blood trailed down his thighs and on to the ceramic, and the entire expanse of his upper leg was covered in red. His eyes would glaze, head loll to one side, his hand would lose its more planned action and just start hacking away unceremoniously in diagonal gashes here, there, everywhere. Finally, he'd throw the blade across the room, claw at his face in frustration and cry. Eventually the pain would pull him back to the present, out from the hazards of being too far in his own head, and he'd stop crying and lean his head against the wall and stare into space as the apathy began to set in.
It was that exact position that Harvey found him in twenty minutes later, and by that point, where Mike was sitting looked like a crime scene.
"Fuck!" Harvey shouted, turning on one heel and covering his mouth. He had to recover –adapt – for several seconds before turning back around to deal with the situation. He'd seen Mike in similar conditions before, but this one was somewhat worse, and it never really got easier to walk in on someone slicing open their flesh.
At the sound of Harvey's voice, Mike managed to move his head enough to look at him, then it rolled back down and to the side again. His eyes were open, looking across toward the shower but not necessarily seeing. Harvey knelt in front of him, put his hand under his chin and moved his head. Maybe even more disturbing than the blood was just how colorless his eyes were, how glassy, how unfocused, how they were already so much more dead than alive, even then. It looked like he'd given up, but really, the fact that Mike was still bothering to make himself bleed meant he was making a somewhat valiant attempt to keep fighting.
It just didn't mean that he was winning.
Harvey was still mumbling expletives when he put a cool, damp towel over Mike's thighs and wiped the blood away, though most of it had dried and stained. Harvey knew it had to hurt – a lot – to aggravate recent wounds like that, but he considered for a moment that maybe that's what Mike had been counting on, because he didn't flinch.
Mike, though still somewhat entranced, noticed that Harvey looked concerned. More concerned than Mike had seen him in the past and about as concerned as he'd see him in the future (there was a cap on the scale of Harvey's concern, and this probably maxed it out). He started to shiver.
"I t-t-told you, Harvey."
Harvey glanced up at the both the sound of Mike's voice and the sudden shaking that he attributed to the fact that he was covering him in cold water. He ignored him in favor of turning on the shower until the water ran comfortably warm.
"What did you tell me, Mike?" Harvey asked, only because Mike seemed to still be waiting for a reply. He put his arms under his shoulders and pulled him up.
"Pain is relative."
"Okay," Harvey acknowledged him but focused more on getting him under the spray of water to warm him up. He tried to hold him, but the water made his skin slick, and Mike's legs were buckling. Harvey was forced to lower him to the floor of the shower, and watch him curl into a ball, almost oblivious to the water rushing around him.
"Aren't you going to ask what it's relative to?"
When Harvey realized he wasn't going to get Mike to stand just yet, he sat across from him just outside of the shower, left the glass door open so he could lean in far enough to keep wiping the water from his face and eyes.
"What is pain relative to, Mike?" Harvey took the bait to appease him, and because Mike's voice sounded so far away, he probably wouldn't walk away from the situation with any kind of lucid recollection of his questions or Harvey's answers.
"You. My mind."
Mike was so calm in the aftermath of his brutal misadventures with a razor blade that it actually made Harvey significantly uncomfortable. The fact that he was curled up on his side in the shower, talking vacantly and almost philosophically about pain and how cutting himself open compared, or didn't compare, to being with Harvey or dealing with his mind – both of those overbearing in their own way – wasn't helping to make Harvey feel any better. He'd never been there before, so he was at a loss as to understand it, let alone fix it.
"Let's get out of the shower, Mike," Harvey suggested, when he noticed the water was cooling. He stood up to accelerate the process.
"No." came the reply from way down on the floor, a battered voice that sounded tragically young and lightyears away from the actual moment they were in. "No." Mike said again, and then he picked up where he'd left off. "Relative to you, no pain. Relative to my mind, no pain."
Mike knew by that point that no was hollow and lacked any kind of compelling weight. Which might be why he said it so softly, so unconvincingly, because why waste his breath on a request that would be ignored? Harvey reached down and gripped his arm, which was difficult, but he did it, pulled Mike up almost entirely by it alone, eliciting a cry that wasn't an unexpected reaction to pain not caused by himself; pain he had no forewarning of and therefore no preparation for.
Harvey dragged him from the shower and wrapped a towel around his shoulders. Mike glared back at him, eyes suddenly ablaze with activity and emotion, and what looked like anger and sadness and fear was very poorly disguised as hate.
"I asked you to stand up more than once, Mike," Harvey said quietly, because he knew that those emotions stemmed from much earlier problems but that the most recent reason for the glare was Harvey's use of force, which, if Mike was in the mood to pick a fight, might have argued was gratuitous, always premature, and usually Harvey's immediate means of negotiating when verbal orders failed. In other words, Mike thought it was a flagrant misuse of his strength, and if Mike had in fact laid there for an hour or so, might have been warranted. But that wasn't usually the case; usually Harvey warned him once and then jumped to strong-arming him into compliance. Which was efficient, but cruel. Mike also thought he could make a pretty good case about this, but he lacked the will to play the game at the moment. It was really just another testament to how inconvenient his mind was; how it refused to stop processing and planning even at the most inopportune times. It got him into trouble more than it got him out of it.
"I said no more than once, too," was a lot easier to say, though Mike had the sudden feeling that maybe that was enough to start a fight all on its own.
Harvey didn't answer, busied himself with drying Mike off and physically dressing him since Mike seemed completely unable to do so himself, still enveloped in a stupor of cutting-induced apathy.
"But you never hear me when I say that." he continued, arm going limp after Harvey pushed it through the sleeve of a shirt.
"Okay, Mike, let's go." Harvey announced, dismissing his words again. He put his arm around his waist and this time Mike cooperated, walked on his own accord to the bed, where he mimicked his position in the shower and Harvey covered him with the blankets. Mike had the unfortunate and inexplicable compulsion to beg him to stay, but didn't need to act on it when Harvey climbed in beside him and wrapped his arm around his chest.
"Mike, if you curl up any tighter, you're going to disappear," Harvey said. He made a half-hearted effort to unfold him.
"Comfortable."
"All right," Harvey sighed. The kid was proving to be more difficult than any case he could remember from back in his prosecution days. Harvey struggled daily with whether or not Mike was worth it.
They lied there, for maybe an hour – time was fluid, really, at least to Mike – and then it started. Harvey expected it; intentionally stayed awake because of it.
Crying.
It started quickly, suddenly, almost from nowhere, almost without a cause, though Harvey knew it absolutely had one – it had many causes. From what little Harvey understood about cutting, he decided that the endorphins and the apathy had probably worn off – because they were always so short-lived – and Mike was left with the same pain he'd started with, only now it was intensified by feelings of shame and regret and, of course, the few dozen wounds on his legs.
His cries were unyielding and morose, creating shocks that sent him writhing and jamming his face into a pillow to muffle the sound of his own sobs. Harvey held him through it, one arm around his shoulders, one around his waist, and a consistent shhhh into his ear. Mike fought it, like he'd done in the past, but eventually he settled into it, and his cries died down, slowly, until he was merely sniffling – a huge victory, really – and then he was rolling over, burying his face into Harvey's chest instead of the pillow, clawing at his shirt like it might somehow allow him to get closer.
It was ironic, really, and cruelly so; another subset of Mike's life that only allowed him to get close, no matter what he did, or how he tried to plaster himself to Harvey's chest, there was just a physical, molecular limit to how close you can get to another person. At some point you just stop. Matter stops you. Gravity stops you. Harvey would try to pull him against him to fool him into thinking he was making more progress, but Mike would just sniff and sigh and be forced to settle for getting close.
Which was all he ever did, really, with work and especially with Harvey. Harvey, who was stroking his hair, and Mike wondered, for a second, if he might say it. Though Mike had nothing he wanted at the moment, and there were no deadlines to meet, and no files to be looked over, and there was not much that Harvey hadn't already taken from him, he still wondered. If he might say it. Just maybe. Just because Mike needed to hear it, even if it was a lie. Just because if Harvey did say it, when he really could expect nothing from Mike in return – except this helpless, fetal, crying heap – then maybe Mike would believe him. And maybe, if he believed him, then despite what Harvey said and what Harvey did, it would all be okay. It would all be worth it. Getting through life would be worth it.
Mike stopped sniffling, his breath still, face pressed – if not practically cemented – into the corner of Harvey's neck, arms holding on so tight it was like he already knew his mind was trying to pry him off, pushing him to the edge, luring him closer to madness, closer to overdosing one week at a time, forcing his hands to slip, but he refused, digging his nails in for grip.
Harvey didn't complain.
Mike waited, hope flaming out with every passing second.
And Harvey didn't say anything at all.
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When Harvey slammed on the bathroom door, Mike thought it might fall right off the hinges. He was up off the floor in a fraction of a second, clawing the tears from his eyes and shutting off the running water. He stood there for a moment, watching the door and shaking.
He hated this. He didn't walk around scared all the time. That wasn't him, it wasn't who he was. He was strong in other aspects of his life. He didn't always flinch, didn't always think so low of himself. He was the best in the bullpen and he was king in the courtroom.
But in Harvey's bathroom, he was terrified.
"Open the fucking door, Mike," Harvey called from the other side.
Mike stared a little longer, weighing his options, which were, frankly, none. The longer he stalled, the more pissed Harvey's voice got.
"I swear to God, Mike, I'll kick the door in and have it replaced by tomorrow morning."
Mike didn't know if Harvey would actually do it, but he didn't put it past him, and he knew he had the money to make it look like it'd never happened. He took a deep breath, flipped the lock, and opened the door.
He half expected to be shoved up against the wall, since that was becoming one of Harvey's favorite pastimes (along with hair carding and lying and occasionally walking past his cubicle without acknowledging his existence), but instead, Harvey just stood and looked at him.
"Come here," he said finally, waving Mike over.
Mike obliged, but kept his gaze down on his feet.
"Do you love me?" Harvey asked, putting a hand on either side of Mike's face and running it through his hair.
Mike looked up, a little frantic, a little offended. He couldn't tell if Harvey was messing with him or if he actually doubted it, and the idea that it might be the latter absolutely killed him.
Harvey reached out, put his hand behind the waistband of Mike's jeans and pulled him close. He shoved his hand deeper. Mike put his own hand up and tried to pushed against his chest.
"Mm-mm," Harvey scolded, pushing his arms down and pinning him against him. "Don't."
Mike stilled and pressed his face against his chest. Harvey was stroking him now, hard and rough, and Mike wished for once that his body wouldn't betray him, but it did; it always did.
"Well?" Harvey asked. "Do you?"
"What? Of course!" Mike said, strained, peeking up. Of course he loved him. How didn't understand how Harvey could even think otherwise. Either he was blind and deaf and completely oblivious, or this was a game he was playing to pay Mike back for doubting him earlier.
Harvey stilled his hand, leaving Mike in lurch. "Prove it," he said.
"What?"
"Prove you love me."
Mike looked at him, mouth slightly open, then lowered his head again. He was so confused. He was sure he proved that he loved him every day. He told him every night, sometimes several times, and often to no response. He did whatever Harvey wanted, whenever, and he endured all of his words and his criticisms and did so almost always without resistance. He was at a loss as to how that might go somehow unnoticed, or misinterpreted as anything except pure, blind, unconditional love. But maybe he'd been doing it wrong all along.
"Harvey…"
"Is this what you do now?" Harvey interrupted him and wiped away an area by Mike's eye that was still moist. He tilted his chin up with two fingers, then nodded into the bathroom and smirked. "You lose an argument, so you go in the bathroom and cry?"
"No," Mike said defensively. That wasn't what happened. Of course, when Harvey put it like that, it sure sounded pathetic. "I didn't—"
"You didn't get the last word so you went in the bathroom and cried."
"No," Mike shook his head in frustration.
"What happens if you don't get a client to settle, Mike? You give up, you cry over it? What happens in court when—"
"I wouldn't do it in court, Harvey!"
"You shouldn't do it at all, Mike."
Mike fell silent and gave up on explaining the difference between being at work or in court – where he felt safe, confident, in his element – and being at home, where he felt insecure, nervous, and like he didn't measure up. He hated conflict and he'd rather be wrong than get in a fight trying to be right.
"Now," Harvey said, pulling his hand out of Mike's jeans and grabbing his wrist. "If you love me," he pushed Mike's hand down to his belt. "Prove it."
When Mike pulled his hand away and hesitated, Harvey put it back again and held it there.
"Otherwise," he continued. "I want you to get your ass back in the living room and finish those briefs. And then tomorrow we call this whole thing off."
"Okayokayokay," Mike said, caving, eyes watering. "Just don't—don't call it off, please."
"Then make a decision, Mike," Harvey sounded bored and irritated. "I don't have all night."
The fact that Mike didn't have anyone else didn't mean he wanted anyone else. He wasn't entirely used to this side of Harvey yet, although he was getting there. The occasions were becoming more frequent, more routine. Mike's moods were taking a gradual but steady turn for the perpetually despondent. His cutting was less experimental and more habitual. Cocaine was waiting not far down the line. It was all coming together in order fall apart. But he didn't know that yet, and he loved Harvey, and Harvey knew he did, and Mike didn't want him to end it. He wasn't stupid enough to believe things would change overnight or that the status quo didn't seem like a terribly ominous precursor of the future, but he hoped things might change and he wanted to be there if they did. Beyond that, Mike never had anyone stick around as long as Harvey already had and while his gut told him that love wasn't supposed to hurt this much, experience didn't tell him differently. So when Harvey counted down, he gave in.
"Five, four, three…"
—and Mike hit his knees.
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