Suits Fic: finding the way
Title: finding the way
Count: 4000+
Fandom: Suits
Characters/Pairings: Harvey/Mike
Warnings: none
Summary: It’s Thanksgiving, and Mike’s all alone. Harvey has something to say about that.
Disclaimer: Don’t own it. Not mine. Don’t sue.
A/N: Happy Thanksgiving, American Suitors! (And Happy Thursday to everyone else.) Here, have some domestic fic.
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The greatest wisdom is in simplicity. Love, respect, tolerance, sharing, gratitude, forgiveness. It's not complex or elaborate...Find your heart, and you will find your way.
- Carlos Barrios
+++
Mike doesn’t hate Thanksgiving.
It might be easier if he did since Mike is, technically, an orphan, and it’s one of those holidays designed to make orphans feel shitty about their lot in life. But he doesn’t. Call it the Grammy Effect. Even when it was just the two of them, just Mike and Grammy, she made it into a big thing. They watched the parade and she made too much food, and Mike always fell asleep halfway through eating his second slice of pumpkin pie, while Grammy watched Miracle on 34th Street. Even without his parents, Mike never felt alone. Grammy was great at that.
Even over the last few years, with Grammy in a nursing home, they made it happen. Mike would cook at home, carefully juggling making the side dishes on his tiny apartment stove so that when he walked in through the door to Grammy’s room, tinfoil covered paper plates in hand, everything would still be warm. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked, which is only fitting. That’s been the theme of his life ever since he turned eleven and lost his parents for good.
Taking tests to make rent?
Not perfect, but it’ll work.
Working as a lawyer without a degree?
Not perfect, but it’ll work.
But things are different this year without Grammy. Without Grammy to think about, without Grammy to plan for - and with no Trevor and no Jenny as replacement family, no Rachel to pretend with after their breakup the month before - Mike let the month creep up on him for the first time, so that he’s standing in front of his open, mostly barren fridge in his pajamas and bare feet on Thanksgiving morning, wondering if he can cobble a meal together with what he has.
It’s not looking good. Maybe he should just order Chinese later, and be done with it.
His phone rings, and Mike shuts the refrigerator door and walks over to the coffee table, picks it up.
“Harvey?”
“Get over here.”
“What, no Happy Thanksgiving, Mike?”
“Happy Thanksgiving, Mike. Get over here. I’m giving you forty-five minutes.”
Mike balks. “I’m not even dressed yet.”
“Oh, so you’re standing around naked then?”
The amusement is just oozing from his voice and it’s a little too close for comfort to the day Mike wore Harvey’s slightly too big suit, when Harvey had looked him up and down openly, brazenly, as if he were allowed. As if Mike were more than just his associate.
“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”
“You just did.”
“Harvey, it’s Thanksgiving.”
“I’m aware of that. Forty-four minutes. And don’t be late, or I’ll give you to Donna for a week to do with as she pleases. I’m sure she can be very inventive if properly motivated.”
Harvey hangs up before Mike can get another word in edgewise, and he’s left staring at the phone in his hand incredulously. Mike has no idea what they could be working on, since he finished the work on the Brayburn contract ahead of schedule, and worked his ass off schmoozing and glad-handing the Avery Group CEO - who apparently has a not so subtle thing for skinny guys in skinny ties - convincing him Pearson Hardman is the only firm equipped to handle his needs. It was exhausting. He doesn’t know how Harvey does it all the time.
Mike drops his phone on his couch, walks over to the closet and pulls out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt Jenny laughingly bought him months ago with Harvard printed across the front in burgundy.
If he has to work, at least he’ll be comfortable.
+
Mike sighs, knocks on Harvey’s door.
“Door’s open.”
Mike opens the door, walks in, shuts it behind him. He starts unzipping his hoodie and says, as he walks into the condo, “Okay, are you going to tell me what the hell we’re working on today that’s so important? Because I almost got assaulted by a giant parade balloon in the shape of Spiderman. Do you have any idea how big that pointing finger is?”
“The parade hasn’t even started yet. And you’re late.”
Mike walks toward the direction of Harvey’s voice - the kitchen - breathing in deep when the smell of cooking food wafts his way. He steps around the corner and stops. Harvey is standing in his kitchen, at the stove, wearing an apron as he flips a pair of eggs over in a frying pan, lets them cook a few seconds, then slides them onto a plate that already holds home fries and fruit. He cracks a couple more eggs into the pan, tosses the shells away, wipes his hands on the hem of his apron.
“You’re wearing an apron.”
Harvey looks up at him, pours orange juice in a glass, follows that with champagne.
“You’re wearing an apron and you’re cooking things.”
Harvey holds out the plate and glass to him and, when he takes them, adds a fork on top, slips a napkin into the space between two of Mike’s fingers.
“What is this?”
“Eggs. Fruit. Home fries. A mimosa.”
“Harvey-”
“Cute shirt.”
Mike looks down at the Harvard tee, blushes a little. When he looks up, Harvey is looking him up and down, amused.
He nods toward the living room. “Go sit down. The parade’s getting ready to start.” When Mike opens his mouth to protest, he says, “Go.”
Harvey turns away from him back to the stove and Mike goes, walks to the living room and sits down on the edge of the couch, his food in his hands. He feels suddenly awkward in Harvey’s space in a way he never is, because it’s never just food with them, it’s always work with a little bit of food on the side, and it’s never Harvey making food for him. This isn’t something they do, not here. They’ve done it in Mike’s apartment before, when Mike was weighed down with grief over Grammy and Harvey was the only one who did just what Mike would have asked for, if he’d only known how. It’s a good thing he hadn’t needed to ask.
But that’s the thing about Harvey, Mike guesses. He usually knows what Mike needs.
“I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to eat the food, not stare at it.”
He looks over at Harvey, sitting next to him, legs crossed and plate in hand, and he sinks back into the sofa, sets his mimosa down on the side table. Harvey watches until he takes a bite then turns his head to watch the parade starting on TV.
“You made me breakfast.”
Harvey snorts next to him. “Not much gets past you, does it Mike?”
Mike spears a few home fries, pulls them through broken yolk, slides the food into his mouth. Harvey’s food is good - simple, but flavorful. He wonders if someone taught him to cook like Grammy taught Mike, or if he taught himself. If he took classes, if his mother taught him. Or maybe it was an ex-girlfriend, someone who laughingly taught him one morning when she was sick and tired of a morning after with Harvey consisting of coffee and slightly burnt toast.
Mike washes that thought away with a sip of his mimosa. It doesn’t help to think about things like that.
“It’s good. The...breakfast. It’s good.”
Mike can feel Harvey’s eyes on him but he refuses to turn his head, takes another bite instead and steadfastly keeps his eyes on the TV screen, where Papa Smurf is passing by.
“I’m glad you like it.”
+
Mike offers to do the dishes after breakfast, after Santa shows up on his float and marks the end of the parade. Harvey lets him, works alongside him in the kitchen, doing prep work for dinner, dipping his hands into the stuffing to mix it up. The turkey has just been put into the oven, Mike’s hands are dunked into a sink full of soapy water, and Etta James plays softly in the background.
It’s the closest Mike’s felt to home in a while.
It’s easy to put Harvey in a box, Mike knows that. It is, after all, an intentional box, one Harvey created himself to project a certain image onto the world of a man completely in control, a man who can do anything, a man in expensive three piece suits and perfectly coiffed hair who knows how to get anyone to say yes. And he’s convinced nearly everyone that that’s the man he is. That even when he goes home at night, it’s the man he stays. But Mike knows better. And it’s not because he’s more observant, or because he’s smarter. It’s because Harvey allows him to know better.
It’s all Harvey’s choice who he lets in. And Mike has somehow earned that.
He drains the water from the sink, rinses the soap suds out until the last trail of suds goes sliding down the drain. He wipes his hands off on a dish towel then stands there, holding the towel. He realizes he doesn’t know the protocol here. Does Harvey need his help? Does he even want it?
“Uh...is there anything I can do?”
Harvey looks over his shoulder at him, nods toward a bowl on the countertop. “You can peel the potatoes.” He nods down at the drawer to the right of his hip. “Peeler’s in that drawer.”
Mike sets aside the dishtowel gratefully, slides forward and opens the drawer, scanning the contents of the drawer for a moment until he finds the peeler. Harvey shifts next to him and it brings their biceps together for a few moments, a few precious moments of heat that linger when Harvey’s arms shift again as he mixes the stuffing.
Harvey owns a peeler. He makes stuffing. He wears an apron in the kitchen. He likes giant parade balloons. This shouldn’t be the same guy who says shit like, “Don’t play the odds, play the man,” and who drives around in whichever classic car strikes his fancy that day, but it is and somehow that fits, somehow that makes way more sense than it should.
A huff of a laugh falls from Mike’s lips before he can stop it, and Harvey looks over at him, a little quizzically.
“Mike?”
“I’m good. It’s...I’m good.”
Harvey nods, slowly. “I’m glad.”
Mike motions toward the potatoes in the bowl in front of him. “Do you have another bowl? For the peels?”
Harvey looks at him a moment. “Behind you.”
Mike spins, opens the cabinet door to find a stack of bowls within. He pulls out a medium size and grabs the other bowl, sets them both on top of the breakfast bar and sits down on the stool in front of Harvey. Harvey’s still watching him carefully, as if he can’t quite figure out what’s going on with Mike, as if there’s something he’s just missing. Mike picks up the first potato and begins scraping away at it with the peeler.
“Leave some of the skin on.” Mike stops, looks up. Harvey’s looking at him intently. “Trust me.”
After a second, Mike nods. “Yeah, okay.”
They’re silent for a while, Mike peeling his potatoes, Harvey adding things to his stuffing, Etta singing softly in the background. Mike desperately wants to keep this moment.
This day is precious, it’s a rarity. And he wonders, if he tried to keep this moment, this day in his memory now, if he catalogued every little detail to the best of his ability, how long could he keep it before small pieces of it start to slip away? A few days? A few weeks? How long until the details become muddied? Before he confuses one detail with another? Mike’s brain is pretty incredible, but it’s not perfect.
Suddenly that seems like less than enough.
+
After they finish the prep work, they turn the game on. The volume is turned down, because neither of them care what the announcers have to say, and Mike is slumped back in the cushions, nursing the glass of wine Harvey poured him ten minutes ago. He feels warm and happy, ankles crossed and resting on Harvey’s coffee table, Harvey close enough to feel the warmth of his body. He only wishes Grammy were here, that she’d been able to spend this Thanksgiving with them, that she’d gotten to know Harvey a little better.
Mike thinks they all deserved that.
“I thought you were calling me over to do work.”
He looks over at Harvey. Harvey meets his eye, takes a sip of his wine.
“It’s Thanksgiving, Mike.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
Mike’s eyes drift over to the TV, and he watches as Aaron Rodgers drops back and throws a completion to James Jones, watches Jones run out of bounds just past the first down marker.
“My mom hated football. On Thanksgiving she made my dad go out to the garage to watch it so she could watch Miracle on 34th Street. She always put it on after the parade ended, while she was cooking. It was her favorite movie, but she only let herself watch it when Thanksgiving day came around. Later, after she was gone and it was just me and Grammy, we kept up the tradition. But you couldn’t see the TV from her kitchen, so we always waited until the meal was done and we sat down to eat.”
Mike takes a sip of his wine, shifts his eyes to watch Harvey when he lifts himself off the couch and approaches the TV, slipping a DVD out of a case and into the player. Harvey walks back to the couch, sinks back down a little closer to Mike, and presses play when the Miracle on 34th Street menu pops up. He sets the remote down on the couch between them.
“Harvey, you don’t have to do that.”
Harvey tilts his head to look at Mike. “Your family isn’t the only one with that tradition. My dad watched Miracle on 34th Street every year after the parade too. He couldn’t cook for shit, though.”
Mike smiles.
The phone rings and Harvey glances toward the phone then stands, walking across the room to pick it up. Mike watches him go, takes another sip of his wine.
“Hello? Hey, Marcus. Yeah, Happy Thanksgiving to you too.”
Harvey laughs softly at something Marcus says then meets Mike’s eyes with his.
“Yeah...don’t I always?” Harvey laughs again, louder, more familiar, and it makes Mike smile. Harvey smiles back at him, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yeah, yeah...you too.”
The conversation goes on for a little while, and Mike turns his head away and tunes him out, lets Harvey become background noise as he watches the movie. He sinks into the comfort of it, scratches softly at his belly under his shirt, sinks into the couch even further if possible. A few minutes later Harvey drops back down on the couch next to him, nudging Mike’s thigh with his when he crosses his legs.
“Marcus says Happy Thanksgiving.”
Mike looks at him. “You told your brother about me?”
“Of course I did.” Harvey looks over and says, “Don’t worry, I made sure to tell him how pretty you are. And how big your brain is.”
Mike rolls his eyes, pushes his head back into the couch cushion as he turns his attention back to the movie.
“So is he stopping by?”
Harvey doesn’t respond right away so Mike’s eyes drift over to him, only to find Harvey watching him. Mike just blinks, waits for Harvey to respond. He finally does, says, “No. Marcus is on the other side of the country, in California. He’s having Thanksgiving with friends.”
“Sorry.” Harvey waves him off and Mike laughs, a little self-consciously. “I guess that makes me replacement Marcus.”
Harvey’s voice is firm, unyielding. “No. It doesn’t.”
When he gets up from the couch and walks away toward the kitchen, Mike watches the back of him until he disappears from view, then sinks down into the couch, wondering how he managed to stick his foot in his mouth so badly.
+
“I’m sorry.” Harvey looks up at him. “I didn’t mean to suggest that I have the same place in your life as your brother, that’s presumptuous. I know we’re just two friends, spending a holiday together. It sucks to be alone on a holiday. I think we both know that.”
Somehow that seems to make things worse, and Harvey sets his knife down and says, “Friends. Loneliness. Is that really what you think this is?”
Mike is a little taken aback. He seems to be getting pretty good at this digging a hole thing without even realizing he’s doing it. He doesn’t know what Harvey wants him to say. He doesn’t know what Harvey wants, and it’s frustrating. Mike knows he can’t claim to be Harvey’s friend in the office, but here, now, today...that should be allowed. If he’s not Harvey’s friend today, who is he? If this isn’t two friends spending the holiday together, then what is this?
“If it were just about loneliness, Mike, I could pick someone up and be done with it. Thanksgiving is for family, not one night stands.”
Mike stops. “Family.”
“Family.”
He swallows. “But I’m not your brother.”
Harvey’s voice is soft, firm. “No. You’re not my brother.”
Oh.
“Oh.”
Mike’s always been good at math.
Harvey’s face softens, and he looks at Mike almost fondly.
“But you never said anything.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Harvey sighs. “It was something you needed to come to on your own.”
He drops down onto a stool. “Harvey, I’ve been attracted to you since we met. You can’t have missed that.”
“I didn’t. And if I hadn’t offered you the job, I probably would have capitalized on that. I would have taken you out, wined you, dined you, then I would have brought you back to my home and taken you apart. Slowly. Thoroughly.” Mike sucks in a breath and Harvey gives him a knowing smile. “But I did offer you the job. And that meant we had to work together. Before I did anything to change our dynamic, I had to be sure it was more than just attraction for you.”
“For me.”
“For you.”
Mike nods, pauses for a moment. “But there were...others.”
“I’ve never claimed to be a monk.” Mike goes to speak and Harvey cuts him off. “None of them mattered. They were one night stands for a reason.”
“They weren’t all one night stands.”
“You mean Zoe.”
Mike nods. He’s never asked Harvey about her before, mostly because he figured Harvey would never tell him. But also because he knew he just couldn’t, that he didn’t want to know how close he was to losing Harvey forever. Donna never gave any specific details, never even really so much as said her name more than once in front of him, but Mike could read between the lines. He could hear what she was telling him: Zoe was different.
“She didn’t fit.”
Mike looks up at him.
“If she had, I would have followed her anywhere. That’s the simple truth. But in the end there was more of a reason for me to stay behind than there was to go.”
Mike nods to himself, accepts the wine refill Harvey graces him with, holding the bowl of the glass in both his hands. It isn’t the right way to hold his wine, he knows that, but he needs something to do with his hands to ground himself. Harvey is so open right now, so relaxed in a way Mike’s never seen him be, and it’s tilting Mike’s axis.
Harvey is everything Mike’s wanted, and nothing he’s ever known how to ask for. He’d never have hoped for this, never have hoped for Harvey, and yet here he is, here they are.
So Mike figures Harvey deserves the truth too.
“Rachel wanted to move in together. I said yes, and we started looking for a place, but I wasn’t as excited as I should have been. It was easy to find something wrong with every place she found. And then she found out she got into Stanford and she asked me to go with her, and I think we both knew I was going to say no, because she didn’t seem all that surprised.”
“I’m sorry.”
Mike smirks. “No, you’re not. But it’s fine, I get it. You’ve never liked Rachel.”
Harvey shakes his head. “I don’t care about Rachel Zane one way or the other. She rarely enters my mind, except when she’s doing work I need for a client.”
“You just thought she was all wrong for me.”
“I did. I also knew that was a conclusion you’d come to yourself, given enough time.”
“And you were willing to wait.”
Harvey leans up against the counter. “You know what they say. Patience is a virtue.”
Mike’s laugh is loud, bright. Harvey’s answering grin sparks something low in his belly.
“Definitely words I never thought I’d hear you say.”
Harvey leans in. “Some things are more than worth the wait.”
A timer goes off and Harvey backs off with a smile, turning to pull the boiling potatoes off the stove. Mike takes a sip of his wine, lets his eyes drift down to Harvey’s ass as he bends to grab something out of the vegetable drawer in the fridge. Harvey looks over his shoulder, catches him with a knowing smirk, and Mike just grins back.
+
Dinner’s amazing.
The turkey’s perfect - everything’s perfect - and Mike eats way, way too much, which is pretty much par for the course. Grammy made a hell of a meal too.
He groans, sets his plate down on the coffee table with a clatter, and leans back into the couch, rubbing at his belly with his hand.
“I told you going back for more stuffing a third time might be a poor choice.”
“Ugh.” Mike goes boneless, lets his head drop to the side to look at Harvey. “But it was so good.”
“I’m glad you liked it.”
Harvey cuts off a small piece of cranberry sauce with the edge of his fork, spears it, then spears a piece of turkey. Mike follows the path of the fork into Harvey’s mouth with his eyes, watches his jaw work as he chews slowly, watches his Adam’s apple as he swallows.
Fuck.
Mike stands, takes Harvey’s plate in his hand and sets it down on the coffee table before climbing onto the couch on his knees, straddling Harvey’s lap. Harvey tilts his head back, looks up at him, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. Mike leans in, his hands braced on the cushion behind Harvey’s head and stops, a breath away from Harvey’s lips. He exhales. Harvey rests his hands on Mike’s thighs, squeezes gently.
“Thank you.”
Mike doesn’t even know what he’s thanking him for, not really. There are too many things to choose from. His job, his life, this day. Harvey himself.
“My pleasure.”
Mike finally closes the distance, puts his whole body behind the kiss.
Everything. Harvey’s done everything for him.
Harvey pulls back, thumbs at the corner of Mike’s mouth. Mike is breathing heavy, and he kisses the pad of Harvey’s thumb.
“I made pie too. Pumpkin. And apple.”
“Fuck.” Mike’s eyes roll back and he leans in and kisses Harvey hard, once, before he pulls back. “I’m totally keeping you.”
Harvey laughs into the kiss, wraps his arms around Mike’s back and flips them, stretching Mike out on the couch.
+
It’s close to midnight when they finally cut into the pie.
Mike sits on the counter, pokes at Harvey’s bare back with his toes while Harvey makes the whipped cream. Harvey starts the stand mixer and then reaches out, grabs Mike’s ankle, and pulls him up to the edge of the counter. Mike laughs and Harvey kisses him, slides a hand up Mike’s back, under his shirt.
The pie is really fucking good.
Harvey’s mouth - tasting of pumpkin, whipped cream, and apple with just the faintest hint of cinnamon and nutmeg - is even better.
Count: 4000+
Fandom: Suits
Characters/Pairings: Harvey/Mike
Warnings: none
Summary: It’s Thanksgiving, and Mike’s all alone. Harvey has something to say about that.
Disclaimer: Don’t own it. Not mine. Don’t sue.
A/N: Happy Thanksgiving, American Suitors! (And Happy Thursday to everyone else.) Here, have some domestic fic.
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The greatest wisdom is in simplicity. Love, respect, tolerance, sharing, gratitude, forgiveness. It's not complex or elaborate...Find your heart, and you will find your way.
- Carlos Barrios
+++
Mike doesn’t hate Thanksgiving.
It might be easier if he did since Mike is, technically, an orphan, and it’s one of those holidays designed to make orphans feel shitty about their lot in life. But he doesn’t. Call it the Grammy Effect. Even when it was just the two of them, just Mike and Grammy, she made it into a big thing. They watched the parade and she made too much food, and Mike always fell asleep halfway through eating his second slice of pumpkin pie, while Grammy watched Miracle on 34th Street. Even without his parents, Mike never felt alone. Grammy was great at that.
Even over the last few years, with Grammy in a nursing home, they made it happen. Mike would cook at home, carefully juggling making the side dishes on his tiny apartment stove so that when he walked in through the door to Grammy’s room, tinfoil covered paper plates in hand, everything would still be warm. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked, which is only fitting. That’s been the theme of his life ever since he turned eleven and lost his parents for good.
Taking tests to make rent?
Not perfect, but it’ll work.
Working as a lawyer without a degree?
Not perfect, but it’ll work.
But things are different this year without Grammy. Without Grammy to think about, without Grammy to plan for - and with no Trevor and no Jenny as replacement family, no Rachel to pretend with after their breakup the month before - Mike let the month creep up on him for the first time, so that he’s standing in front of his open, mostly barren fridge in his pajamas and bare feet on Thanksgiving morning, wondering if he can cobble a meal together with what he has.
It’s not looking good. Maybe he should just order Chinese later, and be done with it.
His phone rings, and Mike shuts the refrigerator door and walks over to the coffee table, picks it up.
“Harvey?”
“Get over here.”
“What, no Happy Thanksgiving, Mike?”
“Happy Thanksgiving, Mike. Get over here. I’m giving you forty-five minutes.”
Mike balks. “I’m not even dressed yet.”
“Oh, so you’re standing around naked then?”
The amusement is just oozing from his voice and it’s a little too close for comfort to the day Mike wore Harvey’s slightly too big suit, when Harvey had looked him up and down openly, brazenly, as if he were allowed. As if Mike were more than just his associate.
“I’m not going to dignify that with a response.”
“You just did.”
“Harvey, it’s Thanksgiving.”
“I’m aware of that. Forty-four minutes. And don’t be late, or I’ll give you to Donna for a week to do with as she pleases. I’m sure she can be very inventive if properly motivated.”
Harvey hangs up before Mike can get another word in edgewise, and he’s left staring at the phone in his hand incredulously. Mike has no idea what they could be working on, since he finished the work on the Brayburn contract ahead of schedule, and worked his ass off schmoozing and glad-handing the Avery Group CEO - who apparently has a not so subtle thing for skinny guys in skinny ties - convincing him Pearson Hardman is the only firm equipped to handle his needs. It was exhausting. He doesn’t know how Harvey does it all the time.
Mike drops his phone on his couch, walks over to the closet and pulls out a pair of jeans and a t-shirt Jenny laughingly bought him months ago with Harvard printed across the front in burgundy.
If he has to work, at least he’ll be comfortable.
+
Mike sighs, knocks on Harvey’s door.
“Door’s open.”
Mike opens the door, walks in, shuts it behind him. He starts unzipping his hoodie and says, as he walks into the condo, “Okay, are you going to tell me what the hell we’re working on today that’s so important? Because I almost got assaulted by a giant parade balloon in the shape of Spiderman. Do you have any idea how big that pointing finger is?”
“The parade hasn’t even started yet. And you’re late.”
Mike walks toward the direction of Harvey’s voice - the kitchen - breathing in deep when the smell of cooking food wafts his way. He steps around the corner and stops. Harvey is standing in his kitchen, at the stove, wearing an apron as he flips a pair of eggs over in a frying pan, lets them cook a few seconds, then slides them onto a plate that already holds home fries and fruit. He cracks a couple more eggs into the pan, tosses the shells away, wipes his hands on the hem of his apron.
“You’re wearing an apron.”
Harvey looks up at him, pours orange juice in a glass, follows that with champagne.
“You’re wearing an apron and you’re cooking things.”
Harvey holds out the plate and glass to him and, when he takes them, adds a fork on top, slips a napkin into the space between two of Mike’s fingers.
“What is this?”
“Eggs. Fruit. Home fries. A mimosa.”
“Harvey-”
“Cute shirt.”
Mike looks down at the Harvard tee, blushes a little. When he looks up, Harvey is looking him up and down, amused.
He nods toward the living room. “Go sit down. The parade’s getting ready to start.” When Mike opens his mouth to protest, he says, “Go.”
Harvey turns away from him back to the stove and Mike goes, walks to the living room and sits down on the edge of the couch, his food in his hands. He feels suddenly awkward in Harvey’s space in a way he never is, because it’s never just food with them, it’s always work with a little bit of food on the side, and it’s never Harvey making food for him. This isn’t something they do, not here. They’ve done it in Mike’s apartment before, when Mike was weighed down with grief over Grammy and Harvey was the only one who did just what Mike would have asked for, if he’d only known how. It’s a good thing he hadn’t needed to ask.
But that’s the thing about Harvey, Mike guesses. He usually knows what Mike needs.
“I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to eat the food, not stare at it.”
He looks over at Harvey, sitting next to him, legs crossed and plate in hand, and he sinks back into the sofa, sets his mimosa down on the side table. Harvey watches until he takes a bite then turns his head to watch the parade starting on TV.
“You made me breakfast.”
Harvey snorts next to him. “Not much gets past you, does it Mike?”
Mike spears a few home fries, pulls them through broken yolk, slides the food into his mouth. Harvey’s food is good - simple, but flavorful. He wonders if someone taught him to cook like Grammy taught Mike, or if he taught himself. If he took classes, if his mother taught him. Or maybe it was an ex-girlfriend, someone who laughingly taught him one morning when she was sick and tired of a morning after with Harvey consisting of coffee and slightly burnt toast.
Mike washes that thought away with a sip of his mimosa. It doesn’t help to think about things like that.
“It’s good. The...breakfast. It’s good.”
Mike can feel Harvey’s eyes on him but he refuses to turn his head, takes another bite instead and steadfastly keeps his eyes on the TV screen, where Papa Smurf is passing by.
“I’m glad you like it.”
+
Mike offers to do the dishes after breakfast, after Santa shows up on his float and marks the end of the parade. Harvey lets him, works alongside him in the kitchen, doing prep work for dinner, dipping his hands into the stuffing to mix it up. The turkey has just been put into the oven, Mike’s hands are dunked into a sink full of soapy water, and Etta James plays softly in the background.
It’s the closest Mike’s felt to home in a while.
It’s easy to put Harvey in a box, Mike knows that. It is, after all, an intentional box, one Harvey created himself to project a certain image onto the world of a man completely in control, a man who can do anything, a man in expensive three piece suits and perfectly coiffed hair who knows how to get anyone to say yes. And he’s convinced nearly everyone that that’s the man he is. That even when he goes home at night, it’s the man he stays. But Mike knows better. And it’s not because he’s more observant, or because he’s smarter. It’s because Harvey allows him to know better.
It’s all Harvey’s choice who he lets in. And Mike has somehow earned that.
He drains the water from the sink, rinses the soap suds out until the last trail of suds goes sliding down the drain. He wipes his hands off on a dish towel then stands there, holding the towel. He realizes he doesn’t know the protocol here. Does Harvey need his help? Does he even want it?
“Uh...is there anything I can do?”
Harvey looks over his shoulder at him, nods toward a bowl on the countertop. “You can peel the potatoes.” He nods down at the drawer to the right of his hip. “Peeler’s in that drawer.”
Mike sets aside the dishtowel gratefully, slides forward and opens the drawer, scanning the contents of the drawer for a moment until he finds the peeler. Harvey shifts next to him and it brings their biceps together for a few moments, a few precious moments of heat that linger when Harvey’s arms shift again as he mixes the stuffing.
Harvey owns a peeler. He makes stuffing. He wears an apron in the kitchen. He likes giant parade balloons. This shouldn’t be the same guy who says shit like, “Don’t play the odds, play the man,” and who drives around in whichever classic car strikes his fancy that day, but it is and somehow that fits, somehow that makes way more sense than it should.
A huff of a laugh falls from Mike’s lips before he can stop it, and Harvey looks over at him, a little quizzically.
“Mike?”
“I’m good. It’s...I’m good.”
Harvey nods, slowly. “I’m glad.”
Mike motions toward the potatoes in the bowl in front of him. “Do you have another bowl? For the peels?”
Harvey looks at him a moment. “Behind you.”
Mike spins, opens the cabinet door to find a stack of bowls within. He pulls out a medium size and grabs the other bowl, sets them both on top of the breakfast bar and sits down on the stool in front of Harvey. Harvey’s still watching him carefully, as if he can’t quite figure out what’s going on with Mike, as if there’s something he’s just missing. Mike picks up the first potato and begins scraping away at it with the peeler.
“Leave some of the skin on.” Mike stops, looks up. Harvey’s looking at him intently. “Trust me.”
After a second, Mike nods. “Yeah, okay.”
They’re silent for a while, Mike peeling his potatoes, Harvey adding things to his stuffing, Etta singing softly in the background. Mike desperately wants to keep this moment.
This day is precious, it’s a rarity. And he wonders, if he tried to keep this moment, this day in his memory now, if he catalogued every little detail to the best of his ability, how long could he keep it before small pieces of it start to slip away? A few days? A few weeks? How long until the details become muddied? Before he confuses one detail with another? Mike’s brain is pretty incredible, but it’s not perfect.
Suddenly that seems like less than enough.
+
After they finish the prep work, they turn the game on. The volume is turned down, because neither of them care what the announcers have to say, and Mike is slumped back in the cushions, nursing the glass of wine Harvey poured him ten minutes ago. He feels warm and happy, ankles crossed and resting on Harvey’s coffee table, Harvey close enough to feel the warmth of his body. He only wishes Grammy were here, that she’d been able to spend this Thanksgiving with them, that she’d gotten to know Harvey a little better.
Mike thinks they all deserved that.
“I thought you were calling me over to do work.”
He looks over at Harvey. Harvey meets his eye, takes a sip of his wine.
“It’s Thanksgiving, Mike.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
Mike’s eyes drift over to the TV, and he watches as Aaron Rodgers drops back and throws a completion to James Jones, watches Jones run out of bounds just past the first down marker.
“My mom hated football. On Thanksgiving she made my dad go out to the garage to watch it so she could watch Miracle on 34th Street. She always put it on after the parade ended, while she was cooking. It was her favorite movie, but she only let herself watch it when Thanksgiving day came around. Later, after she was gone and it was just me and Grammy, we kept up the tradition. But you couldn’t see the TV from her kitchen, so we always waited until the meal was done and we sat down to eat.”
Mike takes a sip of his wine, shifts his eyes to watch Harvey when he lifts himself off the couch and approaches the TV, slipping a DVD out of a case and into the player. Harvey walks back to the couch, sinks back down a little closer to Mike, and presses play when the Miracle on 34th Street menu pops up. He sets the remote down on the couch between them.
“Harvey, you don’t have to do that.”
Harvey tilts his head to look at Mike. “Your family isn’t the only one with that tradition. My dad watched Miracle on 34th Street every year after the parade too. He couldn’t cook for shit, though.”
Mike smiles.
The phone rings and Harvey glances toward the phone then stands, walking across the room to pick it up. Mike watches him go, takes another sip of his wine.
“Hello? Hey, Marcus. Yeah, Happy Thanksgiving to you too.”
Harvey laughs softly at something Marcus says then meets Mike’s eyes with his.
“Yeah...don’t I always?” Harvey laughs again, louder, more familiar, and it makes Mike smile. Harvey smiles back at him, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yeah, yeah...you too.”
The conversation goes on for a little while, and Mike turns his head away and tunes him out, lets Harvey become background noise as he watches the movie. He sinks into the comfort of it, scratches softly at his belly under his shirt, sinks into the couch even further if possible. A few minutes later Harvey drops back down on the couch next to him, nudging Mike’s thigh with his when he crosses his legs.
“Marcus says Happy Thanksgiving.”
Mike looks at him. “You told your brother about me?”
“Of course I did.” Harvey looks over and says, “Don’t worry, I made sure to tell him how pretty you are. And how big your brain is.”
Mike rolls his eyes, pushes his head back into the couch cushion as he turns his attention back to the movie.
“So is he stopping by?”
Harvey doesn’t respond right away so Mike’s eyes drift over to him, only to find Harvey watching him. Mike just blinks, waits for Harvey to respond. He finally does, says, “No. Marcus is on the other side of the country, in California. He’s having Thanksgiving with friends.”
“Sorry.” Harvey waves him off and Mike laughs, a little self-consciously. “I guess that makes me replacement Marcus.”
Harvey’s voice is firm, unyielding. “No. It doesn’t.”
When he gets up from the couch and walks away toward the kitchen, Mike watches the back of him until he disappears from view, then sinks down into the couch, wondering how he managed to stick his foot in his mouth so badly.
+
“I’m sorry.” Harvey looks up at him. “I didn’t mean to suggest that I have the same place in your life as your brother, that’s presumptuous. I know we’re just two friends, spending a holiday together. It sucks to be alone on a holiday. I think we both know that.”
Somehow that seems to make things worse, and Harvey sets his knife down and says, “Friends. Loneliness. Is that really what you think this is?”
Mike is a little taken aback. He seems to be getting pretty good at this digging a hole thing without even realizing he’s doing it. He doesn’t know what Harvey wants him to say. He doesn’t know what Harvey wants, and it’s frustrating. Mike knows he can’t claim to be Harvey’s friend in the office, but here, now, today...that should be allowed. If he’s not Harvey’s friend today, who is he? If this isn’t two friends spending the holiday together, then what is this?
“If it were just about loneliness, Mike, I could pick someone up and be done with it. Thanksgiving is for family, not one night stands.”
Mike stops. “Family.”
“Family.”
He swallows. “But I’m not your brother.”
Harvey’s voice is soft, firm. “No. You’re not my brother.”
Oh.
“Oh.”
Mike’s always been good at math.
Harvey’s face softens, and he looks at Mike almost fondly.
“But you never said anything.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Harvey sighs. “It was something you needed to come to on your own.”
He drops down onto a stool. “Harvey, I’ve been attracted to you since we met. You can’t have missed that.”
“I didn’t. And if I hadn’t offered you the job, I probably would have capitalized on that. I would have taken you out, wined you, dined you, then I would have brought you back to my home and taken you apart. Slowly. Thoroughly.” Mike sucks in a breath and Harvey gives him a knowing smile. “But I did offer you the job. And that meant we had to work together. Before I did anything to change our dynamic, I had to be sure it was more than just attraction for you.”
“For me.”
“For you.”
Mike nods, pauses for a moment. “But there were...others.”
“I’ve never claimed to be a monk.” Mike goes to speak and Harvey cuts him off. “None of them mattered. They were one night stands for a reason.”
“They weren’t all one night stands.”
“You mean Zoe.”
Mike nods. He’s never asked Harvey about her before, mostly because he figured Harvey would never tell him. But also because he knew he just couldn’t, that he didn’t want to know how close he was to losing Harvey forever. Donna never gave any specific details, never even really so much as said her name more than once in front of him, but Mike could read between the lines. He could hear what she was telling him: Zoe was different.
“She didn’t fit.”
Mike looks up at him.
“If she had, I would have followed her anywhere. That’s the simple truth. But in the end there was more of a reason for me to stay behind than there was to go.”
Mike nods to himself, accepts the wine refill Harvey graces him with, holding the bowl of the glass in both his hands. It isn’t the right way to hold his wine, he knows that, but he needs something to do with his hands to ground himself. Harvey is so open right now, so relaxed in a way Mike’s never seen him be, and it’s tilting Mike’s axis.
Harvey is everything Mike’s wanted, and nothing he’s ever known how to ask for. He’d never have hoped for this, never have hoped for Harvey, and yet here he is, here they are.
So Mike figures Harvey deserves the truth too.
“Rachel wanted to move in together. I said yes, and we started looking for a place, but I wasn’t as excited as I should have been. It was easy to find something wrong with every place she found. And then she found out she got into Stanford and she asked me to go with her, and I think we both knew I was going to say no, because she didn’t seem all that surprised.”
“I’m sorry.”
Mike smirks. “No, you’re not. But it’s fine, I get it. You’ve never liked Rachel.”
Harvey shakes his head. “I don’t care about Rachel Zane one way or the other. She rarely enters my mind, except when she’s doing work I need for a client.”
“You just thought she was all wrong for me.”
“I did. I also knew that was a conclusion you’d come to yourself, given enough time.”
“And you were willing to wait.”
Harvey leans up against the counter. “You know what they say. Patience is a virtue.”
Mike’s laugh is loud, bright. Harvey’s answering grin sparks something low in his belly.
“Definitely words I never thought I’d hear you say.”
Harvey leans in. “Some things are more than worth the wait.”
A timer goes off and Harvey backs off with a smile, turning to pull the boiling potatoes off the stove. Mike takes a sip of his wine, lets his eyes drift down to Harvey’s ass as he bends to grab something out of the vegetable drawer in the fridge. Harvey looks over his shoulder, catches him with a knowing smirk, and Mike just grins back.
+
Dinner’s amazing.
The turkey’s perfect - everything’s perfect - and Mike eats way, way too much, which is pretty much par for the course. Grammy made a hell of a meal too.
He groans, sets his plate down on the coffee table with a clatter, and leans back into the couch, rubbing at his belly with his hand.
“I told you going back for more stuffing a third time might be a poor choice.”
“Ugh.” Mike goes boneless, lets his head drop to the side to look at Harvey. “But it was so good.”
“I’m glad you liked it.”
Harvey cuts off a small piece of cranberry sauce with the edge of his fork, spears it, then spears a piece of turkey. Mike follows the path of the fork into Harvey’s mouth with his eyes, watches his jaw work as he chews slowly, watches his Adam’s apple as he swallows.
Fuck.
Mike stands, takes Harvey’s plate in his hand and sets it down on the coffee table before climbing onto the couch on his knees, straddling Harvey’s lap. Harvey tilts his head back, looks up at him, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips. Mike leans in, his hands braced on the cushion behind Harvey’s head and stops, a breath away from Harvey’s lips. He exhales. Harvey rests his hands on Mike’s thighs, squeezes gently.
“Thank you.”
Mike doesn’t even know what he’s thanking him for, not really. There are too many things to choose from. His job, his life, this day. Harvey himself.
“My pleasure.”
Mike finally closes the distance, puts his whole body behind the kiss.
Everything. Harvey’s done everything for him.
Harvey pulls back, thumbs at the corner of Mike’s mouth. Mike is breathing heavy, and he kisses the pad of Harvey’s thumb.
“I made pie too. Pumpkin. And apple.”
“Fuck.” Mike’s eyes roll back and he leans in and kisses Harvey hard, once, before he pulls back. “I’m totally keeping you.”
Harvey laughs into the kiss, wraps his arms around Mike’s back and flips them, stretching Mike out on the couch.
+
It’s close to midnight when they finally cut into the pie.
Mike sits on the counter, pokes at Harvey’s bare back with his toes while Harvey makes the whipped cream. Harvey starts the stand mixer and then reaches out, grabs Mike’s ankle, and pulls him up to the edge of the counter. Mike laughs and Harvey kisses him, slides a hand up Mike’s back, under his shirt.
The pie is really fucking good.
Harvey’s mouth - tasting of pumpkin, whipped cream, and apple with just the faintest hint of cinnamon and nutmeg - is even better.