disclaimer: i don't own suits.

dedication: for hope (allisonarrgent) for christmas and just generally because i love her and she's amazing and she's the reason i'm watching this show in the first place.

notes: okay truth time, i've only watched up to 2x03 so yes i am very very behind and trying to marathon my way through this series so with that in mind, there's a lot of canon that i don't know yet and so this is set somewhere around 2x03 i guess, post-mike/rachel break-up. i apologize for any canon errors or characterization errors or anything else like that!

Truth is, Mike shows up at his place a little too often to call it business, and at the same time, it's not often enough to call it a habit. Harvey calls it stupid, and Mike calls it normal – "I'm your associate, right? You only have one." – and somehow it turns into a thing.

"If you have girl drama, I don't want to hear it," Harvey warns when he opens the door to a bedraggled Mike, who only scowls at him and shoves his way inside like he runs the place. From the smell of his breath, he's probably drunk enough to think he does.

"You never do," Mike mutters, but it has the tone of resignation rather than a complaint. He collapses onto Harvey's extremely expensive leather couch in a mass of lanky limbs and messy hair and closes his eyes. Harvey sighs and sets about making a drink or five for the evening.

"It's only because you always have something," he says over his shoulder, half-certain that Mike is no longer paying attention and might already be passed out. "And it's usually something stupid. And it usually involves Rachel."

Mike groans at the sound of her name and when Harvey looks back at the living room, he's got his head buried in a pillow. "Don't remind me," comes the long-suffering sigh. Harvey decides to just pour himself a glass of vodka and forgo avoiding his drunken associate for a few more minutes.

"You made the right choice," he ventures after a few moments of silence wherein he drinks and watches Mike's chest go up and down with every breath. "Assuming you're still upset about breaking up with her, I mean."

"Well, you would think so," Mike snorts, straightening up and looking at Harvey in a way so earnest that he needs probably three more glasses of vodka to think straight. "You haven't kissed her."

Harvey tries for a second to imagine kissing Rachel Zane, undoubtedly the prettiest paralegal in the firm, but somehow kissing Rachel turns into an image of kissing Mike, undoubtedly the most infuriating associate in New York, and then he needs maybe another two glasses of vodka to stop thinking about that.

"Did you come here to throw yourself a pity party?" he demands instead of replying. "Because that is not why I let you in."

Mike tilts his head consideringly, and Harvey wishes his eyes weren't so goddamn blue. "Why did you let me in?" he asks curiously, suddenly sounding way too sober for someone with that much alcohol on his breath. "Were you lonely?"

Harvey rolls his eyes and finishes off his glass. "I'm never lonely if I don't want to be. Don't flatter yourself."

"Oh, sure," Mike laughs, though it sounds bitter, and slumps back down on his couch. "I forgot, you're the great Harvey Specter. You could sleep with any girl you wanted, couldn't you?" His tone of voice seems mocking, or maybe resentful – Harvey can't tell through the haze of alcohol, but it's not something he wants to focus on, anyway.

"You need to sleep," he tells Mike rather than rising to the bait, and he puts his glass down so he can grab Mike's arm and haul him up. "I'll call you a cab."

"What, I can't sleep over here?" Mike mutters, stumbling a little as he rises. "Do you have a girl around here somewhere? Or do you just not want to taint your shiny place by having me around any longer?" This time, his words sound brittle, self-deprecating in a sense. The way he's looking up at Harvey makes it irrevocably clear that he doesn't mean his words to hurt – that he remembers, even through the drunkenness, that Harvey had threatened to give up his career to save Mike.

That when he says taint he means I'm not a Harvard grad I never went to school I shouldn't be here why did you let me be here and Harvey thinks that he might need to put a cap on this kind of pity drinking. He can't have his associate thinking he doesn't belong here.

Can't have Mike thinking he doesn't belong with Harvey.

"Shut up, and don't pass out on me," Harvey orders, keeping his grip on Mike's arm tight as he reaches for his phone to call a cab. "And you better sober up before Monday and come in hangover-clean to work, okay? I'm not paying you to feel sorry for yourself."

Mike is suddenly eye-level, back straight and his gaze blindingly blue as he looks at Harvey, who nearly fumbles his phone when he notices Mike staring at him like that.

"What are you paying me for?" Mike asks softly, like this is some sort of existential question with an answer less basic than to work for me to help me to be at my side through all of these cases and all of these enemies although maybe, on second thought, the answer's not as basic as it would have been for any other associate.

"To work," Harvey begins, and his voice starts out firm, but it fades out as Mike leans in. His phone clatters to the ground, not loud enough to break the haze of vodka combined with whatever Mike was drinking combined with holy fuck he's kissing me because Harvey Specter has been blindsided before, but this is nothing he's ever prepared himself for.

"God," he hisses, pushing himself away because it'd be impossible to push Mike away and not just because he's so stupidly stubborn but mostly because he doesn't have it in him to do so. "What do you think you're doing?"

Mike's eyes are fixed on the floor, as if Harvey's carpet is so terribly interesting, and he finds himself missing the warmth of his gaze. "Sorry," he mutters, in a way that's so startlingly clear and devoid of pretense that Harvey wonders if he was faking the drunkenness in the first place. "I'm sorry," he repeats, stepping back, one hand dashing through his hair. "I'm sorry."

Harvey stands there, unable to think of a single thing to say as Mike moves away, his mind racing with all the stupid flashes of daydreams he'd had in the past months, ever since Mike had started working with him, like the ones where they didn't stop at kissing, or the ones where Mike gave up his stupid pursuit of Rachel or Jenny or whoever and just –

"Fuck," he says to himself, and Mike's head snaps up in confusion at the muttered word just in time for Harvey to pull him in again. "Shut up," he adds when Mike opens his mouth to question him and then he presses his lips against his, maybe partly to more effectively shut him up but mostly because he wants this more than he's ever wanted anyone or anything else. And Harvey Specter always gets what he wants.

Mike's mouth is hot and messy when it meets his, and Harvey's been with girls who are better kissers, but he's never been with anyone who kisses the way Mike does – all fire, sparks, electricity, like something out of Donna's stupid romance novels that he's certainly never read. Or glanced at. Or skimmed the back covers.

"Isn't this kind of going against every rule in the book?" Mike thinks to ask by the time they're both half-naked on the couch and Harvey's pretty sure Jessica will be able to smell the sex on him all the way on Monday morning. "I mean, sleeping with your associate – "

"I thought I told you to shut up," Harvey mutters, distracting himself with Mike's cheeky smile because yes technically this goes against every rule everywhere but he's in way too deep to stop now – probably has been since Mike became such an integral part of his life.

"Look," he adds, sighing and pulling away long enough to look Mike in the eye. "I'm not going to tell anyone. And I know you won't either. And I – " Here, he trails off, because it's hard enough to admit the truth to anyone else, let alone to Mike, with his stupidly sincere gaze in a shade of blue that should not be possible.

"You're lonely," Mike suggests, and Harvey almost laughs because he is so far off it's kind of absurd, except how would Mike even know how not lonely Harvey has been lately, how, even though he sits at the top of a food chain of sharks, he hasn't felt alone in a long time.

Harvey leans down and kisses Mike more deeply than he's ever kissed any girl, and he's had his fair share. "I'm not lonely," he says when they part, Mike's breathing heavy as he looks up at Harvey. "Not – not tonight," and, yeah, what he really means is not with you and it's stupid and emotional and everything he never wanted to be, everything Donna kept saying he would be once he found the right girl, but he never had. He hadn't found anyone until Mike – his associate, his partner, his protégé, and a thousand other things that all ended up exactly where he was tonight.

Except he'll never tell anyone this, unless Donna figures it out and she probably will, but there is no way on hell he's going to talk about this to Mike at work on Monday. It's probably a good thing Mike wouldn't remember – or, if he did, he'd know better than to mention it after tonight.

"Dude, you are really cheesy tonight," Mike laughs, possibly just so Harvey will shut him, and he does, and Mike's laughter fades into kisses that turn into much more not long after. They manage to move to the bed somehow, and as much as he knows that this is a hundred shades of wrong, Harvey can't stop himself. Maybe it's the alcohol, or maybe it's just Mike, but the bed is comfortable, and so is Mike.

The next morning, he wakes to an empty bed, and even through the hangover headache, he has to admit that he's impressed Mike managed to sneak out without waking him. He's even more impressed that Mike left a note on the bedside table, which means he found a pen and a post-it note and wrote it all without waking him.

If you want, it never happened.

Six words. It would be easy. Harvey sinks back into his bed and thinks of all the girls he's shared it with in the past, thinks of that boy he kissed on a dare back in his undergrad years, thinks of what Donna would say, what Jessica would say, hell, what Mike would say if he hadn't been involved, and then he lifts his phone to text Mike.

It happened. Don't talk about it. I need the Henderson brief on my desk tomorrow morning.

He presses send and closes his eyes and thinks that maybe his life would be a lot easier if he'd just fired Mike when he had the chance. But he hadn't, and he wouldn't, and here he is. It's not easy, but he's pretty sure it's worth it.

a/n: i really hope you liked it if you read this far! please drop me a review to let me know what you thought, thank you!

and DON'T favorite without reviewing, please and thank you.