[suitsbigbang fic]: Chicken Soup for the Cursed Soul - NC-17 - 2/3
BACK TO MASTERPOST!
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Chapter Two: Bullseye Patterned Skinny Tie
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By the time they returned to Pearson Hardman, all the confusion over Gale Tempest's behavior had been put to bed. Instead, Harvey and his associate were embroiled in a heated debate over whether the new Captain Kirk was a match for the old, but Mike knew he would be heading right back to the doghouse as soon as he saw the grimace Hank had for him.
“What’s wrong?” Mike asked with a frown. The security guard declined an answer in favor of pointing upstairs, which did nothing to dispel Mike's worry in the slightest. Harvey was now glowering at him, too. The look wordlessly managed to convey that he disliked his associate’s penchant for finding trouble worthy of a swift rescue.
“Come along,” the older man directed him, calling Mike into the elevators with a wriggled finger, which he grudgingly submitted to, his shoulders already slumped in preparation. He barely listened to the ping of floors being ascended and dragged his feet to Harvey's office, then froze when an arm was thrown around him. It pulled him into a warm half-hug that lasted until Harvey cleared his throat, at which point his assailant released him.
“Dean,” Mike said, as he eyeballed the black suit his cousin currently wore, which looked like it belonged on the discount rack of a prom and funeral store, its sleeves slightly too short and the jacket too big. Behind him, attired in the same outfit in a larger size and precariously not leaning against Donna’s desk, was Sam, who smiled at Mike nervously.
“Mikey,” Dean replied, shit-eating grin tailor-made for him, as opposed to his clothes. “I was just gettin’ to know Donna over here.” He spanned an arm out to point at the nameplate on her desk, a gift from Harvey that was inlaid in gold. “You never told me you had such pretty friends.”
Mike immediately paled several shades, his knuckles white around the files he still held. Sam seemed slightly more attuned to his borderline panic than Dean, but Donna merely laughed - practically giggled, even, which served to scare Mike that much more.
“I must say, the tramp is rather charming,” she admitted, a fiery strand of hair curled around her finger, a click resounding every time her pointed nail-tips made contact, “but what’s more adorable is that the puppy’s puppy thinks it can pick me up.” She shot Mike a scolding look, as if he was the one with the death wish, and he barely withheld a whimper.
Harvey had kept silent while they bantered, but when the tingling of his Mike-senses went haywire, he smiled tersely and crossed his arms. “Despite how enthralled I am with this rapport, may I inquire as to the identity of these gentlemen, Mike? More trouble of the Trevor variety, perhaps, or are you engaging in a ménage-ἁ-trois now?”
“No!” Mike exclaimed. He blushed furiously and ignored Dean’s juvenile chuckle. Jokes about sex and bodily functions always did amuse his oldest cousin.
Sam decided to take mercy on him and clarified, “Uh, hi. I’m Sam Winchester and this is my brother, Dean-” He gave said brother a subduing look that easily read Dean, behave, then ran a hand through his hair when Dean snubbed him in favor of waggling his eyebrows at Donna. “We’re Mike’s cousins,” he finished lamely, diverted by the vexing sight.
Hoping he wouldn’t be mad, that he might even be understanding, Mike roved optimistic eyes to his boss. They drooped in relief after he perceived that Harvey had slackened his shoulders, no longer in alpha dog mode.
“I should have guessed,” Harvey said, smirk firmly in place, his taunting, supercilious tone back with a vengeance. “Those cheap suits give away the resemblance, don’t they, Donna?”
“I’m booking a suite for the Ross family reunion as we speak,” she replied, blasé. It was almost worse than Harvey’s blunt jab. Almost.
“Haha,” Mike returned weakly, a contrast to how Dean puffed up, his handsome face a mask of righteous pique, a saint forced into the company of Illuminati.
“I’ll have you know, we spent a hundred bucks on these. Each,” he declared, plucking at a button on his wrist.
Harvey and Donna exchanged another look, no doubt derisively crooning over how cute they found the whole situation. “That’s nice,” Harvey drawled, upon breaking eye-contact.
“We’re going to lunch,” Mike said, selectively blind to his sarcasm. Although his cousins - well, to be fair, although Dean - didn’t exactly fit into the mold of this environment, maybe even more so than Mike himself was an outcast, he was delighted that they’d remembered to visit. A part of him had honestly feared they would hit the road again, gone for another lifetime. “Do you wanna come with us, Harvey?”
His boss stilled, apparently thrown by the imploring inquiry, not quite shy of an outright request, but said, “I’d like to see you in my office, Mike.”
“U-um, okay,” Mike replied. He documented the way Harvey’s eyes found his secretary’s again, more meaningful this time, and how she clicked off the intercom that connected their desks as a result. It implied the need for subterfuge. Mike swallowed with some difficulty, saliva thick in his throat, then conjured up an assuring smile for his cousins, permitting it to melt off only after they were out of hearing range. “If I wasn’t supposed to have them here-”
Harvey shut the door behind them and interrupted, “I thought you had no family but your grandmother?” His voice dropped low and took on an accusatory edge. Mike gnawed on his lip to ponder the answer.
“I… Well, I guess I can’t say that they’re not my family, because they are, but they haven’t always been.” His vague explanation earned him a incensed glare, similar to that of an owner of a pet that had just piddled on the carpet, so he gave Harvey the abridged account of all that had happened: first meeting the Winchesters when his parents died, not seeing them post Sam’s departure for Stanford, how they'd manhandled their way back into his life without warning. Instead of being appreciative or even apathetic to the revelations, his boss seemed to get more and more agitated, his quick swivel toward the outer windows hinting at an urge to pace his quarters. “Are you mad?” Mike asked, already resigned to a yes.
Harvey stopped fretting and scanned his eyes over his associate, painstakingly slow. “Mike, why are they here now? Do they want something from you? Money? A kidney?”
“Oh,” Mike said, taken by surprise. He might have felt offended by the roundabout insinuations, had he not accepted by now that this was Harvey acting concerned - his way of caring. A hot burst of affection gushed through him, accentuated by an exuberant smile that worked to weaken the older man's resolve. “You don’t have to worry about me, Harvey. I’ll be okay, I promise. I won't mess up anymore.”
Harvey's lips pressed together, his familiar, grim way of forming Mike's name during a rebuke, but Mike didn’t really want to hear what he had to say: that the only thing he cared about was not having to hold more interviews, that his associate was a naïve moron, any variation of the words Mike sorely didn’t want to believe. “You’ll come to lunch with us, won’t you?” he persisted, purposefully obtuse.
“I have too much to do,” Harvey replied. His rejection was expressed kindly, without the affection of outright contemptuousness. “You enjoy your day with Impala man and the giant. At least I’m confident in their taste for cars, if nothing else. Late sixties, early seventies, I’m guessing? Good era for the Chevy.”
“I-Impala man, Harvey? Really?” Mike asked, baffled, until he remembered that his cousins had dropped him off that morning. Harvey must have seen out his window. After all, Harvey was the king of reading people, but you couldn’t do that if you weren’t constantly aware of your surroundings. Harvey would make a great ninja, if lawyering somehow didn’t work out. “How do you know 'the giant', as you put it, isn't the driver?”
A snort resounded, as if the idea was absolutely ridiculous. “Chewbacca never pilots.” Although Harvey would never stoop to it, the reply was reminiscent of duh. He chased Mike out with, “You have thirty minutes. I need that Spellman brief on my desk the second you get back,” before he could think up an adequately clever quip, transforming from a fellow nerd to Mike's demanding superior in a blurring instant.
“Thirty minutes?” Dean, who had only heard the tail end of the conversation, cried.
Mike jogged forward and took him by the arm to prevent him from any further argument. “Have you met Rachel, Dean? You'd like Rachel,” he said, in an obvious attempt to distract his cousin, which luckily prevailed.
“Rachel,” Dean repeated, spritzing up, “sounds like a hot chick name.”
“The hottest,” Mike intoned solemnly. He sent a mental apology to his friend, whom he knew would vehemently protest being objectified, but it was for a good cause. With a last smile goodbye to Donna and his boss, he nodded to Sam, glad that his cousin got the clue and shoved away from his corner, his massive shadow casting over them.
Mike half-hoped that Rachel was off running errands for another associate or partner, so he wouldn’t end up suffering her wrath so disturbingly close to Donna’s, a tropical storm after a hurricane. When they turned around a corner, though, there she was, a devil in Prada. She surveyed the triad of men with barely concealed antipathy, plush lips twisted.
“Who’re your friends, Mike?” she inquired.
Before Mike could explicate, Dean jumped in, “You must be Rachel. Mikey’s told me all about you, sweetheart.”
“Really now?” she said, a neatly plucked eyebrow arched in her friend’s direction. She smiled curtly when Mike failed to look anything but sheepish, unable to meet her gaze.
“Oh yeah,” Dean continued, debonair as ever. “Most beautiful girl in the office, he told me. Didn’t say that you’d take my breath away, though, Miss Rachel.”
As he spoke, her dark eyes continued to build like a storm, ash in an imminently erupting volcano, but it was with a clipped tone that she said, “It’s so sad when something so good looking is so stupid. Mike, remove your frat buddies from the office before I remove something vital of theirs.” The audible clatter of her stilettos echoed through the hall before anyone could muster up a reply.
“I hate that I’m always blacklisted with you,” Sam grumbled, after a minute of staring at the previously occupied, now empty, space that Rachel had left behind.
Dean pouted and gave off the aura of someone betrayed. “There’s something wrong with your office, man. Everyone’s hot, but evil. Only the awkward, curly-haired blond kid gave me the awe that I obviously deserve.”
“Not exactly,” Mike muttered. He chuckled feebly and thought of Louis. Thank God the junior partner and his lapdog associates - aside from Harold, apparently, but he was a nice guy, for all his gracelessness - weren’t around or this uncomfortable situation might have spiraled worse, if at all possible. Rather than dwell on it, Mike said, “I’m really glad you guys came. Did you wear the suits for the office?”
The brothers traded a quick glance and Sam smiled. “Yeah, sure. We knew they probably wouldn’t approve of our dress-code, so we scrounged these up. They got us through the door, at least.”
Mike beamed again, elated that they’d put forth the effort for him. In the office, he’d been so concerned over Harvey’s approval that he hadn’t gotten a good look, but Dean had always been a heart-breaker and Sam had grown into his gangly frame as well. Both of them could easily pass for male models even in the cheapest of materials. If they’d been anywhere but Pearson Hardman, Mike would never have gotten such grief over their appearance and he had to acknowledge, somewhat resentfully, that they’d look the part of hotshot lawyer better than him with a modicum of fashion help from someone like René. At any rate, the tailor wouldn’t cringe at the very sight of them, as he'd done when Harvey introduced Mike to him.
“So, where are we going?” Mike asked, brushing those thoughts away, ineffectual as the imaginary lint he continually feared would dust over him - for Harvey's sake more than his own.
Dean threw an arm across his cousin’s back, reaching up a bit higher to entrap Sam’s the same way, and said, “We found this awesome diner a few blocks from here. The pie’s supposed to be legendary.” He started forward and they jerked along like dogs on a leash with him, till he carelessly added, “It’s probably good boss-man ain’t joining us, Mikey. Posh guy like him wouldn’t dig anything that didn’t have Chez in its name.”
“Dean,” Mike objected, bristling, “you don’t know Harvey like I do. He’s…he's a good guy. My lunch break is only fifteen minutes long, but he gave me double that, so I could spend more time with you. You don’t know him.”
Dean appeared ready to retort, but Sam gave him a warning look and said, “You’re right, we don’t know too much. You could tell us, Mike. We want to know.”
Mike attempted to summon a suitable reply, but settled for a whispered, “Thanks, Sammy,” and smiled down at his shoes, unanticipated affection coursing through him and confirming that he was right to trust them. They were family. “I, uh, think you know most everything, though,” he went on self-consciously. “I kinda blabbered on and on last night.”
“Indulge us,” Sam insisted, as the three of them entered an elevator together, unaware of how they drew the eyes of passersby.
Mike racked his brain for a scenario that would satisfy the Winchesters and fulfill the request, while not divulging his secret. He wasn’t quite ready to share that yet. However, he blanked, let his heart take the wheel, and gushed about Harvey till they touched down on the ground floor again. “And, do you know, they call him the best closer in the city? If you make it here, you can make it anywhere!”
“Jesus, kid, you have got it so bad,” Dean said. He determinedly focused on his ribbing more than Hank the security guard’s vies for their attention, no doubt to enact yet another safety measure on the Winchesters, until the man gave up and waved them through. “Anything else I should know, aside from how my baby cousin wants to have hot monkey sex with that empty suit upstairs?”
Mike felt the telltale burn of a blush on his ears and was thankful for the cool New York breeze that soothed his inflamed face. He scowled when he felt Sam’s elbow rib into his side. “Sorry,” his cousin said, chastened. “I was aiming for Mr. Congeniality over there.”
“Oh, as if, out of the two of us, I’m more like Sandra Bullock. Sure, Sammy, whatever helps you sleep at night,” Dean scoffed.
Before the jokes could become full on bickering, Mike pulled himself away from them and said, “There are a few more things you should know, now that you mention it.” He grinned when they both shut up to attend to him. “My coworkers will easily kick your ass if you try the Casanova act in there again, Dean. And I’d really prefer if you didn’t call me Mikey. It diminishes my professional credibility.”
Dean worked his jaw for a minute, gaping amid the two younger men, but devolved into an exclaimed, “What is it with you snobby law-school types and nicknames? Can’t a man show his love without gettin’ bitched at for it?”
Mike’s smile stretched till his cheeks hurt and he purposefully directed his next question to Sam. “Where’d you say that diner was again?”
They chorused a snicker at Dean’s groan of dismay.
Exactly twenty five minutes later, Mike had a sense of deja-vu, watching from the backseat window as his eldest cousin sidled up to the curb facing Pearson Hardman again. He opened the Impala’s back door and stepped out, then propped his elbows up on the glass until he could see the Winchesters properly.
“I had fun today,” he told them.
He was unsurprised by Dean’s pressing need to tack on, “Maybe if Daddy lets you, we could do it again sometime, Princess.”
“Shut up, Dean,” Sam said in lieu of him, actually in a position to sweep out and punch his brother’s arm, this time.
Mike shook his head at their antics, then picked up where he left off, “All we did was talk about me, though. Can’t you even tell me if your job went well?”
“It was fine,” Dean said. When he saw the desperate, hungry inquisitiveness that Mike couldn’t quite rein in, he grudgingly continued, “We’re half done. Did the grunt work - the research, I guess you could say - today, but still have to implement it.”
Mike tried vainly to figure out what, exactly, they’d been up to, but his big brain didn’t always come in handy, unfortunately. “I could help you with research,” he finally mumbled, receding from the Impala’s body enough for them to pull away, if they wanted to.
“We know you could,” Sam said. Mike wasn’t sure whether he was being honest or patronizing. “We…we don’t need that, though. As long as it can be avoided, we’ll let you live your life. You’re going to make an amazing lawyer.”
“What does that even mean?” Mike wanted to persist. He held it back only by biting his tongue. “Okay. Good luck, then,” he answered crisply.
“Thanks, Mikey!” Dean replied, in a singsong voice that implied he remembered what Mike had said about the nickname and was purposefully disregarding it, just as he was Mike’s sulk.
Mike rolled his eyes, but he was unable to help the twitch of his mouth. He waved goodbye and unenthusiastically wondered why they sped off in the direction opposite his apartment. He supposed they had more to finish up - or, even worse, that they would skip town again.
Oh well. He had work to do - the Spellman briefs wouldn’t proof themselves, after all - and he couldn’t kill time being paranoid about their intentions, not when he couldn’t figure them out in a million years.
He was only certain of one thing: Harvey was waiting.
-
By the time Mike reached home again, the sun had already set, abandoning the sky to a cobalt blanket of stars that might have been beautiful, had he not been physically and mentally exhausted. Not only had he read through all eighty pages of the documentation Harvey needed, but Louis had strutted in near their culmination to hand him the paperwork to a multimillion dollar lawsuit. He honestly hated being Pearson Hardman’s free-for-all sometimes.
He’d been looking forward to coming home, ordering a pizza and possibly popping in one of the bootlegged DVDs he had. In fact, his collection was pretty vast. It spanned from bawdy comedies, superhero films like The Dark Knight, every Star Wars and almost every Star Trek, which he knew at least Dean would wholeheartedly appreciate. After he chained his bike to its rack, however, he found that the Impala wasn’t parked anywhere on the street.
Unlocking his apartment confirmed his fears: his cousins weren’t back yet, were perhaps not coming back at all, but what could he do about it? They were grown men who were perfectly capable of making their own decisions. If that decision was to ditch Mike for another decade to a dozen years, so be it.
He told himself he was okay, the farthest thing from bitter, but when he stripped off his suit, kicked his discarded pile of clothes away from him in a way that would blaspheme Harvey, and stepped into the shower, he acknowledged that it wasn’t just shampoo that made his eyes burn.
He went to bed before he was completely dry and shivered beneath the cool sheets, his appetite lost. Eventually, he fell into an uneasy slumber, beset by nightmares of monster jaws, blood and fire. Nevertheless, none of the dead faces, their eyes wide and mouths cavernous, belonged to his parents. He counted that as the paragon of small mercies.
An indeterminate period of hours later, frenzied knocks on his apartment door freed him of even that. “Who...?” Mike mumbled to himself, squinting at the red numbers his alarm clock displayed. It was a few minutes short of three in the morning.
He heard more bangs and, “Mikey!” a muffled, interspersed cry among the cacophony, then jolted upright and rushed to unbolt his locks.
“D-Dean, what-?” he began to say, but broke off in an, “Umph,” when Sam stumbled at the doorway and fell bodily into him. His hands immediately came up to steady the older man, but Dean was already pulling at Sam’s elbow. He settled his younger brother’s arm around his own shoulders and pushed Mike further inside.
“What’s going on?” Mike asked again, a successful clarification of his question this time. Dean ignored him to bundle Sam onto the couch's futon and slap its messy sheets to the floor, but Mike froze once he realized his own hand was wet. He’d used it to help balance Sam and now blood dripped, wet and slick, from his fingertips. His gaze fixed onto his cousins.
They had changed out of their ridiculous suits, back into what Grammy referred to as the Winchesters’ lumberjack garb. Sam was now propped up against the guest futon's head, a thick splotch of blood blossoming on the lower-right shank of his white shirt, his large hand hovering hesitantly over the wound.
His eyes were the worst, though - wide as the zombies' in Mike's dream, they stared down blankly at his brother's bobbing head, as Dean pushed the torn shirt up to asses the damage and exposed five straight lines, thick enough to be a bear claw's scratch. “Mikey, couldja get your first aid kit?” the eldest Winchester inquired, wary with fatigue.
“W-what happened?” Mike stammered, rooted firmly in place.
Dean's eyes flicked to him, twin chips of emerald, jagged and icy. “Move, dammit!” he barked, which spurred Mike into action.
He hurried out of the room, but stopped in the hall just outside. He hadn't used his first aid kit in ages - not since the time he and Trevor, while high, had decided it would be epic to enact a ninja battle with Mike's kitchen utensils - and it took him a second to recall where he'd last put it. Dean's sharp tone stuck with him, reverberated in his head with too many other thoughts. Since the first moment they met, he'd never been anything but genial to Mike, his snark aside. He'd always treated Mike the way a big brother would.
Eyes screwed shut, Mike released a pent up breath of relief at the images that flashed behind his lids: a small wooden cabinet that the person who'd owned his apartment prior to him had built, the feel of his toilet seat beneath bare feet when he climbed atop it, how he didn't have to reach very far to touch metal handles. Bathroom. It was in his bathroom.
Mike sprinted the rest of the way to his destination and clambered to obtain the first aid kit, sneezing when the particles of dust coating it, in the indent the red plus made, tickled his nose. He then headed back to his living room. Sam seemed calmer now, Mike was allayed to find. The hand that wasn't putting pressure on his wound instead squeezed his brother's.
It was such an intimate moment that Mike felt voyeuristic and didn't want to interrupt, but the lines of pain marring both his cousins' faces left him no choice, so he meekly said, “Um, here it is, Dean.” He stepped scarcely close enough to hand his first aid kit to the older man, before he drew back back, still ready in case Dean needed help.
Soon, however, it became evident that his precaution was unnecessary. Mike watched Dean snap the kit open with precise, practiced motions. The eldest Winchester removed disinfectant and bandages from it that he gently applied to Sam's abdomen, murmuring quietly to him all the while, everything from, “Knew you weren't ready yet,” to, “It's okay, Sammy, it's okay.”
“Just a flesh wound,” Sam mumbled back to him. His eyelids drooped slightly.
“Yeah,” Dean said, but his smile was sad. He unwound himself from his crouch and settled his palms onto his younger brother's biceps, to force Sam flat against the mattress. Then, he picked up the cast off blanket and draped it over Sam, who made a childish snuffle of a sound. “Sleep it off, Sammy. You need it.”
Only after it was apparent that the tall man was lost in slumber, Mike asked, “Will he be all right?” and wrung his hands together. Dried blood had worked its way between the lifelines on them, he noticed with disgusted horror. As soon as he got the okay, he would hold them under searing hot water till they were clean again, till the gore was burned off. For now, he just had to swallow back the bile that rose in his throat for as long as possible.
Dean finally looked at him - really looked, rather than looking through him, like he'd been doing since Sam had gotten hurt - and nodded his head. “Good as he'll ever be, the big, stupid lug,” he said, a fake grin plastered onto his full lips. It pinched slightly at Mike's responding frown and expelled a sigh. “I am so sorry for how fucking awful we've made these last couple of days, kid.”
“No, it's okay,” Mike said immediately. “I really wish you'd tell me what was going on, though. I'm actually not a kid anymore, you know?”
“I know,” Dean replied with another sigh. “You grew up good. You're a good person, I can tell, and I wish I could tell ya everything, but I couldn't do that to you. Just...trust me, okay? We've been tryin' to help people, that's all.”
“I believe you,” Mike said. The tender way that Dean acted around Sam - the way he used to act around Mike, back when he'd been a traumatized child - stated better than anything else, any government record kept by police or teachers, that Dean wasn't a bad man, either, that he was far from it. Mike wished he could let this go, by virtue of Dean's goodness alone, but it harried him like nothing else did. “Goodnight, I guess.”
He couldn't conceal his irritation well enough, if Dean's guilty expression was anything to go by, and it was most telling that Mike was too weary to care. “Uh, you don't have work tomorrow, do ya? It's your day off, right?” Dean asked, an obvious attempt to get back into his good graces, his dimpled smile charmingly manipulative. At Mike's nod, he went on sheepishly, “It's just that Sammy and I haven't been to see Carol yet. She'd have our asses if we left without dropping by to visit her.”
“She would,” Mike said, smiling in spite of himself. Sure, his grandmother looked small and delicate, but she was rather fierce for her age - had to be, to raise first Mike's father, then Mike, all by herself. “You wanna see her tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yeah...if you want to, of course,” Dean replied. He shifted from foot to booted foot hopefully.
Mike considered him for a minute. He figured, for all the tumult the Winchesters had caused since their arrival, the least Dean could do was squirm. “I always love visiting Grammy,” he ultimately relented, taking pity on his cousin with a huge grin.
“You virgin,” Dean said in response. His hearty chuckle broke off in a yawn. “You should get to bed, kiddo. I'll take the armchair for the night.”
Mike rolled his eyes at the condescending command, but nodded. First, he'd get Dean a blanket, as the sofa would be uncomfortable enough without. Then he would clean up, get to bed and hopefully sleep well for the first time that week. Sunday was his rare day to catch up on his rest, since he had to wake up with the sun for work Monday through Saturday. And he had to admit, he was especially excited to not only spend time with the Winchesters, but also his grandmother, something he hadn't done in ages.
Who knew when he would get another opportunity like that? A lifetime might just be an accurate estimate, in this case. He soon tunneled into his blankets, his smile still unwaveringly engraved into his face. No bad dreams aggrieved him this time and he actually thought he might sleep in till noon, if his cousins permitted him that.
-
In the end, it wasn't up to Dean and Sam at all. They weren't even awake yet when Mike's cellphone began to buzz on his bedside table. He threw his arm over his face and groaned.
It was early. That much was evident from the way the sky that peeked through his blinds was a sanguine color. The menacing device stopped, then began to vibrate again. A quick peek at its tiny screen confirmed that it was about the time he woke up for work.
Mike scowled blearily at it, but then he noticed a second notification - you have four missed calls and two new messages - and that woke him up faster than a spilled bucket of ice water might. With numb fingers, he pressed the number two, which would speed dial Harvey, not even bothering to check his voicemail. He knew his boss would prefer him calling directly, rather than have him dillydally.
“Mike?” Harvey picked up by the second ring. Mike gripped his blankets with white knuckles, startled by the way his name cracked like a whip. Before he could reply, Harvey continued, “Check the papers,” and hung up.
“O-okay,” Mike said, to no one but the dial-tone. He staggered out of bed and trembled at the onset of cold that bowled into him, but only paused long enough to grab a dirty shirt before he was at his desk, lifting the lid of the laptop he'd won from Pearson Hardman's IT guy, Benjamin.
Google's generic homepage popped up and he stared at it for a second, tapping at the keyboard so lightly that nothing happened. Harvey had simply said papers, nothing specific, and he wondered if The New York Times would be okay. Its top story related another tidbit of the Ripper case:
Young Iraqi woman claims to have survived a Ripper attack. “They all said she's a man, but she's old. A hag with no teeth and a cloth sack, so, so ugly. She cut me where my baby is, I felt it, and there's a wound now that wasn't here before. Two big men stopped her at the window when she tried to escape. They killed her and she disappeared,” Neema Malik, twenty seven, told reporter Matthew Cane, quivering and hugging her distended stomach.
The article went on to dissect the woman's allegations. It featured interviews with detectives who said that the Ripper wouldn't jump out of Neema's ten story apartment, which faced Ellis Island and the sea, as well as her disputing doctor who swore Neema really hadn't had her injury prior to the supposed attack. Her husband was particularly distraught by the attempt on his wife's life and the unknown duo of men who had barged into his home to rescue her. No body had been found.
Like most other New Yorkers, Mike was intrigued by this new information, but he doubted Harvey would get swept up in all the speculation, at least not so much that he'd call Mike on a weekend. He thought about asking the man again, but was saved from his possible ire when the second page's title caught his eye. It bemoaned the loss of a talented artist.
He clicked that one and was immediately greeted by a horrifying picture. Without even reading the footer, he knew it was a Tempest painting. The ink black, realistic splotches of blood, and a canine beast revealed that. His eyes tracked over the text under it and he felt his stomach drop. No wonder Harvey had sounded so unnerved; their client was dead.
Rupert Abranksky, famous artist who adopted the pen-name Gale Tempest, was found dead in his townhouse this morning, in front of his final work of art. His secretary, Wendy Godfry, was the first to discover the body and contact police. Early coroner reports suggest Abranksky was mauled by a large animal, but further investigation is required. Police Chief Andrew Lowell gave the statement, “We do not believe that foul play is involved at this time.”
The way the image was set up, Mike thought the creature in it could easily be responsible, but it was unrelated coincidence. The thing looked like a nemesis from one of Resident Evil's games, after all, and wasn't real. Biographies, anecdotes and estimated prices of Tempest’s artwork followed, but Mike closed every window with the click of a button and called Harvey.
“You’ve reached the all-knowing oracle. Unfortunately, I’m helping the Greeks siege Troy again - that Helen was being an uppity diva - so you’ll have to try back later,” Donna’s voice answered, bored. He could imagine that she sat at her desk, filing her nails, and still managed to dominate the office in her usual effortless way.
“Donna?” he asked, which inspired her to do a one-eighty.
“Oh, it’s you. Why aren’t you here yet, rookie? Harvey needed your ass an hour ago,” she said, the impatient click of her nails strained through to him. She was probably tapping them on her desk.
“It hasn’t even been half that since he called me,” Mike replied, an explanation more than an argument. No one with even a fourth of his IQ would ever pull that stunt with Donna.
“Tomato, tomahto,” she responded airily. “Just get here soon. Waving a newspaper at you might cheer him up.”
“Yes, your majesty,” Mike said, a grin tugging at his mouth. “I’ll be there ASAP.” He let her hang up first, because she preferred things that way, and started getting dressed. Unofficial day or not, Harvey would chew him out if he came in with street clothes.
It was only after he’d finished and saw his sleeping cousins in his living room that he recalled his prior engagement, and though he didn’t want to let Harvey down when he needed him, Mike was also dispirited by the thought of missing an outing with the Winchesters. He thought about waking them up, so they could all rationally discuss the situation, but Sam’s large frame was flopped peacefully on the bed, his expression placid, and Mike remembered what he'd said almost twenty four hours ago about his insomnia. He couldn’t be selfish and interrupt his cousin's first tranquil night of sleep in who knows how long.
Instead, he quietly crept into the room and momentarily scrutinized Dean to discover whether his position, with his head thrown back on the arch of a sofa, would give him muscle cramps later. Dean snored avidly, though, and occasionally mumbled something about boobs, which meant he was probably fine. Mike shook his head and grabbed a piece of paper from the notepad he had at the desk by the door. He scribbled a quick message on it: Really sorry. Emergency at work. Visit Grammy w/out me. M.
Then, with a lingering look at his slumbering guests, he forced himself out the door. He had a feeling it would be a long day and the wise thing to do would be to pick up coffee, maybe even some doughnuts, for Harvey and Donna on the way.
Pearson Hardman was empty - almost creepily so, with the majority of its lights turned off - and Mike realized his detour was the right move when Harvey exited the office to meet him. There was nothing outwardly wrong with the man. He was still as immaculately dressed as ever, not a single hair out of place on his head. His fists clenched and unclenched, however, and he was wearing his harassed Harvey suit, the same one he’d appropriated during the fiasco with his former mentor.
“Thanks,” he said to Mike, accepting the coffee his young associate wordlessly handed to him. He waited for Mike to do the same for Donna, who smiled, then beckoned his associate back inside. “You heard about Tempest?”
Mike took a seat at the couch next to his boss and replied, “Yeah, but… What the hell happened, Harvey? He seemed kinda sick when we left him, but the paper said he was mauled. Freaking mauled. You don’t get mauled in New York unless you sneak into a cage in the Central Park Zoo or wear a meat-dress around alleyway mutts.”
“I doubt Tempest did that,” Harvey deadpanned with a smirk. He reached over to hand Mike the same documents from yesterday, Tempest’s will at the top of the pile. “That explains this, at least. He probably knew something was going to happen to him.”
“Maybe the mob put a hit out? If they can leave a decapitated horse head in a man’s bed, they can definitely have something, you know, maul a guy,” Mike said, while he searched the will for more clues, even though he knew it was hopeless. He’d seen everything there was to see already. He could recite it word for word, visualize every last stipulation in his mind's eye.
Harvey frowned at him, his eyebrow cocked haughtily. “If you use that word one more time, I’ll string you up by your ugly tie. You’re smart enough to find diverse synonyms,” he replied. “Besides, not everything you see in The Godfather or The Sopranos, as interesting as they are, is accurate. None of the mobsters I know are all that creative.”
“Y-you know mobsters?” Mike exclaimed, more surprised with himself for being surprised than with Harvey for associating with criminals. Harvey knew Michael Jordan, enough supermodels to fill three magazines, and George Clooney. Of course Harvey had ties in the mafia.
“I digress,” Harvey said. He shook his hand in the air, as if something unsavory had touched it. “Tempest’s ex-wife, Martha, is coming into town for his funeral in a few days. I don’t think their son will be joining her, but she might have some pertinent info.”
“What do you wanna do today, then? Is there paperwork we’ve gotta handle for him?” Mike inquired. The documents he had were nothing new and didn’t require anything else, so far as he could see.
“Well, when the time comes, we have to prepare a presentation of the will for Martha and we can question her then, but I’d rather not wait so long,” Harvey answered. He glowered at a baseball on his desk, seemingly bothered by the very idea of having to be patient. Mike knew he was used to getting whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. His boss didn’t let it plague him for too long, however, and declared, “All we can do, at least for today, is squeeze the first responders at the crime scene for info. It just so happens that Police Chief Lowell owes me a favor.”
“Who doesn’t?” Mike asked, rolling his eyes.
Harvey smirked again. “Just be happy that you don’t need to impersonate a federal agent with me around, puppy. You could learn a thing or two.”
“I’ll bring my notebook,” Mike said, with a breathy, exaggerated air of reverence. He fluttered his eyelashes for good measure and Harvey took a swipe at him from his desk, but missed by a good hand-span.
-
PREVIOUS (CHAP 1) ♥ MASTERPOST ♥ NEXT (CHAP 3)
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Chapter Two: Bullseye Patterned Skinny Tie
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By the time they returned to Pearson Hardman, all the confusion over Gale Tempest's behavior had been put to bed. Instead, Harvey and his associate were embroiled in a heated debate over whether the new Captain Kirk was a match for the old, but Mike knew he would be heading right back to the doghouse as soon as he saw the grimace Hank had for him.
“What’s wrong?” Mike asked with a frown. The security guard declined an answer in favor of pointing upstairs, which did nothing to dispel Mike's worry in the slightest. Harvey was now glowering at him, too. The look wordlessly managed to convey that he disliked his associate’s penchant for finding trouble worthy of a swift rescue.
“Come along,” the older man directed him, calling Mike into the elevators with a wriggled finger, which he grudgingly submitted to, his shoulders already slumped in preparation. He barely listened to the ping of floors being ascended and dragged his feet to Harvey's office, then froze when an arm was thrown around him. It pulled him into a warm half-hug that lasted until Harvey cleared his throat, at which point his assailant released him.
“Dean,” Mike said, as he eyeballed the black suit his cousin currently wore, which looked like it belonged on the discount rack of a prom and funeral store, its sleeves slightly too short and the jacket too big. Behind him, attired in the same outfit in a larger size and precariously not leaning against Donna’s desk, was Sam, who smiled at Mike nervously.
“Mikey,” Dean replied, shit-eating grin tailor-made for him, as opposed to his clothes. “I was just gettin’ to know Donna over here.” He spanned an arm out to point at the nameplate on her desk, a gift from Harvey that was inlaid in gold. “You never told me you had such pretty friends.”
Mike immediately paled several shades, his knuckles white around the files he still held. Sam seemed slightly more attuned to his borderline panic than Dean, but Donna merely laughed - practically giggled, even, which served to scare Mike that much more.
“I must say, the tramp is rather charming,” she admitted, a fiery strand of hair curled around her finger, a click resounding every time her pointed nail-tips made contact, “but what’s more adorable is that the puppy’s puppy thinks it can pick me up.” She shot Mike a scolding look, as if he was the one with the death wish, and he barely withheld a whimper.
Harvey had kept silent while they bantered, but when the tingling of his Mike-senses went haywire, he smiled tersely and crossed his arms. “Despite how enthralled I am with this rapport, may I inquire as to the identity of these gentlemen, Mike? More trouble of the Trevor variety, perhaps, or are you engaging in a ménage-ἁ-trois now?”
“No!” Mike exclaimed. He blushed furiously and ignored Dean’s juvenile chuckle. Jokes about sex and bodily functions always did amuse his oldest cousin.
Sam decided to take mercy on him and clarified, “Uh, hi. I’m Sam Winchester and this is my brother, Dean-” He gave said brother a subduing look that easily read Dean, behave, then ran a hand through his hair when Dean snubbed him in favor of waggling his eyebrows at Donna. “We’re Mike’s cousins,” he finished lamely, diverted by the vexing sight.
Hoping he wouldn’t be mad, that he might even be understanding, Mike roved optimistic eyes to his boss. They drooped in relief after he perceived that Harvey had slackened his shoulders, no longer in alpha dog mode.
“I should have guessed,” Harvey said, smirk firmly in place, his taunting, supercilious tone back with a vengeance. “Those cheap suits give away the resemblance, don’t they, Donna?”
“I’m booking a suite for the Ross family reunion as we speak,” she replied, blasé. It was almost worse than Harvey’s blunt jab. Almost.
“Haha,” Mike returned weakly, a contrast to how Dean puffed up, his handsome face a mask of righteous pique, a saint forced into the company of Illuminati.
“I’ll have you know, we spent a hundred bucks on these. Each,” he declared, plucking at a button on his wrist.
Harvey and Donna exchanged another look, no doubt derisively crooning over how cute they found the whole situation. “That’s nice,” Harvey drawled, upon breaking eye-contact.
“We’re going to lunch,” Mike said, selectively blind to his sarcasm. Although his cousins - well, to be fair, although Dean - didn’t exactly fit into the mold of this environment, maybe even more so than Mike himself was an outcast, he was delighted that they’d remembered to visit. A part of him had honestly feared they would hit the road again, gone for another lifetime. “Do you wanna come with us, Harvey?”
His boss stilled, apparently thrown by the imploring inquiry, not quite shy of an outright request, but said, “I’d like to see you in my office, Mike.”
“U-um, okay,” Mike replied. He documented the way Harvey’s eyes found his secretary’s again, more meaningful this time, and how she clicked off the intercom that connected their desks as a result. It implied the need for subterfuge. Mike swallowed with some difficulty, saliva thick in his throat, then conjured up an assuring smile for his cousins, permitting it to melt off only after they were out of hearing range. “If I wasn’t supposed to have them here-”
Harvey shut the door behind them and interrupted, “I thought you had no family but your grandmother?” His voice dropped low and took on an accusatory edge. Mike gnawed on his lip to ponder the answer.
“I… Well, I guess I can’t say that they’re not my family, because they are, but they haven’t always been.” His vague explanation earned him a incensed glare, similar to that of an owner of a pet that had just piddled on the carpet, so he gave Harvey the abridged account of all that had happened: first meeting the Winchesters when his parents died, not seeing them post Sam’s departure for Stanford, how they'd manhandled their way back into his life without warning. Instead of being appreciative or even apathetic to the revelations, his boss seemed to get more and more agitated, his quick swivel toward the outer windows hinting at an urge to pace his quarters. “Are you mad?” Mike asked, already resigned to a yes.
Harvey stopped fretting and scanned his eyes over his associate, painstakingly slow. “Mike, why are they here now? Do they want something from you? Money? A kidney?”
“Oh,” Mike said, taken by surprise. He might have felt offended by the roundabout insinuations, had he not accepted by now that this was Harvey acting concerned - his way of caring. A hot burst of affection gushed through him, accentuated by an exuberant smile that worked to weaken the older man's resolve. “You don’t have to worry about me, Harvey. I’ll be okay, I promise. I won't mess up anymore.”
Harvey's lips pressed together, his familiar, grim way of forming Mike's name during a rebuke, but Mike didn’t really want to hear what he had to say: that the only thing he cared about was not having to hold more interviews, that his associate was a naïve moron, any variation of the words Mike sorely didn’t want to believe. “You’ll come to lunch with us, won’t you?” he persisted, purposefully obtuse.
“I have too much to do,” Harvey replied. His rejection was expressed kindly, without the affection of outright contemptuousness. “You enjoy your day with Impala man and the giant. At least I’m confident in their taste for cars, if nothing else. Late sixties, early seventies, I’m guessing? Good era for the Chevy.”
“I-Impala man, Harvey? Really?” Mike asked, baffled, until he remembered that his cousins had dropped him off that morning. Harvey must have seen out his window. After all, Harvey was the king of reading people, but you couldn’t do that if you weren’t constantly aware of your surroundings. Harvey would make a great ninja, if lawyering somehow didn’t work out. “How do you know 'the giant', as you put it, isn't the driver?”
A snort resounded, as if the idea was absolutely ridiculous. “Chewbacca never pilots.” Although Harvey would never stoop to it, the reply was reminiscent of duh. He chased Mike out with, “You have thirty minutes. I need that Spellman brief on my desk the second you get back,” before he could think up an adequately clever quip, transforming from a fellow nerd to Mike's demanding superior in a blurring instant.
“Thirty minutes?” Dean, who had only heard the tail end of the conversation, cried.
Mike jogged forward and took him by the arm to prevent him from any further argument. “Have you met Rachel, Dean? You'd like Rachel,” he said, in an obvious attempt to distract his cousin, which luckily prevailed.
“Rachel,” Dean repeated, spritzing up, “sounds like a hot chick name.”
“The hottest,” Mike intoned solemnly. He sent a mental apology to his friend, whom he knew would vehemently protest being objectified, but it was for a good cause. With a last smile goodbye to Donna and his boss, he nodded to Sam, glad that his cousin got the clue and shoved away from his corner, his massive shadow casting over them.
Mike half-hoped that Rachel was off running errands for another associate or partner, so he wouldn’t end up suffering her wrath so disturbingly close to Donna’s, a tropical storm after a hurricane. When they turned around a corner, though, there she was, a devil in Prada. She surveyed the triad of men with barely concealed antipathy, plush lips twisted.
“Who’re your friends, Mike?” she inquired.
Before Mike could explicate, Dean jumped in, “You must be Rachel. Mikey’s told me all about you, sweetheart.”
“Really now?” she said, a neatly plucked eyebrow arched in her friend’s direction. She smiled curtly when Mike failed to look anything but sheepish, unable to meet her gaze.
“Oh yeah,” Dean continued, debonair as ever. “Most beautiful girl in the office, he told me. Didn’t say that you’d take my breath away, though, Miss Rachel.”
As he spoke, her dark eyes continued to build like a storm, ash in an imminently erupting volcano, but it was with a clipped tone that she said, “It’s so sad when something so good looking is so stupid. Mike, remove your frat buddies from the office before I remove something vital of theirs.” The audible clatter of her stilettos echoed through the hall before anyone could muster up a reply.
“I hate that I’m always blacklisted with you,” Sam grumbled, after a minute of staring at the previously occupied, now empty, space that Rachel had left behind.
Dean pouted and gave off the aura of someone betrayed. “There’s something wrong with your office, man. Everyone’s hot, but evil. Only the awkward, curly-haired blond kid gave me the awe that I obviously deserve.”
“Not exactly,” Mike muttered. He chuckled feebly and thought of Louis. Thank God the junior partner and his lapdog associates - aside from Harold, apparently, but he was a nice guy, for all his gracelessness - weren’t around or this uncomfortable situation might have spiraled worse, if at all possible. Rather than dwell on it, Mike said, “I’m really glad you guys came. Did you wear the suits for the office?”
The brothers traded a quick glance and Sam smiled. “Yeah, sure. We knew they probably wouldn’t approve of our dress-code, so we scrounged these up. They got us through the door, at least.”
Mike beamed again, elated that they’d put forth the effort for him. In the office, he’d been so concerned over Harvey’s approval that he hadn’t gotten a good look, but Dean had always been a heart-breaker and Sam had grown into his gangly frame as well. Both of them could easily pass for male models even in the cheapest of materials. If they’d been anywhere but Pearson Hardman, Mike would never have gotten such grief over their appearance and he had to acknowledge, somewhat resentfully, that they’d look the part of hotshot lawyer better than him with a modicum of fashion help from someone like René. At any rate, the tailor wouldn’t cringe at the very sight of them, as he'd done when Harvey introduced Mike to him.
“So, where are we going?” Mike asked, brushing those thoughts away, ineffectual as the imaginary lint he continually feared would dust over him - for Harvey's sake more than his own.
Dean threw an arm across his cousin’s back, reaching up a bit higher to entrap Sam’s the same way, and said, “We found this awesome diner a few blocks from here. The pie’s supposed to be legendary.” He started forward and they jerked along like dogs on a leash with him, till he carelessly added, “It’s probably good boss-man ain’t joining us, Mikey. Posh guy like him wouldn’t dig anything that didn’t have Chez in its name.”
“Dean,” Mike objected, bristling, “you don’t know Harvey like I do. He’s…he's a good guy. My lunch break is only fifteen minutes long, but he gave me double that, so I could spend more time with you. You don’t know him.”
Dean appeared ready to retort, but Sam gave him a warning look and said, “You’re right, we don’t know too much. You could tell us, Mike. We want to know.”
Mike attempted to summon a suitable reply, but settled for a whispered, “Thanks, Sammy,” and smiled down at his shoes, unanticipated affection coursing through him and confirming that he was right to trust them. They were family. “I, uh, think you know most everything, though,” he went on self-consciously. “I kinda blabbered on and on last night.”
“Indulge us,” Sam insisted, as the three of them entered an elevator together, unaware of how they drew the eyes of passersby.
Mike racked his brain for a scenario that would satisfy the Winchesters and fulfill the request, while not divulging his secret. He wasn’t quite ready to share that yet. However, he blanked, let his heart take the wheel, and gushed about Harvey till they touched down on the ground floor again. “And, do you know, they call him the best closer in the city? If you make it here, you can make it anywhere!”
“Jesus, kid, you have got it so bad,” Dean said. He determinedly focused on his ribbing more than Hank the security guard’s vies for their attention, no doubt to enact yet another safety measure on the Winchesters, until the man gave up and waved them through. “Anything else I should know, aside from how my baby cousin wants to have hot monkey sex with that empty suit upstairs?”
Mike felt the telltale burn of a blush on his ears and was thankful for the cool New York breeze that soothed his inflamed face. He scowled when he felt Sam’s elbow rib into his side. “Sorry,” his cousin said, chastened. “I was aiming for Mr. Congeniality over there.”
“Oh, as if, out of the two of us, I’m more like Sandra Bullock. Sure, Sammy, whatever helps you sleep at night,” Dean scoffed.
Before the jokes could become full on bickering, Mike pulled himself away from them and said, “There are a few more things you should know, now that you mention it.” He grinned when they both shut up to attend to him. “My coworkers will easily kick your ass if you try the Casanova act in there again, Dean. And I’d really prefer if you didn’t call me Mikey. It diminishes my professional credibility.”
Dean worked his jaw for a minute, gaping amid the two younger men, but devolved into an exclaimed, “What is it with you snobby law-school types and nicknames? Can’t a man show his love without gettin’ bitched at for it?”
Mike’s smile stretched till his cheeks hurt and he purposefully directed his next question to Sam. “Where’d you say that diner was again?”
They chorused a snicker at Dean’s groan of dismay.
Exactly twenty five minutes later, Mike had a sense of deja-vu, watching from the backseat window as his eldest cousin sidled up to the curb facing Pearson Hardman again. He opened the Impala’s back door and stepped out, then propped his elbows up on the glass until he could see the Winchesters properly.
“I had fun today,” he told them.
He was unsurprised by Dean’s pressing need to tack on, “Maybe if Daddy lets you, we could do it again sometime, Princess.”
“Shut up, Dean,” Sam said in lieu of him, actually in a position to sweep out and punch his brother’s arm, this time.
Mike shook his head at their antics, then picked up where he left off, “All we did was talk about me, though. Can’t you even tell me if your job went well?”
“It was fine,” Dean said. When he saw the desperate, hungry inquisitiveness that Mike couldn’t quite rein in, he grudgingly continued, “We’re half done. Did the grunt work - the research, I guess you could say - today, but still have to implement it.”
Mike tried vainly to figure out what, exactly, they’d been up to, but his big brain didn’t always come in handy, unfortunately. “I could help you with research,” he finally mumbled, receding from the Impala’s body enough for them to pull away, if they wanted to.
“We know you could,” Sam said. Mike wasn’t sure whether he was being honest or patronizing. “We…we don’t need that, though. As long as it can be avoided, we’ll let you live your life. You’re going to make an amazing lawyer.”
“What does that even mean?” Mike wanted to persist. He held it back only by biting his tongue. “Okay. Good luck, then,” he answered crisply.
“Thanks, Mikey!” Dean replied, in a singsong voice that implied he remembered what Mike had said about the nickname and was purposefully disregarding it, just as he was Mike’s sulk.
Mike rolled his eyes, but he was unable to help the twitch of his mouth. He waved goodbye and unenthusiastically wondered why they sped off in the direction opposite his apartment. He supposed they had more to finish up - or, even worse, that they would skip town again.
Oh well. He had work to do - the Spellman briefs wouldn’t proof themselves, after all - and he couldn’t kill time being paranoid about their intentions, not when he couldn’t figure them out in a million years.
He was only certain of one thing: Harvey was waiting.
-
By the time Mike reached home again, the sun had already set, abandoning the sky to a cobalt blanket of stars that might have been beautiful, had he not been physically and mentally exhausted. Not only had he read through all eighty pages of the documentation Harvey needed, but Louis had strutted in near their culmination to hand him the paperwork to a multimillion dollar lawsuit. He honestly hated being Pearson Hardman’s free-for-all sometimes.
He’d been looking forward to coming home, ordering a pizza and possibly popping in one of the bootlegged DVDs he had. In fact, his collection was pretty vast. It spanned from bawdy comedies, superhero films like The Dark Knight, every Star Wars and almost every Star Trek, which he knew at least Dean would wholeheartedly appreciate. After he chained his bike to its rack, however, he found that the Impala wasn’t parked anywhere on the street.
Unlocking his apartment confirmed his fears: his cousins weren’t back yet, were perhaps not coming back at all, but what could he do about it? They were grown men who were perfectly capable of making their own decisions. If that decision was to ditch Mike for another decade to a dozen years, so be it.
He told himself he was okay, the farthest thing from bitter, but when he stripped off his suit, kicked his discarded pile of clothes away from him in a way that would blaspheme Harvey, and stepped into the shower, he acknowledged that it wasn’t just shampoo that made his eyes burn.
He went to bed before he was completely dry and shivered beneath the cool sheets, his appetite lost. Eventually, he fell into an uneasy slumber, beset by nightmares of monster jaws, blood and fire. Nevertheless, none of the dead faces, their eyes wide and mouths cavernous, belonged to his parents. He counted that as the paragon of small mercies.
An indeterminate period of hours later, frenzied knocks on his apartment door freed him of even that. “Who...?” Mike mumbled to himself, squinting at the red numbers his alarm clock displayed. It was a few minutes short of three in the morning.
He heard more bangs and, “Mikey!” a muffled, interspersed cry among the cacophony, then jolted upright and rushed to unbolt his locks.
“D-Dean, what-?” he began to say, but broke off in an, “Umph,” when Sam stumbled at the doorway and fell bodily into him. His hands immediately came up to steady the older man, but Dean was already pulling at Sam’s elbow. He settled his younger brother’s arm around his own shoulders and pushed Mike further inside.
“What’s going on?” Mike asked again, a successful clarification of his question this time. Dean ignored him to bundle Sam onto the couch's futon and slap its messy sheets to the floor, but Mike froze once he realized his own hand was wet. He’d used it to help balance Sam and now blood dripped, wet and slick, from his fingertips. His gaze fixed onto his cousins.
They had changed out of their ridiculous suits, back into what Grammy referred to as the Winchesters’ lumberjack garb. Sam was now propped up against the guest futon's head, a thick splotch of blood blossoming on the lower-right shank of his white shirt, his large hand hovering hesitantly over the wound.
His eyes were the worst, though - wide as the zombies' in Mike's dream, they stared down blankly at his brother's bobbing head, as Dean pushed the torn shirt up to asses the damage and exposed five straight lines, thick enough to be a bear claw's scratch. “Mikey, couldja get your first aid kit?” the eldest Winchester inquired, wary with fatigue.
“W-what happened?” Mike stammered, rooted firmly in place.
Dean's eyes flicked to him, twin chips of emerald, jagged and icy. “Move, dammit!” he barked, which spurred Mike into action.
He hurried out of the room, but stopped in the hall just outside. He hadn't used his first aid kit in ages - not since the time he and Trevor, while high, had decided it would be epic to enact a ninja battle with Mike's kitchen utensils - and it took him a second to recall where he'd last put it. Dean's sharp tone stuck with him, reverberated in his head with too many other thoughts. Since the first moment they met, he'd never been anything but genial to Mike, his snark aside. He'd always treated Mike the way a big brother would.
Eyes screwed shut, Mike released a pent up breath of relief at the images that flashed behind his lids: a small wooden cabinet that the person who'd owned his apartment prior to him had built, the feel of his toilet seat beneath bare feet when he climbed atop it, how he didn't have to reach very far to touch metal handles. Bathroom. It was in his bathroom.
Mike sprinted the rest of the way to his destination and clambered to obtain the first aid kit, sneezing when the particles of dust coating it, in the indent the red plus made, tickled his nose. He then headed back to his living room. Sam seemed calmer now, Mike was allayed to find. The hand that wasn't putting pressure on his wound instead squeezed his brother's.
It was such an intimate moment that Mike felt voyeuristic and didn't want to interrupt, but the lines of pain marring both his cousins' faces left him no choice, so he meekly said, “Um, here it is, Dean.” He stepped scarcely close enough to hand his first aid kit to the older man, before he drew back back, still ready in case Dean needed help.
Soon, however, it became evident that his precaution was unnecessary. Mike watched Dean snap the kit open with precise, practiced motions. The eldest Winchester removed disinfectant and bandages from it that he gently applied to Sam's abdomen, murmuring quietly to him all the while, everything from, “Knew you weren't ready yet,” to, “It's okay, Sammy, it's okay.”
“Just a flesh wound,” Sam mumbled back to him. His eyelids drooped slightly.
“Yeah,” Dean said, but his smile was sad. He unwound himself from his crouch and settled his palms onto his younger brother's biceps, to force Sam flat against the mattress. Then, he picked up the cast off blanket and draped it over Sam, who made a childish snuffle of a sound. “Sleep it off, Sammy. You need it.”
Only after it was apparent that the tall man was lost in slumber, Mike asked, “Will he be all right?” and wrung his hands together. Dried blood had worked its way between the lifelines on them, he noticed with disgusted horror. As soon as he got the okay, he would hold them under searing hot water till they were clean again, till the gore was burned off. For now, he just had to swallow back the bile that rose in his throat for as long as possible.
Dean finally looked at him - really looked, rather than looking through him, like he'd been doing since Sam had gotten hurt - and nodded his head. “Good as he'll ever be, the big, stupid lug,” he said, a fake grin plastered onto his full lips. It pinched slightly at Mike's responding frown and expelled a sigh. “I am so sorry for how fucking awful we've made these last couple of days, kid.”
“No, it's okay,” Mike said immediately. “I really wish you'd tell me what was going on, though. I'm actually not a kid anymore, you know?”
“I know,” Dean replied with another sigh. “You grew up good. You're a good person, I can tell, and I wish I could tell ya everything, but I couldn't do that to you. Just...trust me, okay? We've been tryin' to help people, that's all.”
“I believe you,” Mike said. The tender way that Dean acted around Sam - the way he used to act around Mike, back when he'd been a traumatized child - stated better than anything else, any government record kept by police or teachers, that Dean wasn't a bad man, either, that he was far from it. Mike wished he could let this go, by virtue of Dean's goodness alone, but it harried him like nothing else did. “Goodnight, I guess.”
He couldn't conceal his irritation well enough, if Dean's guilty expression was anything to go by, and it was most telling that Mike was too weary to care. “Uh, you don't have work tomorrow, do ya? It's your day off, right?” Dean asked, an obvious attempt to get back into his good graces, his dimpled smile charmingly manipulative. At Mike's nod, he went on sheepishly, “It's just that Sammy and I haven't been to see Carol yet. She'd have our asses if we left without dropping by to visit her.”
“She would,” Mike said, smiling in spite of himself. Sure, his grandmother looked small and delicate, but she was rather fierce for her age - had to be, to raise first Mike's father, then Mike, all by herself. “You wanna see her tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yeah...if you want to, of course,” Dean replied. He shifted from foot to booted foot hopefully.
Mike considered him for a minute. He figured, for all the tumult the Winchesters had caused since their arrival, the least Dean could do was squirm. “I always love visiting Grammy,” he ultimately relented, taking pity on his cousin with a huge grin.
“You virgin,” Dean said in response. His hearty chuckle broke off in a yawn. “You should get to bed, kiddo. I'll take the armchair for the night.”
Mike rolled his eyes at the condescending command, but nodded. First, he'd get Dean a blanket, as the sofa would be uncomfortable enough without. Then he would clean up, get to bed and hopefully sleep well for the first time that week. Sunday was his rare day to catch up on his rest, since he had to wake up with the sun for work Monday through Saturday. And he had to admit, he was especially excited to not only spend time with the Winchesters, but also his grandmother, something he hadn't done in ages.
Who knew when he would get another opportunity like that? A lifetime might just be an accurate estimate, in this case. He soon tunneled into his blankets, his smile still unwaveringly engraved into his face. No bad dreams aggrieved him this time and he actually thought he might sleep in till noon, if his cousins permitted him that.
-
In the end, it wasn't up to Dean and Sam at all. They weren't even awake yet when Mike's cellphone began to buzz on his bedside table. He threw his arm over his face and groaned.
It was early. That much was evident from the way the sky that peeked through his blinds was a sanguine color. The menacing device stopped, then began to vibrate again. A quick peek at its tiny screen confirmed that it was about the time he woke up for work.
Mike scowled blearily at it, but then he noticed a second notification - you have four missed calls and two new messages - and that woke him up faster than a spilled bucket of ice water might. With numb fingers, he pressed the number two, which would speed dial Harvey, not even bothering to check his voicemail. He knew his boss would prefer him calling directly, rather than have him dillydally.
“Mike?” Harvey picked up by the second ring. Mike gripped his blankets with white knuckles, startled by the way his name cracked like a whip. Before he could reply, Harvey continued, “Check the papers,” and hung up.
“O-okay,” Mike said, to no one but the dial-tone. He staggered out of bed and trembled at the onset of cold that bowled into him, but only paused long enough to grab a dirty shirt before he was at his desk, lifting the lid of the laptop he'd won from Pearson Hardman's IT guy, Benjamin.
Google's generic homepage popped up and he stared at it for a second, tapping at the keyboard so lightly that nothing happened. Harvey had simply said papers, nothing specific, and he wondered if The New York Times would be okay. Its top story related another tidbit of the Ripper case:
Young Iraqi woman claims to have survived a Ripper attack. “They all said she's a man, but she's old. A hag with no teeth and a cloth sack, so, so ugly. She cut me where my baby is, I felt it, and there's a wound now that wasn't here before. Two big men stopped her at the window when she tried to escape. They killed her and she disappeared,” Neema Malik, twenty seven, told reporter Matthew Cane, quivering and hugging her distended stomach.
The article went on to dissect the woman's allegations. It featured interviews with detectives who said that the Ripper wouldn't jump out of Neema's ten story apartment, which faced Ellis Island and the sea, as well as her disputing doctor who swore Neema really hadn't had her injury prior to the supposed attack. Her husband was particularly distraught by the attempt on his wife's life and the unknown duo of men who had barged into his home to rescue her. No body had been found.
Like most other New Yorkers, Mike was intrigued by this new information, but he doubted Harvey would get swept up in all the speculation, at least not so much that he'd call Mike on a weekend. He thought about asking the man again, but was saved from his possible ire when the second page's title caught his eye. It bemoaned the loss of a talented artist.
He clicked that one and was immediately greeted by a horrifying picture. Without even reading the footer, he knew it was a Tempest painting. The ink black, realistic splotches of blood, and a canine beast revealed that. His eyes tracked over the text under it and he felt his stomach drop. No wonder Harvey had sounded so unnerved; their client was dead.
Rupert Abranksky, famous artist who adopted the pen-name Gale Tempest, was found dead in his townhouse this morning, in front of his final work of art. His secretary, Wendy Godfry, was the first to discover the body and contact police. Early coroner reports suggest Abranksky was mauled by a large animal, but further investigation is required. Police Chief Andrew Lowell gave the statement, “We do not believe that foul play is involved at this time.”
The way the image was set up, Mike thought the creature in it could easily be responsible, but it was unrelated coincidence. The thing looked like a nemesis from one of Resident Evil's games, after all, and wasn't real. Biographies, anecdotes and estimated prices of Tempest’s artwork followed, but Mike closed every window with the click of a button and called Harvey.
“You’ve reached the all-knowing oracle. Unfortunately, I’m helping the Greeks siege Troy again - that Helen was being an uppity diva - so you’ll have to try back later,” Donna’s voice answered, bored. He could imagine that she sat at her desk, filing her nails, and still managed to dominate the office in her usual effortless way.
“Donna?” he asked, which inspired her to do a one-eighty.
“Oh, it’s you. Why aren’t you here yet, rookie? Harvey needed your ass an hour ago,” she said, the impatient click of her nails strained through to him. She was probably tapping them on her desk.
“It hasn’t even been half that since he called me,” Mike replied, an explanation more than an argument. No one with even a fourth of his IQ would ever pull that stunt with Donna.
“Tomato, tomahto,” she responded airily. “Just get here soon. Waving a newspaper at you might cheer him up.”
“Yes, your majesty,” Mike said, a grin tugging at his mouth. “I’ll be there ASAP.” He let her hang up first, because she preferred things that way, and started getting dressed. Unofficial day or not, Harvey would chew him out if he came in with street clothes.
It was only after he’d finished and saw his sleeping cousins in his living room that he recalled his prior engagement, and though he didn’t want to let Harvey down when he needed him, Mike was also dispirited by the thought of missing an outing with the Winchesters. He thought about waking them up, so they could all rationally discuss the situation, but Sam’s large frame was flopped peacefully on the bed, his expression placid, and Mike remembered what he'd said almost twenty four hours ago about his insomnia. He couldn’t be selfish and interrupt his cousin's first tranquil night of sleep in who knows how long.
Instead, he quietly crept into the room and momentarily scrutinized Dean to discover whether his position, with his head thrown back on the arch of a sofa, would give him muscle cramps later. Dean snored avidly, though, and occasionally mumbled something about boobs, which meant he was probably fine. Mike shook his head and grabbed a piece of paper from the notepad he had at the desk by the door. He scribbled a quick message on it: Really sorry. Emergency at work. Visit Grammy w/out me. M.
Then, with a lingering look at his slumbering guests, he forced himself out the door. He had a feeling it would be a long day and the wise thing to do would be to pick up coffee, maybe even some doughnuts, for Harvey and Donna on the way.
Pearson Hardman was empty - almost creepily so, with the majority of its lights turned off - and Mike realized his detour was the right move when Harvey exited the office to meet him. There was nothing outwardly wrong with the man. He was still as immaculately dressed as ever, not a single hair out of place on his head. His fists clenched and unclenched, however, and he was wearing his harassed Harvey suit, the same one he’d appropriated during the fiasco with his former mentor.
“Thanks,” he said to Mike, accepting the coffee his young associate wordlessly handed to him. He waited for Mike to do the same for Donna, who smiled, then beckoned his associate back inside. “You heard about Tempest?”
Mike took a seat at the couch next to his boss and replied, “Yeah, but… What the hell happened, Harvey? He seemed kinda sick when we left him, but the paper said he was mauled. Freaking mauled. You don’t get mauled in New York unless you sneak into a cage in the Central Park Zoo or wear a meat-dress around alleyway mutts.”
“I doubt Tempest did that,” Harvey deadpanned with a smirk. He reached over to hand Mike the same documents from yesterday, Tempest’s will at the top of the pile. “That explains this, at least. He probably knew something was going to happen to him.”
“Maybe the mob put a hit out? If they can leave a decapitated horse head in a man’s bed, they can definitely have something, you know, maul a guy,” Mike said, while he searched the will for more clues, even though he knew it was hopeless. He’d seen everything there was to see already. He could recite it word for word, visualize every last stipulation in his mind's eye.
Harvey frowned at him, his eyebrow cocked haughtily. “If you use that word one more time, I’ll string you up by your ugly tie. You’re smart enough to find diverse synonyms,” he replied. “Besides, not everything you see in The Godfather or The Sopranos, as interesting as they are, is accurate. None of the mobsters I know are all that creative.”
“Y-you know mobsters?” Mike exclaimed, more surprised with himself for being surprised than with Harvey for associating with criminals. Harvey knew Michael Jordan, enough supermodels to fill three magazines, and George Clooney. Of course Harvey had ties in the mafia.
“I digress,” Harvey said. He shook his hand in the air, as if something unsavory had touched it. “Tempest’s ex-wife, Martha, is coming into town for his funeral in a few days. I don’t think their son will be joining her, but she might have some pertinent info.”
“What do you wanna do today, then? Is there paperwork we’ve gotta handle for him?” Mike inquired. The documents he had were nothing new and didn’t require anything else, so far as he could see.
“Well, when the time comes, we have to prepare a presentation of the will for Martha and we can question her then, but I’d rather not wait so long,” Harvey answered. He glowered at a baseball on his desk, seemingly bothered by the very idea of having to be patient. Mike knew he was used to getting whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. His boss didn’t let it plague him for too long, however, and declared, “All we can do, at least for today, is squeeze the first responders at the crime scene for info. It just so happens that Police Chief Lowell owes me a favor.”
“Who doesn’t?” Mike asked, rolling his eyes.
Harvey smirked again. “Just be happy that you don’t need to impersonate a federal agent with me around, puppy. You could learn a thing or two.”
“I’ll bring my notebook,” Mike said, with a breathy, exaggerated air of reverence. He fluttered his eyelashes for good measure and Harvey took a swipe at him from his desk, but missed by a good hand-span.
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