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“Ha,” Harvey says, letting out a startled laugh as he stands suddenly. His hands come up to cover his mouth as he paces three steps away. “I did not mean to say that.”“I can’t believe you just said that,” Mike says after a pause, voice low and shaking slightly with anger. “You have no right—““Stop,” Harvey says, still facing away from Mike, shoulders drawn up in defense. “Disregard it. It didn’t mean anything.”“It didn’t mean—““I didn’t mean to say it,” Harvey says, voice taking on a desperate pleading tone as he whirls to face Mike. Mike looks at him, the anger clear and present, but underneath it hurt. A whole hell of a lot of hurt. “You love me?”Harvey’s eyes fall shut. “Mike, please.”“You love me,” Mike repeats, standing, reaching up to tug the knot of his tie looser than it already is. He points at Harvey and his hand wavers in the air, an aborted gesture of sheer frustration. “I can’t believe you just said that to me!”
“Mike, believe me, neither can I,” Harvey mutters, squeezing his eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose.
“I’m....” Mike throws his hands in the air helplessly. “Harvey I’m engaged! I’m. I’m marrying—”
“I know.”
“I love Rachel. I...” Mike stops himself mid-sentence, mouth working over words he’s not saying out loud. “Harvey.”
“I know, Mike.”
“We put it on hold,” Mike says, looking at him, mouth pressing down on one side in pain. “It’s on hold, we didn’t call it off.”
Harvey breathes out slowly, even as he feels his insides seizing up in an oncoming panic attack. “Mike, I swear to you. I didn’t mean to say that.”
“You can’t just say you love me, you can’t just sit there and tell me you're in love with me and expect me to—”
“Expect you to what?” Harvey snaps finally, growling to cover the fact that he’s finding it nearly impossible to breathe. “I didn’t mean to say it, Mike!”
“Bullshit,” Mike yells indignantly, stepping forward to shove a finger into Harvey’s chest. “You don’t say anything you don’t mean to say!”
“What possible reason would I have to tell you I’m in love with you,” Harvey finally yells back, stepping into Mike’s space, poking him back. “What, for fucks sake, could I possibly have to gain by telling you that?”
Mike backs up, still pointing at him. “You said it again, you just said it goddamn again!”
“Yes,” Harvey yells, throwing his hands wide. “It’s out there! I’m sorry I said it, it wasn’t my intention to say it, I’ve been not saying it for years, but yeah. It’s out there and I’m not gonna take it back, because it’s true!”
Mike swallows convulsively, silently watching Harvey as he reaches up and finally yanks his tie all the way loose, running his hand through his hair. Mike takes a deep breath before angrily ripping the tie from around his neck and balling it in his fist.
“Years?” Mike asks, barely audible as he turns to watch Harvey walk back to his desk and lower himself back into his seat. “You’ve... For years?”
Harvey stares down at his desk, taking a deep breath through his nose. “It’s unimportant. It doesn’t matter.”
“When,” Mike says, placing his palms on Harvey’s desk and leaning over it. Harvey doesn’t look up at him. “Harvey, how long?”
Harvey huffs out a breath and grabs a case folder. “Aren’t you in the middle of the Whittaker case?”
“Harvey.”
Harvey breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth trying to compose himself before then looking up at Mike. “It. Doesn’t. Matter.”
Mike’s shaking, only slightly but his hands are shaking and his voice is thready when he speaks. “Tell me. Please.”
Harvey looks down at the folder before him again. “You're with Rachel. You’ve been with Rachel.”
"You don't get to tell me it's not important," Mike says, leaning over the desk, Harvey can feel his eyes boring into the top of his head but he refuses to look up at him. "You can't just. You don't get to just. Harvey."
"I get to do whatever the hell I want to, Mike," Harvey bites out, finally looking up and giving Mike a cold look. "It's late. You should get home to your fiance."
"If you love," Mike starts, closing his eyes and breathing in slowly through his nose.
Harvey resists the urge- the strong, deep urge - to reach over and cup the side of his face. Trail his fingers down the length of his jaw and down to his throat. Curl his fingers behind around the side of Mike’s neck. Just to hold him there, not do anything else, just that. It’s an urge he's been finding it harder and harder to resist lately.
"If you love me, I have.... that's information I should have, Harvey."
"Why," Harvey asks, schooling his voice into it's hardest line, it's sharpest edge. Mike will see right through it, just like he always has, like he always will, but Harvey needs it. He needs the distance, he needs the illusion that he can rein this in, that he can take this back. Make this unhappen. "What business is it of yours how I do or do not feel?"
"God," Mike chokes out, a harsh laugh escaping out of his mouth as he bends his head forward and shakes it. "You are such a dick."
"Not arguing," Harvey allows, voice gentling just slightly. He needs Mike out of here, now, before all of his defenses come tumbling down. The panic attack is still lurking, just beneath the surface, just waiting for him to stop white knuckling his way through avoiding it so it can come in and take over.
"I'm getting married," Mike repeats, and he knocks his knuckles against the desk to punctuate it but his voice is still shaky and uncertain. "I love her. We hit pause, Harvey. It's just a pause. I'm not having doubts."
Harvey looks at the top of Mike's head and thinks, bullshit. He doesn't say it though, because he's already said too many things this evening. "Goodnight, Mike."
Mike straightens, his fingers clenching and unclenching into fists. "I'm going home," he says.
Harvey nods, clicking and unclicking his pen as he opens the folder in front of him. He makes a note in the margin even though he can't see the letters to read the words. "You do that."
"To my girlfriend," Mike says, his voice turning harder, less shaky and more angry. "My fiancee. To the woman I love."
Harvey grins like it doesn't feel like Mike is driving a doubled edged serrated knife in his chest and twisting, and nods at him. "Have a good evening."
Mike knocks his knuckle into Harvey's desk sharply again and then takes a step back. Takes two more. "Goodnight, Harvey."
Harvey waves him off, dismissing him and looking back down at the words that are swimming in front of him and making no sense. He can't breathe properly, it's hitching halfway down his windpipe, rattling in his ribs. He grips his pen too tightly to keep his hand from shaking and presses his other hand flat onto the desk.
He watches Mike walk halfway down the hall and then closes his eyes, trying to remember how the fuck to breathe again. He breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth. In and out, in and out, in and--
"Stand up."
Harvey startles, eyes blinking open to stare disbelievingly at Mike as he stalks back into the office. He rolls his chair back as Mike comes around the desk, face set determinedly as he comes to a stop in front of Harvey, toes of his shoes touching the toes of Harvey's.
"Stand. Up."
"Mike," Harvey says as he stands, but he's cut off by Mike grabbing his tie and pulling him forward, mashing his mouth to Harvey's.
Mike huffs into the kiss, backing Harvey up until his ass is pressed against the desk behind him.
Harvey raises his hands to push him away but instead finds his fingers curling into the crisp white material of Mike's shirt and holding him still, tight up against him. "What are you--"
Mike pulls on Harvey's tie and rests his forehead on Harvey's. "I'm so full of shit," he confesses. "I'm a goddamn liar."
When Harvey breathes in he can smell the spearmint gum Mike had been chewing earlier, the mountain fresh scent of his arm and hammer deodorant. His eyes are still closed and his lips tingle from the feeling of Mike's on his. "Mike."
"I have doubts," Mike whispers, sounding emotionally wrecked, pulling even harder on Harvey's tie. It cuts into the back of Harvey's neck. "We keep telling ourselves it’s just a pause, we're not having doubts. But I am Harvey, I'm having doubts. I have so many doubts."
"I really didn't mean to say it, Mike," Harvey whispers back, but he doesn't let go of Mike's shirt, opening his eyes as he lets his thumb brush up the line of buttons towards Mike's throat.
"Do you know what my biggest doubt is though," Mike asks, like Harvey hadn't even spoken. He lets go of Harvey's tie and slides his hands up Harvey's shoulders, thumbs resting against Harvey's neck. "You."
Harvey's breath catches. "Me."
"How can I marry her when I feel the way I feel when I look at you," Mike says, whisper soft as he leans closer, thumbs brushing up and down the length of Harvey's neck. “How I feel when I think about you. Think about you with... anyone. Anyone else. With Paula."
It hits Harvey like a ton of bricks, that Paula is still there. Paula is sitting at home, waiting for him to call her when he gets home. Waiting for him to ask her out to dinner, to invite her over, to continue this whatever it's become. A domestic partnership. Easy, comfortable, reassuring... and nothing at all like what he really wants.
"It makes me crazy, thinking of you with her," Mike continues. "I have no right to feel like that, I love Rachel. I do, I love her."
He’s been fooling himself and he’s been fooling Paula, and it would be fucking hysterical if it weren’t so sad. “But...”
“But I love you too,” Mike says in a rush, fingers curling around the back of Harvey’s neck, pressing into his skin. “I think I might love you more, because when I’m with her I think of her and I think of you, but when I’m with you… you’re the only thing that exists.”
“You are all that ever exists,” Harvey says back, finally meeting Mike’s eyes. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what,” Mike asks, closing his own eyes now, resting his forehead against Harvey’s, because he knows exactly what Harvey’s asking but he’s gonna make him ask it anyway.
“Don’t marry her,” Harvey says, reaching up to hold Mike’s face. “Come home with me, Mike.”
“I just came in here to tell you about the Whittaker case,” Mike says, but he smiles just slightly and Harvey knows his answer in the uptick of his mouth.
“And I meant to say good job and instead I said I love you,” Harvey says, pulling back. “So shit didn’t go down how we meant for it to."
“No, it never does for us, does it?” Mike says, laughing and letting go of Harvey’s neck, stepping back. “But I can’t just go home with you Harvey.”
Harvey nods, flicking his eyes away towards the door so he doesn’t have to look at Mike. “Right. Because you love her.”
“Because I owe her,” Mike says softly. “I at least owe her closure before I move on.”
Harvey looks back at him at that. “Easy as that?”
Mike laughs. “I wouldn’t say it’s gonna be easy.”
“You don’t need to think about it? You don’t need to consider--"
Mike props his hip against Harvey’s desk. “If I’d picked her, I never would have come back in this office tonight. Instead I got halfway to the elevator and turned right back around, stalked in here, and kissed you.” He shrugs then, looking helpless and bemused and resigned. “The choice seems to have already been made.”
Harvey only allows Mike two steps before he steps forward and grabs Mike’s hand, pulling him back towards him and twining their fingers together. “Mike,” he breathes out shakily.
Mike searches his eyes, for what Harvey doesn’t know, but then he nods and his fingers tighten in Harvey’s hand and Mike’s always spoken the same language as Harvey. He’s always read him, even when Harvey wasn’t even sure himself. Leaning forward Mike brings his free hand to Harvey’s face and rests his fingertips there on his cheek as he kisses him softly. Brief. Chaste. A promise of more, not at all a goodbye.
“I’ll see you later, Harvey.” ** the way I wanted to go was ".... and then they fucked in the office oopsidaisey!" but... ya know... they're too damn decent to actually do that so I had to put my pervy mind on hold. Sigh.