Suits fic: Kings and Lionhearts (PG-13, Gen)
Title: Kings and Lionhearts
Fandom: Suits
Character(s): Ensemble (Donna, Harvey, Mike, Louis, Jessica, Rachel)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Hurt/comfort, friendship
Pairing: Gen
Spoilers: Up to and including 2x03 (Meet the New Boss.)
Disclaimer: Suits doesn't belong to me, this is solely for fun. No copyright infringement is intended.
Word Count: ~4000
Warnings:
[Spoiler (click to open)]
References to off-screen, OC character death
Summary: Harvey cares vicariously through Mike, and Donna needs Louis' help.
-
AN: Credit where credit is due! The title comes from the Of Monsters and Men song by the same name, Mike's line at the end comes from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along blog. Anything else you recognize (eg Avengers, Good Will Hunting references) comes from their respective creators!
Also posted at AO3, if that's your preference!
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Kings and Lionhearts
-
Mike almost turns around and walks away. Who could blame him? Harvey sits at Mike's cubicle all the time, usually with a lecture lying in wait on any one of a myriad of topics - last week's was a characteristic three quarters patronizing, one quarter sincere seminar on choosing the appropriate tie knot for the occasion, be it the Four-in-Hand, the Pratt, or the Windsor. For him to sit at Donna's is unheard of, and Mike can only assume it to be a sign of the apocalypse.
Curiosity wins out in the end, though, much as it always has; Mike's never been great at backing down from challenges, particularly not the interesting ones. He comes close enough to see both Harvey's casual occupancy of the space and the effect it has on passers-by, whose outright gawking is downright tawdry in a profession who prides itself as highly as theirs on poker faces. Through the glass wall he spies Donna sitting at Harvey's desk, head bent over paperwork. A layer of hair hangs down along the side of her face, hiding it from outside view.
Mike blinks. "Did you lose a bet or something?"
"Donna needed the office this morning," Harvey says. He doesn't look up from the polished lump of metal he's been playing with since Mike walked up, the magnetic buckyballs Donna keeps in the drawer for slow days. With a flick of his finger, Harvey folds the rope he's been building in on itself, laying the groundwork for the early stages of a fractal. Fitting for a man whose schemes have schemes.
"The whole office? Why?"
Harvey levels a supremely unimpressed look at him, and Mike stops to think it through. The restrictions that govern their conduct as lawyers make Harvey an honest man, but all this means is that he doesn't lie, not that he tells the truth. "You don't know, do you?" Mike realizes.
"I'm not in the habit of violating my assistant's privacy."
Mike's reasons for calling bullshit have a name, and that name is Trevor. "You violate my privacy all the time!" he squawks.
"You're not my assistant."
Mike and the coffee shop on the corner who pities him disagree with that statement, but he knows better than to voice it, choosing instead to take the fractal. Harvey watches closely as Mike's hands make quick work of the pattern, pushing the flat centre inwards with his thumbs to extend it to a third dimension. In the interests of self preservation, Mike has made a habit of reading Harvey's mood from the length of his silences, and the comfortable way Harvey takes the toy back to finish the job tells Mike that his boss is still at least mildly amused with the conversation. Good.
"While you're free," he wheedles, and Harvey's smile widens to show teeth. Mike isn't particularly encouraged by the expression, having been here long enough to know better, but he carries on anyways. The risk of running into the hardened corporate lawyer rather than said lawyer's soft underbelly has never stopped him before, and it's not about to start now. "There's a pro bono I could use your help on…"
Harvey presses the button for the intercom. "Donna!"
"Ten more minutes," she calls back.
Harvey pins Mike with a look. "You have five. Talk fast."
-
When the shadow drops over his view to indicate someone's arrival, Louis thinks it's Harold having come back for clarification on the new case. With that in mind, he lets him stew for awhile. In Harold's second year as an associate with the firm, Louis would have expected if not more cynicism than less naiveté. He's not sure if he respects or resents what by now amounts to easy going acceptance in the face of situations where it won't serve him well. In either case, it's definitely why he pushes Harold harder than the rest of them. It'll either force him to develop a protective hard outer shell or teach him to use his nature to his advantage, either way benefiting him in the long run.
Louis doesn't slight individual associates, affording them all with chances to rise to the occasion, but neither does he manage them with an even hand. The legal world is not a level playing field, and the associates had better get used to their bosses playing favourites with more impressive employees sooner rather than later.
Mike Ross has Harvey Specter to keep him in line. Were they all so lucky, Louis might have made senior partner by now. It's been in the plans since they were drawn up during the last months of his undergrad in a crappy little student apartment, letter of admission to Harvard Law in hand. The view he's come to call his own for several years now is not quite the corner office he'd expected at this stage in the game, but it's only lately that he's realized it's time to do something about that. It starts now with grooming Harold to be his associate, and, lord help him, ends with Harvey owing him a drink. Louis still remembers the bet they made as associates whiling away the early hours of the morning on grunt work in the bullpen, and Harvey had damn well better.
"Louis."
Last he checked, Harold's impression of Donna was not nearly that good. He turns in his chair to find her poised in front of his desk, back straight and hands clasped behind her back. It's a defensive position and try as he does, he can't figure out what he's done to inspire it.
"I need your help," she says. Louis almost misses it in a combination of both shock and disbelief. She isn't manipulating, isn't threatening, and he doesn't get it. Where's the ploy in outright asking?
"With what?" he asks. "I--."
"Louis," she snaps.
He freezes in place, coming to the slow conclusion that she is truly and genuinely upset. Oh, God. Not good, this is not good. In the past, she's blackmailed him. She's intimidated him. She's charmed him. As the fellow theatre aficionado she is, she's even used Shakespeare against him. Never mind Harvey's reputation, Donna does her own eviscerating. Louis desperately misses those tactics now - using genuine emotion is a low blow indeed.
"What's going on?"
-
Harvey's obvious preoccupation with Donna's secrecy this morning allows Mike to stretch his five minutes to just over fifteen, pressing his luck by following up the follow-up question on how best to proceed.
"I could go the class action route to show a systemic pattern of wrongful termination, but that could take years and Melis - not Melissa, who's Melissa? The client, whose name I do not know and the names of whose kids I definitely do not know because I am a corporate attorney and we don't know things like that - has bills to pay now."
Mike puts his best innocent expression up against Harvey's impassive one. Experience has taught him that the best way to enlist Harvey's help is to dangle a carrot in front of him in the form of a case with potential, such as a wrongful termination suit whose circumstances hint at a widespread problem within a high profile company. Step two is then bungling the strategic execution just enough to offend Harvey on a personal level without appearing the fool. It shouldn't work nearly as often as it does, so either Harvey's caring vicariously through Mike or Harvey's strategic sensibilities are really that delicate. Or both.
Mike's going with both.
-
Donna's a little red rimmed around the eyes when she returns to her desk, not just because Louis had tried to emote in between agreeing to help and getting the paperwork started. Harvey sees her before she him, as she gathers both the files he needs for the morning and the cloak of professionalism that's served her well so far. By the time she's pushing the door to his office open, he's on his feet and poised for action, like all she needs to do is point him in the direction of the problem that needs solving. He'll throw in the potentially emotionally satisfying overkill of a beat down in for free.
It's heartwarming, at once both patronizing and protective. She's questioned his priorities on occasion, but never once his loyalty.
"I've got this," she tells him. Putting the sentiment that's driven her actions this morning to words is the first step in meaning it; no ambiguity, no question, just the knowledge that not only can she handle this, but she will. "I know you'd help, but what I need right now is for you to be you. I need us to stay the same while I fix the problem."
"Sit," he tells her. "Please." She acquiesces, perching on the armrest of the couch only because she can see his restraint throwing up barriers to stall his intense desire to know. He doesn't handle being kept out of the loop well, even when the thing he's being kept out of the loop of is none of his damn business. It's one of the things she's always liked about him, actually. They don't have secrets. That he's quiet now means he's trying. So is she, and she sits primarily because she has to believe that trying will be enough.
"If that changes, if you need time off or a situation closed or someone to help you hide the body," he says. He's joking. Mostly. She thinks. On the other hand, Harvey balances out the shark's mentality the clients pay him the big bucks for by caring disproportionately about the few people he lets close. "You come to me."
There are words for declarations like that, responses it deserves, but she can't find them now any more than she could when he came to her the afternoon before a long weekend in the District Attorney's office and said, far too casually to be referring to the holiday, "Want to get out of here?"
It would be easy, she thinks, to step back and let him fix her problems. It's certainly tempting. In the end, the responsibilities Donna bears are hers to live up to. She needs to win this battle herself, on her own terms. Harvey, fresh off the fallout from Cameron Dennis' resignation, will understand that.
"I will."
She closes her hand over his and squeezes.
-
By the time the morning's events have trickled down through the office grapevine, the official version of events ("straight from the horse's mouth," Mike tells her when he pops in to pick up some paperwork, which she takes to mean the story Kyle is spouting in his unofficial position as Office Gossip), is that Donna's been tapped by Director Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D and is quitting Pearson Hardman effective immediately to become a personal assistant to the Avengers Initiative.
The award for most obscure theory is that it was Donna's twin (rather than Donna herself) running around the firm this morning. As everyone knows, the first day of trading lives with someone else is always a little bumpy. This tale had to have come from Louis Litt - Donna's told Rachel about the third row Twelfth Night tickets on opening night at the Rose Theatre that he's been wearing her down with.
By lunch, Rachel's had enough. Donna's been a wonderful friend to her, faithfully talking her through everything from the breakup with Mike to the pre-LSAT jitters to the problems she's been having with the dog from down the hall. It's time to return the favour. She gathers a stack of folders large enough to make any associates think twice about trying to pawn their research off on her, and sets off for Donna's desk. She has A Plan.
As it turns out, her Plan mostly consists of taking Donna out to a long lunch, plying her with the brownies she loves from the bakery two streets over, and asking her what the problem is. In an office full of lawyers who spend all their time either predicting their opponent's strategies or devising complex ones of their own, she finds that the direct approach is often more effective.
Well, alright. The brownies don't hurt.
-
Harvey comes to Jessica late in the afternoon, heading off the start of the new business day; in their profession, it starts with prep work the night before rather than diving in the morning of. There are six new cases sitting on her desk at the time, but only one is earmarked for Harvey's particular brand of lawyering. Two will end up in the hands of the associates, and three are calculated political manoeuvres to curry favour with the contract, tax, and real estate departments specifically. She cannot hope to sway the leadership vote in her favour with a few high profile cases, but if she plays her cards right, it will open the door to further negotiations. Jessica Pearson is patient by necessity, but she wins by design.
He can't handle any new cases for the next few days, he tells her. He's still dealing with the paperwork from the messy Milton merger. It's bullshit and they both know it. The interns were filing the paperwork for the merger this afternoon. Harvey's lying in wait should Donna need him, on standby in the meantime but for a pro bono case he'll only indulge because Mike Ross is the one who brought it to him.
She knows him less than he thought, but more than he assumes; she doubts his humility but not his loyalty, his methods but not his motives. When the people he cares about are threatened, Harvey refocuses his energies to protect his own. Cameron taught Harvey to win above all else, but she takes a vicious pride in that at least this arena, her lessons are the ones that reign.
Jessica doesn't have much patience for Harvey's ego after the train wreck that was his attempt to charm bankruptcy, but this is Donna. Not only does she know where all the bodies are buried, she ran the discourse on Jessica's transition to managing partner with an iron first during the days after Hardman's departure. The partners' opinions do not exist in a vacuum, much as they'd like to believe, and they're influenced by their underlings far more than they think. Jessica has Donna to thank for her broadening support base in the weeks after Harvey's successful blackmailing shook the executive power structure to its roots.
"Get that paperwork in as soon as you can."
Harvey nods, turning to leave. He gets as far as the door before she calls out to him again. "And tell Donna that anything she needs is hers."
The odds are he knows that she knows, but Jessica wouldn't want him to forget it.
-
Mike leaves the political theatre of the adult table to Harvey and spends his day doing legwork, digging up potential clients and knocking on doors as necessary. They regroup in the evening under the muted lights of Harvey's office. The motion sensors that govern the unflattering fluorescents of the hallway after business hours leave the area dark with inaction but for the faintly permeating glow of the stars, illuminating empty cubicles clear down the hallway.
Harvey's walked these halls from sun up to sun down on the path from first year associate to senior partner, neither too old for his mind to forget waking up in the bullpen nor too young for his body to do the same. He prefers the activity of day by a long shot, the challenge of the battle a task undertaken in the sunshine, but night does have the admittedly alluring habit of stripping the social pretenses from a situation and paring it down to its bare elements.
Take Mike Ross, for example, and the things filed under Harvey's ever growing list of 'things I do not need to know about my associate, ever.' (There are two other lists of this nature, one being 'things I do not want to but will likely need to know about my associate', the other inferable from the first two but quite classified indeed.) While Harvey's mental picture of Mike has remained fundamentally unchanged since their first meeting, he's fleshed it out in the nights since over classic movie references, particularly bad Chinese food, and particularly worse problems they've been tasked with solving.
For example, it's only under the night sky that he learns a Mike Ross with a head cold is a Mike Ross who snores like a goddamn chainsaw.
It might have been endearing an hour ago, when the coffee had been fresh and their eyes had been sharp. Now, it's the newest addition to the list of habits he's going to have to accept (not likely) or train out of him (very likely.) Current precedents on file include Harvey vs. Mike's Garlic Lunch ("Don't come back until you've bathed in a bottle of Listerine"), Harvey vs. Mike's Inappropriate Pop Culture References ("Not even if they're thematically appropriate?" "I will end you." "Oh, so you can quote Good Will Hunting but I can't?"), and Harvey vs. Mike's Savior Complex (ongoing, result pending).
Harvey kicks Mike with a sock-toed foot, watching him roll over and press his face into the back of Harvey's fine leather couch. The fabric reduces the chainsaw to a dull, muffled rumbling, so he'll take the hit to his furniture. Donna will appreciate the photos. It's the least he can do for her, considering.
Mike gives him a lot of shit for not caring, but truth be told, this situation would be easier if he didn't. Caring is exhausting. Tying yourself to another person's well-being is a bigger risk than any of the stunts he's pulled, positions as an ADA and private gunslinger included. There are days when he wants to drill this into Mike's head, but then again, Harvey reads people for a living. From evidence he doesn't want to inspect too closely, he suspects that this is something Mike is already intimately familiar with. That he persists in doing so anyways is a riddle Harvey hasn't been able to solve. It's one of the reasons he keeps him around, actually.
Harvey wonders what could falter the steps of one of the strongest women he's ever known, sure even as he floats ideas that this is not a challenge to be taken lightly. There are ways he could get around the letter of her words - discrete inquiries he could make, favours he could call in - but that would violate the spirit of them. She has asked for privacy, and Harvey respects her far too much to deny her that.
His thoughts are interrupted by Mike making a quiet, pained noise in his sleep. It cuts the snoring off abruptly, but while that was louder by magnitudes, it was at least innocuous. This is decidedly less so.
Harvey sighs. "Mike."
No response.
"Mike, wake up."
Mike's foot, which had been hanging over the end of the couch carelessly, pulls inwards to protect his torso as he curls in on himself. He doesn't wake. A person doesn't make it this far in life without picking up a few fears along the way, though. Everyone has memories they'd rather forget and things they'd rather not imagine come to pass. He could be having a nightmare about anything from Louis complimenting him to the skeletons in his closet, Harvey doesn't know. If Mike's not going to get a restful sleep, there's no point in wasting time they could spend working.
Harvey slaps a file folder down on the coffee table beside Mike's head, watching him startle awake abruptly, one well braced arm away from rolling right off the couch.
Mike blinks, takes a lengthy look around the room to place his surroundings, and blinks again. "I was just resting my eyes!"
"You were snoring."
"I forgot: Harvey Specter's nasal passages don't dare produce noise."
"Now you're getting it. I trust you'll do better next time."
"Aye aye, Captain."
Harvey hides his amusement behind a blank face. He is decidedly losing the case of Harvey vs. Mike's (Occasionally Appropriate) Pop Culture references, but it wouldn't do to let him know that.
-
It takes two days before the stalemate breaks, two days in which Harvey cracks Mike's pro bono wide open. When opposing council tries to call his bluff, Harvey holds a press conference that makes the six o'clock news, which Mike then wields as a weapon on the great playground that is the bullpen. Hardman compliments them both on their good work in person, setting Mike's teeth on edge. The good press reflects well on Jessica, so she leaves them be in a state of limbo for the duration of the second day, leaving Harvey free to make a general nuisance of himself.
"You need to leave," Mike hisses at him finally.
"You realize I'm your boss, right?"
"You're scaring the associates!"
While Harvey is supposed to scare the associates - it may in fact be in his job description - Mike's tone suggests this is highly irregular. He turns to survey the other occupants of the bullpen more closely, finding no less than three associates (and one particularly befuddled paralegal) openly staring at him amiably chatting with Mike about the relative merits of Deep Space Nine to The Original Series. They turn back to their work when they notice him noticing, but the kid with the curly blond hair doesn't seem to have noticed the documents he is so intently reading are still inside the closed file folder.
Well, maybe it is time to leave.
He returns to his desk with a cup of coffee in tow for Donna, black as the ink on the forms she's diligently filling out. She calls out to him when he has one hand on the door to his office.
"Hypothetically…"
When he turns, he finds her absentmindedly running a finger along the rim of the lid. "Hypothetically?" he asks.
"Friend of a friend."
"Of course," he says, motioning for her to continue.
"A friend of a friend was killed in a car accident last week. Her parents are gone, and she wasn't close with her brothers, so dealing with the estate fell to the friend."
"The friend," Harvey says quietly.
"The friend," she confirms, just as quiet. She meets his eyes easily, steadily.
He circles around the end of the desk to come alongside her chair with barely an arm's length between them. He puts his back to passers-by, blocking the view of both prying eyes and curious eavesdroppers, warm eyes intent on her. "This friend is sorry for your friend's loss."
She huffs, at once both bitter and amused, and leans into him. With him standing and her still seated, her head comes up to about his chest, ear resting just over his heart. He wraps an arm around her shoulders.
It's a long minute before either of them speak, Harvey holding Donna close as she gets her breathing under control. "My friend may have asked Louis for help in sorting out the legal snafu, since his specialty is finance and yours is not. By the way," she says into the vest.
"Well," he says, eyes fixed forward. He doesn't move away, tightening his grip on her. "Your friend is forgiven. Just the once, of course."
"Of course."
At several occasions during the past, Harvey's thought he could never be more proud of her. Every time, she's managed to surpass the bar. Maybe this is why Mike does it. All that worrying, all that frustration, all that caring, and here's the flip side. She makes him a better person, because he wants to be strong for her.
"The friend is --," Harvey says.
"No."
Mike, coming around the corner with a file in hand, overhears this last bit. If he has any questions as to why Harvey is holding Donna, he keeps them to himself. They've trained him well.
"The hammer is-," Mike says.
"No, Mike."
"Fine, fine."
-
fin
Fandom: Suits
Character(s): Ensemble (Donna, Harvey, Mike, Louis, Jessica, Rachel)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Hurt/comfort, friendship
Pairing: Gen
Spoilers: Up to and including 2x03 (Meet the New Boss.)
Disclaimer: Suits doesn't belong to me, this is solely for fun. No copyright infringement is intended.
Word Count: ~4000
Warnings:
[Spoiler (click to open)]
References to off-screen, OC character death
Summary: Harvey cares vicariously through Mike, and Donna needs Louis' help.
-
AN: Credit where credit is due! The title comes from the Of Monsters and Men song by the same name, Mike's line at the end comes from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along blog. Anything else you recognize (eg Avengers, Good Will Hunting references) comes from their respective creators!
Also posted at AO3, if that's your preference!
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Kings and Lionhearts
-
Mike almost turns around and walks away. Who could blame him? Harvey sits at Mike's cubicle all the time, usually with a lecture lying in wait on any one of a myriad of topics - last week's was a characteristic three quarters patronizing, one quarter sincere seminar on choosing the appropriate tie knot for the occasion, be it the Four-in-Hand, the Pratt, or the Windsor. For him to sit at Donna's is unheard of, and Mike can only assume it to be a sign of the apocalypse.
Curiosity wins out in the end, though, much as it always has; Mike's never been great at backing down from challenges, particularly not the interesting ones. He comes close enough to see both Harvey's casual occupancy of the space and the effect it has on passers-by, whose outright gawking is downright tawdry in a profession who prides itself as highly as theirs on poker faces. Through the glass wall he spies Donna sitting at Harvey's desk, head bent over paperwork. A layer of hair hangs down along the side of her face, hiding it from outside view.
Mike blinks. "Did you lose a bet or something?"
"Donna needed the office this morning," Harvey says. He doesn't look up from the polished lump of metal he's been playing with since Mike walked up, the magnetic buckyballs Donna keeps in the drawer for slow days. With a flick of his finger, Harvey folds the rope he's been building in on itself, laying the groundwork for the early stages of a fractal. Fitting for a man whose schemes have schemes.
"The whole office? Why?"
Harvey levels a supremely unimpressed look at him, and Mike stops to think it through. The restrictions that govern their conduct as lawyers make Harvey an honest man, but all this means is that he doesn't lie, not that he tells the truth. "You don't know, do you?" Mike realizes.
"I'm not in the habit of violating my assistant's privacy."
Mike's reasons for calling bullshit have a name, and that name is Trevor. "You violate my privacy all the time!" he squawks.
"You're not my assistant."
Mike and the coffee shop on the corner who pities him disagree with that statement, but he knows better than to voice it, choosing instead to take the fractal. Harvey watches closely as Mike's hands make quick work of the pattern, pushing the flat centre inwards with his thumbs to extend it to a third dimension. In the interests of self preservation, Mike has made a habit of reading Harvey's mood from the length of his silences, and the comfortable way Harvey takes the toy back to finish the job tells Mike that his boss is still at least mildly amused with the conversation. Good.
"While you're free," he wheedles, and Harvey's smile widens to show teeth. Mike isn't particularly encouraged by the expression, having been here long enough to know better, but he carries on anyways. The risk of running into the hardened corporate lawyer rather than said lawyer's soft underbelly has never stopped him before, and it's not about to start now. "There's a pro bono I could use your help on…"
Harvey presses the button for the intercom. "Donna!"
"Ten more minutes," she calls back.
Harvey pins Mike with a look. "You have five. Talk fast."
-
When the shadow drops over his view to indicate someone's arrival, Louis thinks it's Harold having come back for clarification on the new case. With that in mind, he lets him stew for awhile. In Harold's second year as an associate with the firm, Louis would have expected if not more cynicism than less naiveté. He's not sure if he respects or resents what by now amounts to easy going acceptance in the face of situations where it won't serve him well. In either case, it's definitely why he pushes Harold harder than the rest of them. It'll either force him to develop a protective hard outer shell or teach him to use his nature to his advantage, either way benefiting him in the long run.
Louis doesn't slight individual associates, affording them all with chances to rise to the occasion, but neither does he manage them with an even hand. The legal world is not a level playing field, and the associates had better get used to their bosses playing favourites with more impressive employees sooner rather than later.
Mike Ross has Harvey Specter to keep him in line. Were they all so lucky, Louis might have made senior partner by now. It's been in the plans since they were drawn up during the last months of his undergrad in a crappy little student apartment, letter of admission to Harvard Law in hand. The view he's come to call his own for several years now is not quite the corner office he'd expected at this stage in the game, but it's only lately that he's realized it's time to do something about that. It starts now with grooming Harold to be his associate, and, lord help him, ends with Harvey owing him a drink. Louis still remembers the bet they made as associates whiling away the early hours of the morning on grunt work in the bullpen, and Harvey had damn well better.
"Louis."
Last he checked, Harold's impression of Donna was not nearly that good. He turns in his chair to find her poised in front of his desk, back straight and hands clasped behind her back. It's a defensive position and try as he does, he can't figure out what he's done to inspire it.
"I need your help," she says. Louis almost misses it in a combination of both shock and disbelief. She isn't manipulating, isn't threatening, and he doesn't get it. Where's the ploy in outright asking?
"With what?" he asks. "I--."
"Louis," she snaps.
He freezes in place, coming to the slow conclusion that she is truly and genuinely upset. Oh, God. Not good, this is not good. In the past, she's blackmailed him. She's intimidated him. She's charmed him. As the fellow theatre aficionado she is, she's even used Shakespeare against him. Never mind Harvey's reputation, Donna does her own eviscerating. Louis desperately misses those tactics now - using genuine emotion is a low blow indeed.
"What's going on?"
-
Harvey's obvious preoccupation with Donna's secrecy this morning allows Mike to stretch his five minutes to just over fifteen, pressing his luck by following up the follow-up question on how best to proceed.
"I could go the class action route to show a systemic pattern of wrongful termination, but that could take years and Melis - not Melissa, who's Melissa? The client, whose name I do not know and the names of whose kids I definitely do not know because I am a corporate attorney and we don't know things like that - has bills to pay now."
Mike puts his best innocent expression up against Harvey's impassive one. Experience has taught him that the best way to enlist Harvey's help is to dangle a carrot in front of him in the form of a case with potential, such as a wrongful termination suit whose circumstances hint at a widespread problem within a high profile company. Step two is then bungling the strategic execution just enough to offend Harvey on a personal level without appearing the fool. It shouldn't work nearly as often as it does, so either Harvey's caring vicariously through Mike or Harvey's strategic sensibilities are really that delicate. Or both.
Mike's going with both.
-
Donna's a little red rimmed around the eyes when she returns to her desk, not just because Louis had tried to emote in between agreeing to help and getting the paperwork started. Harvey sees her before she him, as she gathers both the files he needs for the morning and the cloak of professionalism that's served her well so far. By the time she's pushing the door to his office open, he's on his feet and poised for action, like all she needs to do is point him in the direction of the problem that needs solving. He'll throw in the potentially emotionally satisfying overkill of a beat down in for free.
It's heartwarming, at once both patronizing and protective. She's questioned his priorities on occasion, but never once his loyalty.
"I've got this," she tells him. Putting the sentiment that's driven her actions this morning to words is the first step in meaning it; no ambiguity, no question, just the knowledge that not only can she handle this, but she will. "I know you'd help, but what I need right now is for you to be you. I need us to stay the same while I fix the problem."
"Sit," he tells her. "Please." She acquiesces, perching on the armrest of the couch only because she can see his restraint throwing up barriers to stall his intense desire to know. He doesn't handle being kept out of the loop well, even when the thing he's being kept out of the loop of is none of his damn business. It's one of the things she's always liked about him, actually. They don't have secrets. That he's quiet now means he's trying. So is she, and she sits primarily because she has to believe that trying will be enough.
"If that changes, if you need time off or a situation closed or someone to help you hide the body," he says. He's joking. Mostly. She thinks. On the other hand, Harvey balances out the shark's mentality the clients pay him the big bucks for by caring disproportionately about the few people he lets close. "You come to me."
There are words for declarations like that, responses it deserves, but she can't find them now any more than she could when he came to her the afternoon before a long weekend in the District Attorney's office and said, far too casually to be referring to the holiday, "Want to get out of here?"
It would be easy, she thinks, to step back and let him fix her problems. It's certainly tempting. In the end, the responsibilities Donna bears are hers to live up to. She needs to win this battle herself, on her own terms. Harvey, fresh off the fallout from Cameron Dennis' resignation, will understand that.
"I will."
She closes her hand over his and squeezes.
-
By the time the morning's events have trickled down through the office grapevine, the official version of events ("straight from the horse's mouth," Mike tells her when he pops in to pick up some paperwork, which she takes to mean the story Kyle is spouting in his unofficial position as Office Gossip), is that Donna's been tapped by Director Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D and is quitting Pearson Hardman effective immediately to become a personal assistant to the Avengers Initiative.
The award for most obscure theory is that it was Donna's twin (rather than Donna herself) running around the firm this morning. As everyone knows, the first day of trading lives with someone else is always a little bumpy. This tale had to have come from Louis Litt - Donna's told Rachel about the third row Twelfth Night tickets on opening night at the Rose Theatre that he's been wearing her down with.
By lunch, Rachel's had enough. Donna's been a wonderful friend to her, faithfully talking her through everything from the breakup with Mike to the pre-LSAT jitters to the problems she's been having with the dog from down the hall. It's time to return the favour. She gathers a stack of folders large enough to make any associates think twice about trying to pawn their research off on her, and sets off for Donna's desk. She has A Plan.
As it turns out, her Plan mostly consists of taking Donna out to a long lunch, plying her with the brownies she loves from the bakery two streets over, and asking her what the problem is. In an office full of lawyers who spend all their time either predicting their opponent's strategies or devising complex ones of their own, she finds that the direct approach is often more effective.
Well, alright. The brownies don't hurt.
-
Harvey comes to Jessica late in the afternoon, heading off the start of the new business day; in their profession, it starts with prep work the night before rather than diving in the morning of. There are six new cases sitting on her desk at the time, but only one is earmarked for Harvey's particular brand of lawyering. Two will end up in the hands of the associates, and three are calculated political manoeuvres to curry favour with the contract, tax, and real estate departments specifically. She cannot hope to sway the leadership vote in her favour with a few high profile cases, but if she plays her cards right, it will open the door to further negotiations. Jessica Pearson is patient by necessity, but she wins by design.
He can't handle any new cases for the next few days, he tells her. He's still dealing with the paperwork from the messy Milton merger. It's bullshit and they both know it. The interns were filing the paperwork for the merger this afternoon. Harvey's lying in wait should Donna need him, on standby in the meantime but for a pro bono case he'll only indulge because Mike Ross is the one who brought it to him.
She knows him less than he thought, but more than he assumes; she doubts his humility but not his loyalty, his methods but not his motives. When the people he cares about are threatened, Harvey refocuses his energies to protect his own. Cameron taught Harvey to win above all else, but she takes a vicious pride in that at least this arena, her lessons are the ones that reign.
Jessica doesn't have much patience for Harvey's ego after the train wreck that was his attempt to charm bankruptcy, but this is Donna. Not only does she know where all the bodies are buried, she ran the discourse on Jessica's transition to managing partner with an iron first during the days after Hardman's departure. The partners' opinions do not exist in a vacuum, much as they'd like to believe, and they're influenced by their underlings far more than they think. Jessica has Donna to thank for her broadening support base in the weeks after Harvey's successful blackmailing shook the executive power structure to its roots.
"Get that paperwork in as soon as you can."
Harvey nods, turning to leave. He gets as far as the door before she calls out to him again. "And tell Donna that anything she needs is hers."
The odds are he knows that she knows, but Jessica wouldn't want him to forget it.
-
Mike leaves the political theatre of the adult table to Harvey and spends his day doing legwork, digging up potential clients and knocking on doors as necessary. They regroup in the evening under the muted lights of Harvey's office. The motion sensors that govern the unflattering fluorescents of the hallway after business hours leave the area dark with inaction but for the faintly permeating glow of the stars, illuminating empty cubicles clear down the hallway.
Harvey's walked these halls from sun up to sun down on the path from first year associate to senior partner, neither too old for his mind to forget waking up in the bullpen nor too young for his body to do the same. He prefers the activity of day by a long shot, the challenge of the battle a task undertaken in the sunshine, but night does have the admittedly alluring habit of stripping the social pretenses from a situation and paring it down to its bare elements.
Take Mike Ross, for example, and the things filed under Harvey's ever growing list of 'things I do not need to know about my associate, ever.' (There are two other lists of this nature, one being 'things I do not want to but will likely need to know about my associate', the other inferable from the first two but quite classified indeed.) While Harvey's mental picture of Mike has remained fundamentally unchanged since their first meeting, he's fleshed it out in the nights since over classic movie references, particularly bad Chinese food, and particularly worse problems they've been tasked with solving.
For example, it's only under the night sky that he learns a Mike Ross with a head cold is a Mike Ross who snores like a goddamn chainsaw.
It might have been endearing an hour ago, when the coffee had been fresh and their eyes had been sharp. Now, it's the newest addition to the list of habits he's going to have to accept (not likely) or train out of him (very likely.) Current precedents on file include Harvey vs. Mike's Garlic Lunch ("Don't come back until you've bathed in a bottle of Listerine"), Harvey vs. Mike's Inappropriate Pop Culture References ("Not even if they're thematically appropriate?" "I will end you." "Oh, so you can quote Good Will Hunting but I can't?"), and Harvey vs. Mike's Savior Complex (ongoing, result pending).
Harvey kicks Mike with a sock-toed foot, watching him roll over and press his face into the back of Harvey's fine leather couch. The fabric reduces the chainsaw to a dull, muffled rumbling, so he'll take the hit to his furniture. Donna will appreciate the photos. It's the least he can do for her, considering.
Mike gives him a lot of shit for not caring, but truth be told, this situation would be easier if he didn't. Caring is exhausting. Tying yourself to another person's well-being is a bigger risk than any of the stunts he's pulled, positions as an ADA and private gunslinger included. There are days when he wants to drill this into Mike's head, but then again, Harvey reads people for a living. From evidence he doesn't want to inspect too closely, he suspects that this is something Mike is already intimately familiar with. That he persists in doing so anyways is a riddle Harvey hasn't been able to solve. It's one of the reasons he keeps him around, actually.
Harvey wonders what could falter the steps of one of the strongest women he's ever known, sure even as he floats ideas that this is not a challenge to be taken lightly. There are ways he could get around the letter of her words - discrete inquiries he could make, favours he could call in - but that would violate the spirit of them. She has asked for privacy, and Harvey respects her far too much to deny her that.
His thoughts are interrupted by Mike making a quiet, pained noise in his sleep. It cuts the snoring off abruptly, but while that was louder by magnitudes, it was at least innocuous. This is decidedly less so.
Harvey sighs. "Mike."
No response.
"Mike, wake up."
Mike's foot, which had been hanging over the end of the couch carelessly, pulls inwards to protect his torso as he curls in on himself. He doesn't wake. A person doesn't make it this far in life without picking up a few fears along the way, though. Everyone has memories they'd rather forget and things they'd rather not imagine come to pass. He could be having a nightmare about anything from Louis complimenting him to the skeletons in his closet, Harvey doesn't know. If Mike's not going to get a restful sleep, there's no point in wasting time they could spend working.
Harvey slaps a file folder down on the coffee table beside Mike's head, watching him startle awake abruptly, one well braced arm away from rolling right off the couch.
Mike blinks, takes a lengthy look around the room to place his surroundings, and blinks again. "I was just resting my eyes!"
"You were snoring."
"I forgot: Harvey Specter's nasal passages don't dare produce noise."
"Now you're getting it. I trust you'll do better next time."
"Aye aye, Captain."
Harvey hides his amusement behind a blank face. He is decidedly losing the case of Harvey vs. Mike's (Occasionally Appropriate) Pop Culture references, but it wouldn't do to let him know that.
-
It takes two days before the stalemate breaks, two days in which Harvey cracks Mike's pro bono wide open. When opposing council tries to call his bluff, Harvey holds a press conference that makes the six o'clock news, which Mike then wields as a weapon on the great playground that is the bullpen. Hardman compliments them both on their good work in person, setting Mike's teeth on edge. The good press reflects well on Jessica, so she leaves them be in a state of limbo for the duration of the second day, leaving Harvey free to make a general nuisance of himself.
"You need to leave," Mike hisses at him finally.
"You realize I'm your boss, right?"
"You're scaring the associates!"
While Harvey is supposed to scare the associates - it may in fact be in his job description - Mike's tone suggests this is highly irregular. He turns to survey the other occupants of the bullpen more closely, finding no less than three associates (and one particularly befuddled paralegal) openly staring at him amiably chatting with Mike about the relative merits of Deep Space Nine to The Original Series. They turn back to their work when they notice him noticing, but the kid with the curly blond hair doesn't seem to have noticed the documents he is so intently reading are still inside the closed file folder.
Well, maybe it is time to leave.
He returns to his desk with a cup of coffee in tow for Donna, black as the ink on the forms she's diligently filling out. She calls out to him when he has one hand on the door to his office.
"Hypothetically…"
When he turns, he finds her absentmindedly running a finger along the rim of the lid. "Hypothetically?" he asks.
"Friend of a friend."
"Of course," he says, motioning for her to continue.
"A friend of a friend was killed in a car accident last week. Her parents are gone, and she wasn't close with her brothers, so dealing with the estate fell to the friend."
"The friend," Harvey says quietly.
"The friend," she confirms, just as quiet. She meets his eyes easily, steadily.
He circles around the end of the desk to come alongside her chair with barely an arm's length between them. He puts his back to passers-by, blocking the view of both prying eyes and curious eavesdroppers, warm eyes intent on her. "This friend is sorry for your friend's loss."
She huffs, at once both bitter and amused, and leans into him. With him standing and her still seated, her head comes up to about his chest, ear resting just over his heart. He wraps an arm around her shoulders.
It's a long minute before either of them speak, Harvey holding Donna close as she gets her breathing under control. "My friend may have asked Louis for help in sorting out the legal snafu, since his specialty is finance and yours is not. By the way," she says into the vest.
"Well," he says, eyes fixed forward. He doesn't move away, tightening his grip on her. "Your friend is forgiven. Just the once, of course."
"Of course."
At several occasions during the past, Harvey's thought he could never be more proud of her. Every time, she's managed to surpass the bar. Maybe this is why Mike does it. All that worrying, all that frustration, all that caring, and here's the flip side. She makes him a better person, because he wants to be strong for her.
"The friend is --," Harvey says.
"No."
Mike, coming around the corner with a file in hand, overhears this last bit. If he has any questions as to why Harvey is holding Donna, he keeps them to himself. They've trained him well.
"The hammer is-," Mike says.
"No, Mike."
"Fine, fine."
-
fin