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Acrimony
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Summary: Harvey is angry about a client he didn't want to take and Mike doesn't know when to stop trying to help. He provokes Harvey into doing something he's going to regret.
Rating: PG-13 for some violence
Disclaimer: I do not own Suits. If I did this foolish Rachel-or-Jenny question wouldn't be an issue – the answer would be Harvey
Chapter Count: 2/3 – Final chapter to come!
Note: This was written for a prompt on the Suits Meme.
Thank you so much for all of the feedback for the last chapter!
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Chapter Two: Bitter Regret
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"Mike? Come on, Mike, snap out of it. Jesus, kid…"
The black in Mike's vision slowly cleared, leaving him a little confused. His eyes were a little wet as though he'd been crying, but he hadn't been and he was pretty confident about that.
He asked Harvey what had happened… well, he thought he was asking Harvey what exactly had happened, but the noise that came out of his mouth was embarrassingly closer to a whimper with maybe a hint of "Huh?"
He felt a shaking hand run through his hair, "Shh, stay still Mike. You're okay." Harvey said, like if he meant that enough it would be true.
His vision cleared a little more and, when he caught sight of the ceiling in Harvey's office, what had actually happened came rushing back to him. He hadn't been crying at all. They'd been fighting and Harvey had totally just delivered a right hook that made all those champion amateur boxing rumors seem like the definition of understatement.
"You punched me." Mike said, a little incredulously.
"I should probably be glad you're so surprised." Harvey mumbled under his breath from above Mike as he shifted a cloth that he had pressed against Mike's nose. It took him a second to realize that his head was propped up in Harvey's lap. Harvey himself looked more freaked out than Mike had ever seen him, even including the duration of the case that had started the whole thing.
"What're you doing?" Mike said, slurring a little. Harvey's eyes narrowed at him.
"How many fingers am I holding up?" Harvey asked, holding his hand in front of Mike's face.
Mike tried to concentrate, but his head was still spinning a little. "Two? No, three. Three."
Harvey frowned. "What's my name?"
"Harvey, seriously?" Mike asked, voice snuffling a little. Harvey was still holding something to his nose and it was seriously beginning to hurt. "What are you doing to my nose? It hurts."
Harvey winced, a strange, guilty look crossed his face. "Trying to stop the bleeding."
"Huh?"
"Your nose is bleeding. I don't think it's broken, though." Harvey explained, a little monotone. He was obviously trying to pull himself together now that Mike was awake. That he needed to do it at all was strange. "I'm going to help you sit up, okay?"
Harvey's hands were gentle, excessively so, as he slowly pulled Mike up from his lap and into a sitting position. The room spun a little, but righted itself pretty quickly. Still, he couldn't stop the dizzy moan that came out.
"Okay?" Harvey asked, shifting around Mike to sit in front of him. "Mike? Are you okay?"
"You hit me." Mike repeated, trying not to let either kind of hurt reflect on his face. From the suddenly stricken look on Harvey's face, he'd completely failed.
Harvey swallowed, pulling the cloth that Mike suddenly recognized as the ridiculously expensive and now ridiculously bloody tie away from his nose. "I think your nose is done bleeding."
"That's a lot of blood," Mike observed a little dumbly.
Harvey glanced away from him, obviously guilty. "How's your head, Mike?" He asked, not commenting about his bloody tie the same way he hadn't said anything about punching Mike, "I managed to grab you at the last second and slow you down, but you still landed pretty hard."
Mike actually had to consider that a second. All his brain could come up with was, "You punched me. I blacked out for a second, you punched me so hard."
Abruptly standing, Harvey turned away from Mike and grabbed some napkins from the wetbar. "I know. I'm sorry." Harvey said, startling Mike. He hadn't really been looking for an apology. "It will never happen again." Harvey finished, his voice strained and forceful all at the same time.
"Um, okay." Mike said, still a little startled. It wasn't quite forgiveness, but Mike wasn't sure who needed to forgive who in their situation so he didn't know what else to say. Harvey didn't say anything either as he kneeled down next to him again, but his face said that he'd noticed the difference.
Hands still gentle, Harvey held the back of Mike's head with one hand and started carefully wiping his face with a wet napkin with the other.
"Why not just use the napkins instead of your tie in the first place?"
"You were out of it and your nose was… streaming blood, I was concerned you'd choke on it if you were flat on your back. The only thing around I could reach from the floor was the tie." Harvey explained, his voice tight.
"I'll pay you back… but it'll probably take a while." Mike offered.
Harvey barked out a laugh that sounded off to Mike's ears, which had finally stopped ringing. "God, kid… you're not paying me back."
"But that tie…"
"Is a tie. I don't give a damn about it." Harvey said. "Now sit still." He reached down for something in his lap and Mike's head barely got to switch gears from Since when do you not care about ties? to registering that it was a bunch of ice in a napkin before Harvey was pressing it to his nose.
"Oww, god, Harvey! Take it off." Mike said, trying to twist away from what was making his sore nose sting even worse. Unfortunately for him, Harvey's hand was still holding him in place.
Harvey winced at his obvious pain, "Shh, Mike. You'll hurt worse tomorrow if you don't let me ice it now."
"Don't care." Mike stubbornly said, again trying to dodge the ice.
"Alexis Kellison isn't my ex-girlfriend. He was my best friend and roommate in college that my ex cheated on me with, though." Harvey said abruptly.
Mike stopped moving.
"Alex didn't even have the balls to tell me what they were doing, either. I walked in on them going at it… in my bed." Harvey said, his voice less bitter than Mike would have thought. "They claimed it was eternal love and they were sorry that I had been hurt by it. I told them to go fuck themselves."
Mike took that in. It wasn't quite on par with setting your friend up for a drug bust, but it was still pretty low. He felt a pang of sympathy for Harvey, who claimed no friends and no feelings. "Are they still together?" He asked, still barely thinking about his nose, which had begun to numb out.
Harvey snorted, "No. They broke up about three months after. I guess forbidden love isn't as passionate when it's suddenly allowed."
"Well, um, thanks for telling me?" Mike offered, a little unsure of what to say. Harvey rolled his eyes, but Mike could tell the action was forced, "Want me to find something to ruin the whole deal for him?"
Harvey smiled and it was finally genuine. "No, finish it like Jessica wants. It doesn't matter."
Mike didn't frown because he had an awful instinct that it would hurt like hell, but it was a close thing, "It mattered a whole lot a minute ago."
Shifting his gaze from Mike's nose to his eyes, Harvey stared at him. "It doesn't now."
He wasn't sure what to say to that, but it was probably as close to an 'I care' as Mike was going to get.
The same instinct telling him not to frown was telling him not to smile either, but he ignored it.
Harvey looked away, his face twisting up in disgust, but his eyes saying something totally different. "I never want to hear you complain about being called a puppy again. I need to start taking pictures or something, so you'll see what you are. Now stand up, I'm giving you a ride home."
Yet again, he said it forcefully but everything else was the total opposite. He helped Mike stand up and guided his hand to hold the ice himself. Mike did so without complaint, now that it was numbing out his nose.
They were standing in the elevator before an important snag came into his mind. "Hey, what am I going to tell everyone… no way is there not going to be some sort of bruise tomorrow."
"There's a bruise already." Harvey informed him, eyes on the door to the elevator. "You can tell them whatever you want. Don't worry about it."
"So I could say that I was saving some hot chick from a gang of bikers or something?" Mike asked, mostly joking.
Harvey glanced at him, "You should probably pick something with even a slight chance of actually happening, Mike."
He couldn't even pretend to be offended. "Yeah, probably. Don't worry, I'll come up with something."
"You don't have to." Harvey said, the words leaving his mouth like they hurt.
Mike glanced at him. "It's got nothing to do with them. I'm sorry for pushing, you're sorry for punching, it's all good now." The strange part was that he didn't feel strange for saying it. Maybe it was because seeing Harvey so torn up about having hit him made Mike feel less like punishing him, but he didn't want to hold it over the other man's head like he could have.
"You're not going to say that when you see your face tomorrow morning." Harvey said, confident.
Shrugging, Mike didn't really have a lot to say to that. Or at least, not a lot that Harvey would appreciate. He could see that the other man felt awful for having hit him and that was more than enough reason for Mike to not want anyone to know. That would be dangerously close to trying to protect Harvey Specter though, and that was obviously even less welcome than he'd originally thought. "Badass is a good look on me."
"Because it's so unexpected?"
The joke was half-hearted, like it came out without much thought even, but Mike answered all the same, "Kind of. You'll see, I'll come up with something that makes me look good and could actually be believed." Still, Harvey looked genuinely unsettled about it, so Mike nudged his arm with his own, "Hey, it's between us. No one here will know."
The doors to the elevator opened and Mike stepped forward. He wasn't sure, but he thought he heard Harvey say something like, "She will.", but he was pretty sure that Jessica wasn't that psychic and probably wouldn't care.
Wrong she…
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Stay tuned for next and final chapter that features Mike coming to terms with getting punched and the wrath of Donna!
I hope the level of h/c and guilt was enough for everyone. My inner-fangirl would have loved to really amp it up, especially for protective!Harvey and puppy!Mike, but I (sadly) try to strive for some realistic manliness for the guys I write and that always gets in the way… *Sigh*