Long time no see! I'm sorry if the formatting's off on this chapter as I haven't had access to word, but it's something! It diverts a little more from the Suits canon than the other chapters, so if that's not what you're here for, sorry! I hope you enjoy it, though.

I've had a lot on with school and life and all, but I'll work on getting the next chapter up as quickly as possible :) I have a lot more I want to include, and I definitely still have plans to finish this fic.

Thank you so much for your reviews and favs and all. I really appreciate it, and those are what really motivate me to carry on writing. Thank you! Enjoy :)

'Hey, slow it down, kid, you've barely said a word to me since you got in the car,' Harvey said to the teen making a beeline for his room. Mike paused, leaning on his door jamb, as the lawyer shrugged off his damp overcoat and asked, 'how was school?'

'Alright,' Mike shrugged.

'And the math test? Was that good?' Harvey pushed.

'Yep'

'What about Trevor,' Harvey tried again, 'is he still bothering you?'

'Nope'

God, this was like pulling teeth.

'What time do you want dinner?' Harvey asked. This time all he got was a disinterested shrug. Harvey frowned, trying to quell his growing irritation.

'I'm gonna need you to stop sulking, kid,' he said. The boy had been pouting like a stroppy toddler ever since Harvey had told him that he wouldn't be able to go with him to his trial session at Dr Paroussos' gifted group the next day, and quite frankly, he was tired of it. 'I know you wanted me to be there, and I did too, but I need to be in this meeting about the merger. You're a big boy, Mike, you'll manage just fine by yourself.'

Mike gave a flat laugh.

'You treat me like a child and expect me to act like an adult. Seems a bit contradictory.'

'You know why I treat you like a child, Mike?' Harvey said, folding his arms. 'Because you are a damn child. My only expectation is that you act your age, and you're old enough to go to this goddamn nerd playgroup by yourself.'

'I'm not a child,' Mike said, quietly.

'In the eyes of the law-'

'I don't care,' Mike cut him off, 'we're not in court, Harvey. It's not always about legalities and clauses. You've gotta think about feelings and emotions and actions and stuff.'

'Well, I'm feeling that you're acting like a child.'

'Yeah? And I'm feeling that you're acting like a prick.'

Harvey covered the ground between himself and Mike in three quick strides, and Mike soon found himself nose to nose with the glowering lawyer.

'What did you just say to me?' Harvey said, his voice low. To his surprise, instead of lowering his gaze, the boy stared back at him, his eyes cold and angry.

'I'm not a fucking child.'

Harvey clenched his fists, taking a deep breath. The boy was making it exceedingly hard to keep a handle on his famous temper. They both needed space to calm down.

'Get the hell out of my sight,' he growled.

'Gladly,' came the flippant reply, as the bedroom door was slammed in his face.

Mike knew he was being difficult. He knew that Harvey was trying his best and he knew that he had been purposefully pushing the man, and yet he hadn't stopped. He'd been feeling like shit all day and some cruel, primal instinct inside him wanted Harvey to feel the same way. This time of year was never easy for him, and it didn't help that this year he wasn't with Grammy.

Sighing, he threw his backpack onto his bed with a little too much force. The zip caught on the bedpost, and books and schoolwork spilled out onto the floor. It was the trigger that Mike didn't realise he'd been waiting for, and suddenly, weeks of pent-up frustration at his situation flooded through him. Blindly, he swung at the wall, his fist searching for solidity, longing for a reminder of constancy, a flash of pain to take his mind off the ache in his chest.

His knuckles never reached their target. Instead, his fist connected with the Jonathan Adler mirror hanging on the wall. There was a piercing crack and small shards of glass sprayed out across the room, showering Mike in dust.

'What the hell was that?' came Harvey's thundering voice from the living room, followed by hurried footsteps. Mike's bedroom door was thrown open and the lawyer stalled in the doorway, eyes flitting between the designer mirror now webbed with cracks and the teenager staring at the blood pooling between his knuckles.

'Shit,' the lawyer breathed.

Mike raised his head, meeting Harvey's searching gaze. The cold anger he had felt earlier had all but drained away, and instead he just felt sort of empty. His breath caught in his throat as the older man stepped towards him. God, Harvey must be pissed; on top of swearing earlier, he'd just shattered a mirror that was probably worth more than the sum of everything Mike had ever bought.

Instead of shouting at him, though, Harvey wordlessly took Mike's injured hand in his own. He examined each bloody knuckle, then turned it over, looking over the palm for damage. Gently manipulating each finger, he asked, 'This hurt?'

Mike shook his head no.

'Good,' Harvey said. 'No trip to the ER today.'

Mike didn't say anything. Harvey's voice was scarily calm and he couldn't gauge how angry the man was, so he decided the best course of action was just to shut up and avoid further antagonising him. He let Harvey lead him to the bathroom and clean up his hand. He cried out as the man sluiced the open cuts with antiseptic, but Harvey just steadied him in a firm grasp and got it over with quickly, and his hands were surprisingly gentle as he dexterously removed a small shard of glass caught between two fingers. Harvey was slowly wrapping the his hand in a bandage, taking care to avoid putting excessive pressure on the cuts, when Mike finally decided that enough was enough.

'Harvey?' he asked.

'Uh huh,' Harvey responded, still focused on the task of tying up the bandage.

'Can you stop being nice to me?'

Harvey chuckled. 'You sure?' he asked, deftly tucking in the end of the bandage before stepping back to admire his work.

'I mean, I don't want you to be angry with me,' Mike said, 'but I'd rather you just get it out the way and shout at me. This Mother Theresa act is unsettling.'

Harvey folded his arms and leant against the counter behind him.

'What have you done that would make me angry with you?' he asked.

'For a start, I broke your mirror, got blood on your carpet, swore at you and I guess my attitude hasn't... I mean, it's been, well-'

'Pretty damn awful?' Harvey suggested.

'Um, yeah,' Mike said, blushing. 'I'm really sorry, honestly.'

'That's the thing, Mike,' Harvey sighed, 'I believe you. You're genuinely sorry and you know you were in the wrong. That and the whole sad, injured puppy thing make it hard to stay angry with you.'

'I'll pay for the mirror,' Mike said, choosing to ignore the puppy comment.

'No you won't.'

'Harvey, I don't need you to make concessions for me,' Mike said, frustrated. 'It was my fault. I... I didn't mean to do it, but I just... well, I did, and I've gotta take responsibility. You're already paying for one of my mistakes by letting me stay here, I don't need you to catch the bill for any more of them. I'm not a charity case.'

'I know that, kid,' Harvey said, 'but you're not paying for that goddamn mirror. I never liked it anyway. Too angular. Didn't fit the room.'

'Harvey...'

'Don't. Enough about the mirror,' Harvey said firmly. 'What I do want to know, though, is why you took a swing at it in the first place? I get that I rub people up the wrong way, but they don't usually resort to violence. Well, this early at least.'

The teen shrugged, looking away.

'Mike,' Harvey pushed, 'you're not a violent kid, nor an angry one. There's something else going on, and you're keeping me in the dark. That's not a place I like to be.'

Harvey watched as the boy struggled internally over how much to tell him. Several times, Mike opened his mouth as if to say something, before closing it again abruptly. He was not a patient man, but he knew he had to give the boy time or he'd get no answer at all.

Finally, Mike said, 'It's just not easy. It was three years ago tomorrow.'

'What was?' Harvey asked, his brow crinkled in confusion. Three years ago Mike would have been 11, placing him not with Edith but with his parents. His parents. The realisation hit him like a tonne of bricks.

'Crap,' he breathed. 'I didn't know, Mike, I'm sorry, I-'

'Don't be,' Mike said, offering a small smile. 'I didn't want you to know. Sometimes it's easier to deal with stuff by yourself, without other people telling you how you should feel or how they feel about how you feel or how much they 'understand' what you're going through. I guess it just sorta spilled out today and I'm sorry that your mirror was the victim. It won't happen again.'

'Goddammit, Mike, how many times do I have to say it? That mirror is the least of my worries, and it shouldn't be one of yours,' Harvey said, running a hand through his hair. 'I'm, uh, not the best example for healthy sharing of emotions, but you need to realise that sometimes talking it out is the best thing to do. Yeah, it's not easy when the thing that's making you upset is something no one can offer solutions too, and I can't pretend that I can imagine what it must feel like, but it's like a pressure relief valve, kid. You've got to open up every once in a while or you explode. And you never know what innocent Jonathan Adler mirrors may be hanging nearby when that happens.'

'Harvey, I-'

The man stopped Mike's protestation with a wave of his hand, saying, 'Jonathan Adler mirrors that I don't mind saying goodbye to. What I'm saying is maybe next time consider talking to me about whatever's going on before it reaches the stage where you need to take a swing at something, whether it's Trevor or a mirror or whatever, yeah?'

'I'll try, Harvey,' Mike said.

'That's all I can ask for.'

They were interrupted by the trill of Harvey's ringtone. Seeing it was Jessica, Harvey gave Mike an apologetic look and answered.

'Jessica.'

'Harvey. Tell me why I've got Angus Fogerty in my office complaining about you being unreachable and yet you answer me the minute I call?'

'Ah. I might have blocked Fogerty's number on my cell after he tried chatting up Donna.'

'Harvey Reginald Specter, you did what? I knew you had a kid staying with you but I didn't realise you'd become a melodramatic teenager,' scolded the managing partner.

'Sorry, mom,' Harvey threw back. 'I'll call Fogerty later.'

'You'll call him now,' came Jessica's blunt reply. 'The merger meeting is tomorrow morning. I need you communicating with each other.'

'About that...'

'Do not let me down.' Her tone was dangerous.

'Absolutely not,' Harvey replied cheerily. 'I just feel like Fogerty would handle this better alone. I don't want to get in his hair, you know, interrupt his flow.'

'Harvey...'

'So I'll be in a little later tomorrow morning.'

'Harvey.'

'Thanks for calling, Jessica.'

'Do not han-'

Jessica's protest was cut off as Harvey hung up the call.

'She sounded angry,' Mike commented. 'Bad news?'

'Nope,' Harvey said, 'you could hear her, then?'

'Yeah, a little... Reginald,' Mike said, laughing at Harvey's mock horrified expression. 'Why was she so annoyed?'

'I might have told her that I couldn't make the meeting tomorrow morning.'

'Why?'

'I thought it might be fun to come with you to see Dr Paroussos' group.'

Mike's eyebrows shot up. Harvey had flatly refused to accompany him on the grounds of how important this meeting was despite Mike repeatedly asking, and now he was suggesting himself that it would be 'fun'.

'You faced Jessica's wrath for me?'

'No, I faced Jessica's wrath so I could avoid going to a pointless meeting with the most boring lawyer in Pearson-Hardman. Angus Fogerty has about as much personality as a potato,' Harvey said, 'Anyway, her bark is worse than her bite. And its easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.'

Mike felt like he'd stepped into another world. The entrance to Dr Paroussos' building was dingy and unassuming; a small door in a peeling wall, sandwiched between a charity clothing store that appeared to be stuck in the 1970s and a closed laundromat that, from the smell, appeared to be a front for a cannabis farm. Casting a cautious glance at Harvey, who appeared unperturbed, Mike had knocked cautiously on the door, which swung right open.

They'd followed a winding set of stairs up to a small corridor, which had opened out into the room they stood in now. Mike was still struggling to comprehend how a room of such lofty proportions could fit into the small New York backstreet. In front of him lay an extensive library, with a cylindrical main chamber lined with bookshelves that extended far up to a domed glass ceiling. Passageways were dotted around the walls of the room, winding off towards what Mike had no doubt were more stores of books. At different levels of the room, platforms had been constructed, and ladders and ropes bridged the gaps between them. It was sort of like a librarian's wet dream.

Kids of different ages were sprawled across the room, some draped in hammocks, books in hand, whilst others were clustered in small groups, chatting quietly but with fervour. In the centre of the room sat a curved oak desk, with a group of boys about his age leaning on it, chatting, relaxed. Behind it sat a tanned, portly man with a shock of tightly curled white hair and a matching beard. His face had strong features and a prominent, aquiline nose, but with a friendly, open quality. He was surveying the room with a satisfied smile. Mike couldn't help but thinking that he looked very much like a Greek Santa.

In that moment, Greek Santa's eyes settled on Mike. His smile widened, and he gestured for them both to come over. Mike suddenly wanted nothing more than to turn on his heel and run back to Harvey's condo. He didn't belong here. This was a place for intellectuals, for academic high flyers. He was no more than a liability.

Harvey gave him a small shove into the room. A few of the boys at the desk had followed Greek Santa's gaze and turned to look at him expectantly, giving him no choice but to walk over to the man, who greeted him with the warmth of an old friend.

'Mr Michael Ross,' he said cordially in a strongly accented voice. His intonation was almost tuneful. ' I am Dr Aristophanes Paroussos. Good to finally meet you.'

'You too, sir,' Mike replied, unsure of what else to say. He shook the proffered hand.

'And the famed Mr Harvey Specter,' Dr Paroussos continued, 'My brother speaks highly of you.'

'And I would speak higher of him, given the chance, Doctor,' Harvey replied. 'Thank you for agreeing to let Mike bypass the waiting list.'

'Yes, well, you helped my brother out of that delicate situation with his spouse, so let us call it a quid pro quo, eh?' Dr Paroussos said.

'Ah, well, it was just luck that his ex-wife was a Michael Jordan fan,' Harvey replied, smiling. 'Those charges she threatened would have been hard to shake, though.'

'Indeed,' Dr Paroussos said with a chuckle. 'Well, I am sure Michael will enjoy his time with The Frogs, however long it may be.'

Harvey quirked a brow.

'The Frogs?' he queried.

It was Mike, who had been watching the conversation, perplexed at the allusions to some prior encounter, who replied.

'Like the comedy, Harvey. You know, the one by Aristophanes? Cause the doctor's first name is Aristophanes too. It got first place at the Lenaia at the Dionysia in Athens in 405 BC,' he said.

'No, kid, surprisingly I didn't know that,' Harvey said, deadpan. 'I've got to go, or Jessica will quite literally have my head. See you in a couple hours.'

'See you, Harvey.'

'Thank you, Dr Paroussos,' he directed to the older man. Gesturing at Mike, he added quietly, 'Keep an eye on him.'

'I would not worry about him, Mr Specter,' the doctor replied. 'He will fit right in here.'

Harvey squeezed Mike's shoulder and walked down the corridor towards where Ray was waiting.

'A formidable man,' Dr Paroussos commented, 'You are lucky that he cares so greatly for you.'

'Oh I don't.. He's just- I mean, I'm just living in his house,' Mike said, turning to face the doctor.

Dr Paroussos simply held his gaze. His eyes seemed to hold a permanent amused, knowing glint, as if he held some higher knowledge that he found very entertaining.

Finally, the man said, 'Well, I suppose we must find you a fílos, a friend, to look after you.'

He leant over his desk, towards the group of boys. They had long lost interest in the new arrival and had gone back to their conversation, which, from what Mike could tell, seemed to be on the philosophical implications of string theory.

'Isambard,' Dr Paroussos said.

A tan boy with a mop of wild brown hair and bright eyes turned around.

'Doctor?'

'This is Michael. He is here to see if The Frogs are for him,' Dr Paroussos explained. 'Would you show him around?'

'Course, sir,' the boy said, grinning at Mike. He nodded at his friends, who went back to their discussion as if they had never left off, and hopped over the back of a sofa, landing next to Mike.

'I'm Sam,' he said, 'ignore the doctor. He has a thing about shortening names. You'd think that having a killer name like 'Aristophanes' would make you open to nicknames, but he has this spiel about how with each syllable lost you lose part of the soul. Ridiculous, right? Ouch!'

Mike laughed as a small notebook hit the back of Sam's head.

'I can still hear you, Isambard,' Dr Paroussos said. 'Now, shoo, before I throw the entirety of Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus at you. That would knock out a few brain cells, and you haven't got many spare, eh?'

'Message received, sir,' Sam said, excitedly pulling Mike by the arm towards one of the many ladders.

'Isambard Kingdom Brunel Ainsworth.'

The piercing shout echoed through the library, floating up to the balcony where Mike and Sam were buried in a pile of beanbags, flicking through a stack of books. Mike at ease in Sam's company. Sam had shown him around and introduced him to most of the other Frogs, whose ages spanned first graders to college age kids, and then they had climbed the ladders to the highest platform below the domed balcony. That's where they had been sat for the past two hours, talking about books and philosophy and art. Mike had never met anyone who could hold a conversation in the same way that Sam could, and yet he didn't feel like he was Sam's intellectual inferior either. Time had passed by quickly, something that he was incredibly grateful for, considering what the date was.

'Shit,' Sam said, scrambling to get down the first ladder. 'that's me.'

Mike followed him, saying, 'Hang on, your full name is Isambard Kingdom Brunel? Like, as in, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the famous English Architect?'

'Yep,' Sam said, hopping down a staircase. 'Pretentious, right?'

'I mean, kinda,' Mike said.

'Uh huh, and I didn't even get saddled with the worst name. My brother's full name is Buckminster Fullerene Asquith Ainsworth.'

'Jesus.'

'My parents have a passion for science and maths. It sorta sucked for them when Bucky turned out to be a musical prodigy and I'm more of a poetry and arts kinda guy.'

'Yeah, well, you're just two solid cases against nominative determinism,' Mike said, stepping off a rope ladder onto the ground floor.

'Yup,' Sam agreed as they headed towards where Dr Paroussos stood with a poised woman, who he assumed to be Mrs Ainsworth. Mike was surprised but happy to see Harvey standing next to them, and gave the lawyer a small wave.

'Isambard,' the woman scolded, 'I have been calling your name for ten minutes. We are already late for your father's lecture at NYU. Let's go. Now.'

'Sorry, Mom,. Bye, Doctor,' Sam said, in a suitably chagrined tone. He flashed a grin over his shoulder at Mike. 'See you around.'

'See you, Sam,' Mike returned the smile.

Harvey watched the interaction, pleased to see his boy's unguarded happiness.

'We better go too, kid,' he said.

Mike nodded.

'Thank you, Doctor,' he said.

Dr Paroussos took Mike's hand, enveloping it in his own. 'No, efharisto, thank you, Michael. I hope to see you soon, yes?'

'I hope so too, sir,' Mike said.

'Good,' the doctor said. 'Goodbye for the moment, Michael.'

'Bye, sir.'

Mike and Harvey headed towards the doorway that they had passed through together hours earlier.

Holding open the door for the teen, Harvey said, 'I'm afraid it's a bit of a walk to the car. Ray refused to park on this street again on the grounds that having a car that smells like weed might damage my business prospects.'

'That's okay.'

'Good. Tell me about the toads.'

'Frogs, Harvey. You said that on purpose,' Mike grinned. Harvey listened as he contentedly chattered about the library, about the magnanimous doctor, and his new friend Sam who was bright and funny and had published his first poetry folio by the age of nine.

Finally, they made it out of the network of insalubrious backstreets and found Ray's chosen parking spot. As they were approaching the car, Mike's chatter tailed off and he cautiously asked, 'Harvey? It is okay if I go back to The Frogs, isn't it? Only, if you don't want me to, that fine, I just was wondering i-'

'Of course you can go again,' Harvey cut into the boy's flustered questioning. 'I'm happy for you, kid.'

He reached over and gave Mike's hair a nonchalant ruffle before climbing into the waiting Tesla Roadster.

Mike thought about his day. Happiness hadn't come this easily for a long time.

'Me too,' he muttered to himself, following Harvey into the car.