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FILL: Consequential Damages (4/?)

[iscaris]

Mike takes a cab, gets stuck in traffic and finally arrives at the office at forty-two minutes past eight. He gets weird looks as he literally sprints through the corridors to Harvey’s office. Donna, thankfully, is away from her desk, and Mike rushes into Harvey’s office without knocking.

“Harvey, I am so, so, so sorry,” Mike blurts out, panting, his hands held out in front of him in a bracing gesture. “I overslept and then there were all these cars on the road and please don’t kill me but I haven’t finished reading Halters versus Tomlinson yet, I swear I will get it done in an hour, just give me one hour and I’ll have it done-”

Harvey holds up a hand. Mike stops in mid-babble.

“You’re wearing the same clothes as yesterday,” Harvey says, narrowing his eyes at Mike. “You didn’t go home, and you didn’t spend the night in the office.” Another pause. “You were with someone, weren’t you?”

“What? No, I mean, yes, um, maybe, uh, but that’s not-”

“Any of my business,” Harvey cuts in. “I don’t give a damn if you were getting some last night, Mike, I really don’t. But this is not college-whatever part of it you did attend-where you can just play hooky whenever you’re too sore to get out of bed the next morning. When I tell you that I want something on my desk by the time I get in, that’s exactly what I expect to see when I walk into my office. Is that clear?”

Harvey’s words are like a punch to the gut. Mike opens his mouth but no words come out, and he mimes a goldfish for a few seconds before he finally manages, “Okay. Absolutely clear. Harvey, I’m really sorry. I promise this won’t ever happen again.”

“Get out and finish Halters v. Tomlinson. I have a conference call at ten o’clock. I want it ready by half past nine.”

Mike leaves Harvey’s office hanging his head. He feels awful. He let Harvey down, just when he knew Harvey was on edge about closing this settlement. He deserves getting told off-even though that college line was a little below the belt, even for Harvey-but what lingers longest at the fringes of Mike’s mind, even as he feverishly scans page after page of Halters v. Tomlinson, is what Harvey said about not giving a damn who Mike is sleeping with.

Harvey didn’t even care.

* * *

Mike calls Simon-who turns out to be a hedge fund manager in the top investment firm on Wall Street-and after drinks they end up going back to Simon’s apartment again. Soon it becomes a thing, and over the next few weeks Mike spends more nights in Simon’s bed than in his own.

Exactly one month from the day they met, Simon sends Mike twenty pink roses, each petal edged with dark red swirls. The women in the office take turns fawning over them; apparently they’re exotic roses only grown in one place in South America or something. Even Jessica raises an eyebrow when she passes by one morning, and Rachel and Donna walk past several times a day to harass Mike endlessly about who sent them.

Harvey says nothing. He doesn’t even look at the roses when he comes over to Mike’s cubicle.

One week later Simon fucks Mike without a condom. It just happens one night when Simon’s had too much to drink, and he pushes Mike down and just thrusts into him, and after that he acts as if they’ve agreed to stop using protection from that time on.

Mike almost brings it up, except before he can say anything Simon takes him to dinner at a restaurant that Mike knows is always fully booked three months in advance (he knows this because Harvey still somehow manages to get reservations in a week or less). Over dinner, Simon gives Mike a key to his apartment and tells him, seriously, “because I just want to come home at the end of the day and see you waiting there for me,” and Mike can only nod and smile and take the key.

The next Saturday night Simon coaxes Mike to do cocaine when they have sex. Mike doesn’t want to, but Simon doesn’t exactly give him an option. They do it again the weekend after, and Simon holds him down hard enough to leave bruises on his arms and thighs. Mike feels a wave of guilt whenever he thinks of Harvey, of how he promised him not to get high anymore-and each time Simon cuts two neat rails of coke on the glass table, Mike feels like the fake, the failure that he knows he really is.