Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mike is sitting on the floor of Harvey’s living room. Physically, he looks fine. His punch landed exactly where he aimed it. Head down and silently rubbing his knuckles, however, Mike looks broken. 

Harvey… can’t look at him right now. 

Instead, Harvey leaves. His shoes echo across the apartment floor until he’s staring at himself in his bathroom mirror.  His lip is puffy.  Blood has dried in the corner of his mouth.  He looks tired, goddamn beaten. He throws back a couple of ibuprofens.  

The shower can’t wash away the enormous size of this. Of the panic that threatens to consume Harvey from the inside out. Of the hole he and Mike have dug for themselves. Of his guilt about keeping so much while Mike is on the brink of losing everything. Of Harvey’s all-consuming need to save Mike despite Mike’s stubborn refusal to let him. Harvey pushes his forehead hard against the tile wall. The dull pain grounds him and forces the steaming pile of emotions back down his throat. Mike deserves everything , but he keeps getting dealt shitty hands. And, this time, Harvey had been the dealer.  

He stands on the rug and drips.  The blood’s gone but Harvey doesn’t feel clean.  He won’t meet his reflection’s gaze in the mirror.  Naked and cold, he shivers.  

Eventually he towels off.  The ache in his jaw from Mike’s punch is still there. He sits on the edge of his bed and pokes at the nascent bruise. Warm, itching pain flares up. He presses harder, just like he’d pressed until Mike snapped earlier. The look of anger on Mike’s face had hurt more than the punch had. The necessity of it, though, was real. It was for Mike’s own good to know he could take a man down with one swing. And it was – selfishly – for Harvey too. Mike should take a pound of Harvey’s flesh if he won’t take Harvey’s time behind bars. He can at least give him that.  

Harvey pulls on pajamas and walks barefoot out to the kitchen. Scotch on the rocks is calling his name despite the late hour. Sleep wasn’t going to come anyway. He needs to clean up the glass he threw across the kitchen before he steps on it–

Harvey pulls up short when he sees Mike still here. After a few beats, he asks, “How long have you been standing there?” It’s an inane question. Mike was in the room when Harvey went to take a shower, and he’s still here. 

Mike is looking out at the city night lights. The ice in his half-drunk scotch is long gone. Their eyes meet in the window’s reflection.  

“Yeah,” Mike says, coming out of his reverie.  “I should get out of your hair.”

“That isn’t what I asked, and it is definitely not what I meant.”

Mike turns and levels a look at Harvey.  

“I don’t know how to…”  Mike’s voice cracks with emotion.  “I can’t go home, Harvey.”

It was the last thing Harvey expected to hear him say.  Mike’s whole life revolves around Rachel. He should be with her right now, taking every last second of time he can get with her.  But Harvey doesn’t have it in him to fight with Mike again, so he takes the broom and dustpan out of the cupboard and starts sweeping.

A shard of glass glints.  Harvey pushes it into the dustpan with the broom.  “I’m not going to tell you what to do, Mike, but you are at the 23rd hour here. Use the time you’ve got in the best way you can.”

Mike stands there.  Harvey can feel him looking at him while he sweeps.  

His front door closes with a soft click when Harvey turns to empty the dustpan into the trash.     

*****

Mike stands quietly in their living room, barely four steps away from the bedroom. Behind the closed door, he hears Rachel pitter pattering around, occasionally laughing. Her happiness is so fragile and lovely.  

Mike is fragile too, he supposes, but in a different way.  His relationship with Rachel is a sandcastle at sunset – beautiful and sun-filled and so goddamn temporary.  Mike’s choices are the tide inevitably coming to erase it, carrying the scraps of it out to sea.  

So, he stands there in their home, and it feels like the walls are closing in. Over and over, his fight with Harvey spins around in his head until it is disjointed and out of order. 

Let me call Gibbs.  

                                               I can’t.

Mike is going to prison.  He protected the firm, and he protected Harvey.  The agreement with Gibbs is airtight.  Mike read every word of it.  Harvey is safe.  

I can’t let you go to prison for a crime that I committed!

Well, I can’t let you go when you were going to be found innocent!

Even mixed up, it points in one glaringly obvious direction.  Even with Rachel in the other room, even knowing Harvey’s soul is eating itself alive because Mike can’t let Harvey throw himself on this grenade, Mike is going to prison tomorrow.

         Let me call Gibbs.  

                    It’s not too late.

I can’t, Harvey.  

I can’t.

Here, in the condo he shares with Rachel – the woman who he’s supposed to be starting his life with, the woman who is humming happily in their bedroom right now – Mike can’t stop thinking about the feeling of his knuckles connecting with Harvey’s chin. His mind is replaying every late night session where Harvey took off his suit coat and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows.  He’s thinking about batting cages and shared beers and inside jokes and aspiring to be better. 

Fuck.  Mike is choosing Harvey being safe, over…  over Rachel’s happiness.  Over marrying her.  Over his own freedom.  Over himself .  Right here, in front of his fiancée’s bedroom door, Mike is thinking about Harvey.

And there is not one iota of doubt in his mind.

“Rachel?”

“I’m in the bedroom. Don’t come in.”

Mike pauses with his hand on the door.  He closes his eyes like that would freeze time.  Not even to go back in time, just to freeze it.  To keep it there, where it was, before…  before Mike blew up their lives.

“I need to talk to you.”

“No, you can’t come in.  I have my dress on.”  

The sparkle of laughter in her voice darkens.  No one wants to hear We need to talk .  Tears prick Mike’s eyes.  Anger, fear, and tears: it’s all he’s felt for days.

“Rachel, please.”

“There are about a million things about this wedding that aren’t going as planned.  And I'm fine with that.  But I’m not going to jinx it by having you see me in my dress.”

“Rachel.”

“Nope,“ she says, forced laughter following. She is trying so hard to rebuild the sandcastle even as the waves eat away at it. She is taking the shit situation he’s put them in and trying to pretend everything is fine. “I know it’s silly and an old wives’ tale, but… it’s tradition, Mike.”

“I don’t value you,” he says, looking down at his white knuckles where he grips the door jamb.  If he gripped just that little bit harder, he’d make himself bleed on the outside as much as he feels like he is on the inside.  Maybe he should.  Maybe that would make up for what he’s doing to their future.  “Not the way I should. I don’t value us the way I should.”  

The door opens so fast there is a gust of wind. It should take his breath away, she is so stunningly beautiful in her dress. Of course she is. Rachel is always stunning.

“Mike… what?” she chokes out.  “What the hell did you just say?”

He looks in her eyes.  Their life together shatters into a million pieces under the pressure of her horrified look.  

“It’s true, Rachel.  You know it’s true.  I don’t value you, not the way I should if we’re getting married.”

She blinks up at him, mouth working open several times until she forces herself to stop. She closes her eyes, shakes her head once, and takes a deep, centering breath.  

“ What are you doing right now?”

“Rachel.”

“No,” she says, slicing a hand through the air.  “What are you doing right now, Mike?”

“I don’t think we should–”

“Unbelievable.”

“--get married.”

“You are un-fucking-believable, Mike.”  She gathers the skirt of her dress up and pushes past him into the living room.  Whirling to face him with her hands on her hips, she skewers him with her hurt and disappointment. “Is this you being self-sacrificing? Is this you sparing me?”

“No,” Mike says, hanging his head.

“Did it finally dawn on you that you should be sacrificing yourself at least as much for me as you would Harvey? Did you finally remember me? Your fiancée?”

It cuts like a knife, no matter how true he’d already known it to be.  “That’s kind of exactly the point, Rachel.”

She laughs without humor.  “What is?”

“I’m not being self-sacrificing. The point is… The point is I was willing to sacrifice for Harvey. Despite your feelings. I didn’t even–”  He spreads his hands and shakes his head.  “I honestly didn’t even consider your feelings, although I certainly knew what they would be.”

Her mouth is twisted with an ugly, unamused sneer.  “You didn’t even consider them?”

He meets her eyes again.  It only seems fair to look her in the eye for this.  There shouldn’t be any ambiguity.  “I don’t regret it, Rachel. I won’t change my mind. Even knowing that I would’ve been found innocent, I still choose this. I still choose going to prison, losing us , because it means Harvey will be safe.”

All of Rachel’s breath leaves her body in that moment and she freezes to the spot. She blinks at him, dumbfounded.  “They were going to–”  She swallows, looking like she is seconds away from puking.  “They were gonna find you–”

“Harvey lied to me.  To spare my feelings.  But, yes.  They were going to find me innocent.”

Rachel’s jaw clenches, hands turning into fists at her sides.  “Goddamnit, Mike.  Goddamn you.”  Tears creep into her voice.

“I know.”

“I told you to have faith.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“What the hell do you mean it doesn’t–”

“This is the only way I can make sure Harvey’s okay!  What don’t you get!  This, this right here, me doing this, this is the only guarantee I could have that Harvey doesn’t face this same thing five months down the road!”

“And what about me?”

“That’s my fucking point, Rachel!  If we belonged together, we would have mattered more when I made my choices!”  

Mike deflates.  The fight leaves him in a rush.  A few, painfully numb moments later, he turns away from her and walks out.

*****

Mike walks without direction.  

A corner bar seems like a good idea until he steps inside, and then the memory of Harvey throwing that glass of scotch across his apartment turns Mike’s stomach.  He walks on.  Central Park – a place Mike had criss-crossed a thousand times on his bike – feels like a purgatory of memories of freedom, so he keeps walking.  His feet take him across the 78th Street pedestrian bridge and he stares at the East River.

Roosevelt Island’s streetlights shine across the water.  His mind digs up his elementary school history lessons.  The island was called Blackwell Island back then, and the city’s prisons were there.  His eyes drift to the north end where the lighthouse sits.  Block by block, inmates built it up like a monument to their crimes. In his memories, Mike sees the New York local history book that had yellowing pages and black and white photos.  The caption beneath a map of all the 19th Century asylums, slums, and jails gave it the terrible nickname “Farewell Island.”

Tears wet Mike’s cheeks.

*****

It’s both surprising and totally unsurprising to find Mike blinking awake on his couch in the morning.  

“You told her the jury would have let you go free, didn’t you,” Harvey asks, walking briskly by him on his way to the kitchen.

“It’s over,” Mike says in a gravelly voice. Harvey jerks his head to look at Mike, hunched over on his couch and looking down at the floor.  “Me and Rachel. It’s done.”

“She dumped you?” Harvey asks after a moment.  He’s not sure how he feels: badly for Mike, angry towards Rachel for kicking a man when he’s down, or resigned to the fact that this was probably always what was going to happen.  He holds a cup of coffee out to Mike as he comes to sit next to him.

Mike laughs, though there’s no mirth in it.  “Actually?  The opposite.” 

Harvey rolls his eyes.  “You set her free.  Of all the self-sacrificing–”

“I am not that honorable,” Mike interrupts.  “This wasn’t self-sacrifice. This was waking up.”

Harvey looks into Mike's eyes.  His tired, sad, angry, resolute eyes.  “I don’t understand.”

Mike nods, taking a sip of coffee, closing his eyes as the dark brown liquid coats his throat.  “Neither did she.”  Clearing his throat he leans forward to put the mug down on the coffee table before him.  “Listen, I don’t want to get into it.  I’m not ready to.”  He frowns, shaking his head. “I don’t even know if I can put it into words, Harvey, it just…”  He nods.  “It was already over, I just unplugged the machine.”

Harvey nods slowly, looking down at his watch.  “You need a ride to Danbury?”

Mike smiles softly, looking down as he plays with his fingers.  “What, no last minute attempt to get me to go back on my word?  No plane tickets to Buenos Aires?”

“If I thought I had half a chance, I would,” Harvey says, leaning his shoulder into Mike’s.  “But I don’t, do I?”

“No,” Mike says.  Leaning back into Harvey, Mike gives him a bemused expression.  “But I could be convinced to eat some of your scrambled eggs and avocado toast if you really tried.”

Harvey grins.  This, he can make happen.

*****

Mike thought he would know how this would go.  He’d read about prison intake procedures.  He’d seen enough pop culture representations of it to find the common thread.  He knew he’d be off-kilter.  He knew he’d get put in his place by a guard or three.  He knew people would eye him up.  He knew it’d feel bad.

He just didn’t know it’d feel this bad .

As the barber shaves his hair off, pieces of it falling against his cheek, Mike is hollowed out.  Becoming inmate number 53296 is stripping away his identity.  A dull blue shirt and plain pants replace the thousand dollar suit that Harvey had finally convinced him to buy.  They replace his favorite red t-shirt – the one with the hole in the armpit and the coffee stain on the hem – that he always wears to bed.  His bike is gone.  Any good he managed to do for the world working as a corporate lawyer is gone.  

He is anonymous now.  

Mike is glad Grammy isn’t here to witness this.  

*****

Harvey can’t get rid of this roiling tension in his gut. He’s only felt this way twice in his life: When he found out his mother was cheating on his dad, and during the whole Liberty Rail thing where it looked like Donna would end up in jail. This, right now, is worse. 

He works through the night the first night Mike’s in prison.  Writing notes in the margins of his files, scratching out whole paragraphs in the briefs.  Reading the same affidavit three times in a row and retaining none of it.

Jessica finds him when she arrives at the office at 6 a.m.  He's on his office couch, head in his hands, sleeves shoved up to his elbows. She’d heard the melancholic musical tones from three offices away.

“What's going on in here?” She turns off Harvey's record player. The needle was hiss-skipping at the end of Willie Nixon’s “I am the Blues.”

Harvey is the blues. “Working late,” he says. He can't hide the half full glass of bourbon and the mostly empty bottle on the table in front of him.  Doesn’t even have it in him to want to.

“Bullshit.” 

“Bullshit?” He asks, too aggressively. “I'm here busting my balls for this firm–”

“Is that what you're doing?” Jessica interrupts. “From where I'm standing it looks like you're wasting this firm’s time.”

Harvey picks up a folder, trying to formulate a half-truth to bluff with.  Jessica sees his move before he even makes it. 

She looms over him. “That kid gave you – gave us – a gift. He's in prison. We aren't. Wake up, Harvey. Take that gift and make something of it.” 

Harvey looks up to finally meet her eyes.  “I don't know if I know how to do that without him here anymore, Jessica.”

She looks him over appraisingly.  “Go home,” she orders.  Her hand on his shoulder is sympathetic but unyielding.  “I mean it, Harvey.  Go home.  Take a long weekend.  Sleep.  Come back bright and early Monday.”

Harvey blinks up at her.  He has never been this adrift.  “And then what the fuck do I do?”

She smiles at him, reaching to touch his cheek.  She quickly cuffs him upside the head instead.  “You figure it the fuck out, Harvey.  Just like you always do.”

*****

>> I’m so sorry for how I handled last night, Rach  

>> I didn’t express myself well and I don’t think text will be able to do it justice either, 

>> but I’m sorry for the words I used and how abruptly I said it  

>> I do love you

>> I do care about your feelings

>> I just realized that I don’t love you enough

>> I didn’t consider you enough when I made my choice 

>> I should be putting us first if I am in love with you, but I didn’t

>> and that that says everything

>> I’m not even sure if I fully understand what it means

>> but I do know it means we’re not meant to be together

>> I’m sorry.

“Thanks,” Mike says, handing the phone back to his cellmate.

“No problem, Mike,” Frank says, immediately opening the phone to the text messages.

“Hey, what are you doing?  Could you…”  Mike frowns, feeling uncomfortable.  “Could you at least wait to read it until I’m asleep? That’s personal shit.”

“Aw, Mikey,” Frank says, grinning a smile that makes all the blood in Mike’s body go cold.  “Did you break up with your girl over Harvey too?  You’re in here cuz of him, and now you’ve told your girl to scram too?”  He looks over at Mike, amusement lighting up his entire face.  A stark contrast to the empathetic mask he’s shown until now.  Shit, Mike should’ve known it was fake.  “How many lives is Harvey gonna ruin before he’s stopped?”

“Who prosecuted you?” Mike asks, panic gripping his throat.

“Don’t be stupid, Mike, you already know,” Frank says, standing up and pounding on the door three times.  “Thanks for my new toy, though. I’m going to enjoy playing with…”  He looks back down at his phone.  “Rach.  Rachel, is it?”

Mike springs up out of bed and walks right up to Frank, grabbing him by his shirt and slamming him against the door.  “You leave her the fuck alone.”

“It’s cute,” Frank says as the door opens behind him, a guard standing there looking harassed.  “He thinks he gets a say on me doing anything .”

“Come on, Frank, hurry up. I gotta get you to your cell before the shift change.”

“I can, and will, do whatever I want,” Frank says, leaning closer to Mike, speaking directly in his ear.  “Whenever I want.”

Mike doesn’t expect the punch Frank throws and he hits his head against the metal bedframe on his way down.  The guard does nothing.  Not a single thing.

Chapter Text

Mike comes to on the floor of his cell aching in the dark.  He lets out a hiss when he gingerly touches his cheekbone.  There’s no blood at least.  He drags himself into his bunk and tries to sleep through the pounding headache.  

Too soon, he’s startled awake by a guard yelling at him to get up. “Get your ass out of bed!  Time for breakfast! There’s no brunch here!”  His nightstick rattles on the end of Mike’s metal bunk.  

Mike winces at the bright overhead lights.  A brown-haired prisoner with sad eyes looks at him from the door.  “C’mon, man.  It’s better if you just do things on time the way they ask.”

His head throbs.  He’s slept maybe three hours in the last three days.  The weak coffee doesn’t fix things.  Neither does seeing Gallo’s smirking face across the cafeteria when he makes a phone gesture next to his ear.  Mike sits by himself at the end of a table and makes eye contact with no one.  

*****

Harvey stands at his window exactly where Mike stood the night before he went in.  Outside, Manhattan traffic goes by.  The city is so full of life in all its stinking, loud, creative, human beauty, but it’s silent from up here.  Harvey is insulated from the sound.  

Apt.  

Mike gave up all of that New York life in himself to insulate Harvey from the punishment he deserved.  Somehow this seems as stifling as a jail cell.

*****

“Hey, man.”

Mike looks up to find the man who’d been in his cell this morning. This guy is Mike’s actual cellmate.

“Can I sit?”  He points at the seat across from Mike’s at the common room table.  

Mike had been absently flipping through a paperback.  He sets it aside and makes direct eye contact with him.  “That depends,” Mike responds.  “Are you going to stab me – a complete stranger to you – in the back again?”

“It wasn’t personal.”  At least the guy looks a little ashamed.

“Felt pretty personal to me when I got punched in the face by your buddy.  I don’t think I am interested in having a chat with a guy who is friends with Frank Gallo.”  Mike picks up his book again and turns to a random page.  

The guy sits down anyway.  “He’s not my friend,” he hisses.  

“Then what?  He paid you in cigarettes and porn magazines?”

“I did it so I wouldn’t end up the one getting a beating,” he aggressively whispers.

Mike looks at him.  The guy’s eyes scan the room.  He’s not twitchy, but paranoia is leaking off him.

“I get it,” Mike eventually says.  

“I’m Kevin,” he replies, clearly relieved at Mike’s response.  “I didn’t know you were going to get it that bad. The guard just came in and told me I was sleeping in the other–”

“Kevin,” Mike interrupts.  “ Kevin . I said, I get it.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“So, maybe we should stick together.”

Mike raises an eyebrow, still suspicious of motive but out of his depth enough to cautiously trust him until proven wrong again.  “Safer that way?”

Kevin’s eyes scan the room again.  “Probably, yeah.” 

*****

Harvey doesn’t get to go home and decompress for long. Jessica calls a few hours into his forced sabbatical. She's in a cold rage that barely masks her panic. 

“They're leaving.”

“Who’s leaving?”

“Everyone! Goddamn it, Harvey, they're all leaving. Going to other firms and taking their client lists.”

“I'll be there.”

“Hurry.”

And the life of the firm supersedes wallowing over Mike being in Danbury… for a little while, anyway. On his cab ride to the firm, Harvey gets Dean Morello on the phone.  He pries a tentative assurance out of Dean that Morello Asset Group will still be PSL’s client through this shit storm.

“Harvey, do you remember telling me that your firm needed to be above board with the DOJ? That you would be going through my company's records with a fine toothed comb to look for corruption?” Dean pointedly asks him. 

Harvey sighs into the phone. He knew this would come up. “I remember. And now our dirty laundry is hung up for the world to see, just like yours was when Burt Kimball fucked around and found out that Pearson Specter Litt is a force to be reckoned with. Now we are doing our penance, just like you did.” It rips at Harvey's insides to imply that anyone other than Mike is suffering for this.  He grips the elevator’s handrail as he rides up to the 50th floor.  

“If this Mike Ross guy happened right under your nose, how am I supposed to–”

“See, Dean, this is how you and I relate. Both of us had someone beneath us committing fraud.” Harvey's stomach turns at his words. “This is something we share. No other firm will know yours better than mine. No other counsel will know you better than I will.” 

Dean Morello quietly curses on the other end of the line.  “Hell. Pearson Specter Litt helped us, but this is a huge ask, Harvey. I'll call Jessica in the morning with my decision.”

As soon as Morello hangs up, Harvey races to the men's room, throws open a stall, and tries not to vomit into the bowl. 

Later, well after midnight, he and a lone first year associate are the only ones in the firm’s library.  A legal pad full of crossed out ideas sits on a stack of case law journals.  An empty to-go cup of coffee, lid off, has a napkin stuffed in it.  Harvey’s watch is off his wrist, and it ticks seconds off, minutes, hours where it sits on the table.  Harvey tugs at his hair. His stomach still is roiling. 

Idea after idea for getting Mike exonerated and for enforcing the firm’s noncompetes have proven unworkable.  Harvey can’t focus long enough to force the law into submission. His thoughts are spinning around how he verbally threw Mike under the bus on the phone earlier, how he blamed everything on him. The emptiness in Mike’s expression when Harvey brought him to Danbury... all of his excitement and passion for their work gone. Mike was a husk of his former self, and it’s Harvey’s fault.  

Harvey angrily shoves the books and papers off the table with a frustrated yell.  

“Um, Mr. Specter, sir? What about–” the associate starts.

“No,” Harvey says, not even giving the first year’s theory the courtesy of a listen.  He’d commandeered the guy because he was one of the only saps that hadn’t left in The Mass Exodus of Pearson Specter Litt after Mike’s conviction.  

“But–”

“I said no ,” Harvey yells, and he hears Mike laughing at him inside his head.  Something about how Harvey picked the weakest link associate because he never wanted the help in the first place, he just wanted someone to lash out at.

It’s true.

*****

How long it will take to actually sleep in prison, Mike wonders.  A week?  A year? Until the next time Gallo clobbers him in the face?

Maybe prisoners in movies exercise so much just to exhaust themselves into passing out overnight. Maybe Mike should get out of his bunk and do sit-ups until his body’s fatigue outweighs his head’s nonstop noise.

Kevin snores a little. 

Being in here is like being a scared 11 year old kid all over again.  You don’t know what to expect from people.  You desperately want to trust a new friend, but what if they pull the rug from under you?  Mike looks at Kevin in the dark and wonders which kind of guy he is. 

*****

Harvey is worse for the wear. He blinks his eyes, dry from lack of sleep. He hasn’t gone to the gym in days, hasn’t showered.  He forces himself to stop clenching his teeth. 

At least Morello called Jessica this morning and agreed to stay with the firm.  Harvey didn’t stick around after Jessica gave him the news.  He should have.  There’s a mountain of work that needs to be done and only a few of them left to do it.  There are clients to call, fires to put out.  But Harvey can’t do that right now.  Right now he has to be somewhere else before he puts his fist through the glass of his office wall.

“Harvey!  Where are you–”

“Donna.  Not now.”

She throws up her hands in exasperation.  “What am I supposed to tell Jessica?”

He doesn’t have an answer for her.  He just needs to leave before the walls close in on him.  Donna eyes Harvey with pity he does not fucking want when the elevator doors close between them.  

Within the hour, Harvey has the jangly alertness of espresso, simmering anxiety, and driving over the speed limit on I-87.  Shifting into fifth, he pushes into the fast lane.  Harvey paid double to get his favorite Mustang Fastback for the day.  Just like Bullitt in the eponymous movie, Harvey is responsible for losing his most important asset.  Bullitt had his key informant, and Harvey had Mike.  As he drives, the wheels of the car rhythmically thump over the seams in the pavement, and the line from the movie repeats over and over in his head.

You blew it. 

You blew it.  You knew the significance of his testimony, yet you failed to take adequate measures to protect him. 

Failed to protect him.

Failed.

To you, it was a job, no more. Were it more, and you had the dedication I was led to believe...  

You blew it.

You failed.

Harvey pounds a fist on the steering wheel as he pulls into Danbury’s parking lot.  

“What the hell am I even doing?” he whispers.  

Harvey doesn’t go inside to see Mike.  Unshowered and five o’clock shadowed, he can’t go in there like he’s the one suffering.  Even going in there as Mike’s counsel won’t fly when he looks like last week’s leftovers.  Instead, he parks at the back of the lot and stares at the barbed wire.  His mind fills with static.  Any productive ideas are hidden behind the fuzz.  Still, he tries to focus.  Just one brainstorm, one lightbulb moment and Mike will be out. Harvey needs to find one loophole for Mike.  

A guard starts approaching the car.  Harvey’s knuckles go white from gripping the steering wheel in frustration.

“Perfect,” Harvey mutters. It isn’t.  It’s undignified at best.  Harvey drives away before he’s confronted. It feels like running away with his tail between his legs.  

*****

“So, is there a way to look up old newspapers online here?”

Kevin stirs some gloop on his lunch tray that's supposed to be beef chow mein.  “There are paper newspapers, the daily ones.  They put them in the library room.  Sometimes they get stolen or torn up or drawn on, so it’s not very reliable.”

“What about older issues?  Let’s say from a decade ago?”

Green-brown sauce drips in a blob from Kevin's fork. He shakes his head. “They throttle internet access unless you’re taking a class for credit, and sometimes even then. I tried to look up articles about my case when I got here. All of that recent stuff is blocked. No YouTube. No major news sites. No online games. Best you can get is a limited catalog of e-books and whatever stuff the library has.”

Mike opens his fortune cookie and pushes his own tray away. Damn it. He needs to find out the story between Gallo and Harvey without Harvey losing his mind about Mike's safety. 

The slip of paper in Mike’s fingers says,

TAKE THE CHANCE WHILE YOU STILL HAVE THE CHOICE

*****

Harvey’s stomach growls.  He hasn’t eaten since… last night?  Yesterday some time.  A roadside diner comes into view on the left.  He pulls in, thinking about a greasy cheeseburger or maybe a chicken fried steak.  He should have noticed the black rental car in the next parking space over…

“Harvey,” Sean Cahill intercepts him on the way to a booth in the back.  Two more men in suits – Harvey vaguely recognizes one from the U.S. Attorney’s office – sitting at another booth, napkins crumpled in front of them and cups of coffee being refilled by a tired-looking waitress.  

“Sean.”

“Visiting your prom date?  I hear he’s in Danbury.”

Harvey’s scowl has Cahill throwing up defensive hands between them.  

“Sore subject,” Cahill smirks.  

“What are you doing here?” Harvey asks, deflecting.

“Christofferson–” Sean gestures at the men at the table, “--has an informant he’s working.  I am considering a similar angle and wanted to discuss some things with the warden to get it off the ground.”

“Hm,” Harvey replies.  He doesn’t have the energy for this now.  “Don’t let me keep you.”

Sean looks him over.  “This thing has you tied up in knots.”

“I said: don’t let me keep you.”

“Considering you knew about Ross’s fraud the whole time we were working on the Forstmann case, I think I’ll poke at your wounds a little.”

“The whole time we were winning that case for you, you mean?”

Harvey and Sean stare at each other.  Sean drops it first, looking at the ceiling and shaking his head.  

“Pull yourself out of your misery before anyone sees you back in the city again, Harvey.  You smell like angst.”

*****

“So what are you in for,” Kevin asks as they spend some down time in their cell.  “Let me guess: it wasn’t you.”

Mike smirks, playing absently with a deck of cards he’d five-finger-discounted from the rec room.  “Everyone in here is innocent.  Don’t you know that?”

Kevin looks at him, grinning.  “ Shawshank .”

Mike laughs, “That was a gimme.”

“Better question:  Who are you here for?”

Mike’s laugh dies.  “What do you mean?”

“You seem pretty smart.  I saw you talking with Monaghan about his Yeats book.  You give off the vibe of a guy who is a thinker, not a fighter.”  

“Thanks?”

Kevin explains, “Word is you’re here because you were pretending to be a lawyer for the last couple years.  You’ve got to have a lot up here,” Kevin taps at his temple, “in order to pull that off. I figure, maybe you could’ve figured your way out of it if it was just you on the line.  So, who are you in here for?”

Mike tries to calculate what Kevin’s angle is. Did he put two and two together, or is someone priming him with this info? How might Mike get fucked over if he answers Kevin honestly?  In the end, he decides lies are harder to keep track of.  

“There’s only two people I trust.  One of ‘ems me.  The other’s not you.”

Kevin’s smile falters.  “Fair enough. I was just making conversation.”  After a moment of silence he cocks his head to the side, looking confused.  “Wait.  Was that a line from Shawshank again?”

“ Con Air ,” Mike answers, grinning.  “The other person that I trust, he’s why I’m here.”

“Oh.”  Kevin nods, looking away.  “So it was him or you, and he fucked you over.”

Mike laughs. “Actually, no.  This is me fucking him over actually.”

Kevin frowns.  “Huh?”

Mike nods.  “It was me or him, and I beat him to the punch in taking the blame.  He’s pretty pissed at me.”

“Damn,” Kevin says, respect in his voice.  “Don’t run into loyalty like that very often.”

“Loyalty might be all I have left of myself that’s worth a damn thing,” Mike says to the cards in his hands, not looking up.  “Can’t give that up.”

*****

“Can you find out who Christofferson at the DOJ is?”

“I already know who he is,” Donna says, grinning down at him.  “James Christofferson.  Yale graduate.  Married.  Husband is the art director at the Met.”

Harvey pauses. Donna never fails to be excellent at her job. “Okay then.  Can you find out what cases he’s working right now?”

“Why?”

“I ran into Sean Cahill yesterday and he said something about Christofferson having an informant in Danbury.”

Donna winks at him.  “Say no more.”

*****

Her warm-yet-professional, friendly-but-removed voice on the other end of the line makes Mike close his eyes and smile.  That little bit of home.  Familiarity.  “Donna,” he says.

“Mike! How are you doing?”  Her admin voice disappears, replaced with relief.  She’s glad to hear from him.  Donna is a balm to his soul.

He doesn't need her to worry unnecessarily, so… “Sunshine and roses.”

She snorts.  “Yeah, dumb question.”

“It's ok,” he interrupts before she can self-flagellate for asking an obvious question.  “The sentiment is appreciated. Thanks.”

Donna pauses. Mike knows what's coming. 

“I talked to Rachel–”

“Donna,” he says, eyes closing in pain at the mention of his ex-fiancée.  “This isn't a social call. I'll tell you all about that a different day, I promise.”

She sighs. Mike imagines her face, judgemental and resigned. Donna wouldn’t kick Mike’s ass for very many reasons, but Rachel is one of those reasons.  

“Fine. I'll get Harvey.”

“No! Wait!” Mike blurts. “I called to ask you for some information.”

“And you…” Her tone turns conspiratorial and he knows she's leaning into the conversation, even though there's two phones and a lot of miles between them, “...don't want him to know you're asking.”

“Exactly.”

“Hit me.”

“Frank Gallo.”

There’s a long pause. Mike can see her in his mind's eye casting her wary gaze around the office.  Then, so quiet he almost can't hear her:  “Shit.”

*****

Something about his run in with Cahill sits with Harvey for days afterwards.  He keeps turning the encounter at the diner over and over in his head.  Why, why does it feel like he's missing a piece of a puzzle?   

Donna hit roadblock after roadblock at the DOJ.  Whomever Christofferson has informing from inside Danbury is being kept deep under wraps.  

Then it hits Harvey at 9 p.m. sitting in front of the television watching baseball highlights.   

“Shit.”  Harvey sits upright on his couch, fully awake with an idea that might actually work.  He fumbles his phone into his hand and dials.

“Donna.  Find out where Sean Cahill is right now.”

“What’s this about?”

“I think I can get Mike out early if I can get Sean to–”

“Say no more.  I’ll text you in a few minutes.” And Donna hangs up.

He is swishing mouthwash into the sink when his phone pings with an address of a swanky martini bar in Lenox Hill. Harvey quickly changes into a clean suit.  He’s still tightening his tie when he runs out his door.  

In less than ten minutes, he’s walking up to Sean and saying, “Could I run an idea by you?”

*****

Mike is barely awake enough for first call to breakfast when Harvey shows up the next morning.  Mike is probably still a little pissed off from the Gallo bullshit, and he’s definitely a little bit pissed off because it’s taken several days for Harvey to show his face here.  So, maybe Mike’s being a little petulant, staring at him silently from across the table, arms crossed over his chest.

Mike forgot about his bruises though.  He realizes his mistake when Harvey’s eyes immediately zero in on his face, rage overtaking the slightly guilty look he’d entered the meeting room with.

“Who gave you that black eye?”

Mike closes his eyes and bows his head.  It’s too fucking early for this.  “Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it?  You’re in here for barely a week and you get in a fight?”

“I’m handling it.”

“You’re handling it.”

Mike grits his teeth.  Harvey goaded him into punching him on the eve of his prison sentence to prep him for exactly this.  Why is he being obtuse?  “Yes, Harvey, I’m handling it.”

“Who did this?”

“Stay out of it, Harvey.  Anything you do about him is going to make my time in here harder.”

“Who, Mike?”

Mike grits his teeth.  “Frank Gallo,” he says finally, leaning forward and grabbing onto Harvey’s arm before Harvey can fly off the handle.  “I said I’ve got this.”

Harvey stares down at the way Mike’s fingers wrap around his wrist.  “Goddamnit, Mike, he’s not even supposed to be in Danbury.  We put him in Fairton.  What’s he doing in a low security prison?”

“I don’t need you to worry about me, Harvey,” Mike says, letting him go and leaning back in his chair.  Gallo is plenty dangerous from what Donna told him, but Mike does not want Harvey involved.  He gives him something else to sink his teeth into instead.  “I need you to worry about Rachel.”

Mike proceeds to explain just how his first night went in prison, and how Gallo was now a threat to Rachel.  Harvey does not take it particularly well.  Every time he looks like he’s going to boil over, Mike puts his hand back on Harvey’s arm and squeezes harder on his wrist.  Eventually, Harvey nods and says he'll take care of it. 

The relief Mike feels is physical.  Tension he didn’t realize he’d been holding in his shoulders evaporates.  

“Are you going to take off my shackles now?” Harvey asks.  

They both look at where Mike’s hand is still wrapped around Harvey’s forearm.  Mike doesn’t really want to let go.  It means he’ll be alone in here again.  

It takes long seconds for Mike’s fingers to relax.  It’s enough time for Mike to think about how easy it was to let Rachel go.     

*****

When Mike first met Father Walker, he’d hated him.  He hated him deep down in his soul, with no room to figure out why or if it was justified.  Mike’s 11-year-old brain decided Father Walker represented every deep, dark, ugly thing Mike had hidden down in his psyche. He hated Father Walker because 11-year-old Mike didn't know how to deal with two dead parents and the knowledge that God didn’t, apparently, give a shit about him.

It doesn’t feel all that different to 35 year old Mike.  Sitting down with the prison psychologist is like going into Father Walker’s confessional.  Suffice it to say, Mike is ready to be chastised for getting into it with Gallo.  And he’s ready to make a smart comment in response.  And, probably, to hate Julius Rowe for all the wrong reasons.

A few minutes into their talk, however, Mike is considering that Julius might be different.

“I’m no one in here.  I’m a number,” Mike says, jabbing at the identification number on his shirt pocket.  

“You're still Mike Ross,” Julius says.  “But my job is to help you become a better version of him when you leave than when you came in. And if you trust me, that just might happen.”

Mike looks at him long and hard at that. Part of him wants to push back on authority. But Grammy’s voice is the angel on his other shoulder.  

Michael, there’s no reason to keep digging this hole you’ve gotten yourself into.  If someone is being nice to you, let them.  

So, Mike takes the notebook and pencil that Julius hands over.  There are stamps and envelopes on the corner of the desk.

“I think you should start by writing a letter.  Pick someone who makes you a better man.”

*****

“It’s done.”  Harvey’s voice is tinny down the prison phone line.  “Rachel is getting a new phone number.  She knows the texts weren’t you past the first message.  She doesn’t forgive you, but she gets it.  She says she’ll talk to you when you’re back home.”  It sounds like he’s reading notes off a page to make sure he gets the details right.  

Mike smiles ruefully, twisting the stiff, metallic phone cord around his wrist.  “Thanks.”  

The moment lasts exactly one second before Harvey says, “I’ve been thinking about what to do about Gallo.”

“Stop.”  Mike stiffens and looks around him before curving more into the wall and lowering his voice.   “I swear to God, Harvey, if you do something.  I told you I’m handling it.”

“You shouldn’t have to handle it, Mike.  It’s my fault.”

Mike shrugs.  “It is what it is.  I’ve had my back up against the wall against bigger, badder foes than Frank fucking Gallo before.  I’ll be fine.”

“Mike.”

Mike rolls his eyes.  “I don’t need a hero.”

After a long pause where Mike swears he hears a small laugh, Harvey says, “Well, I’ll be your Huckleberry.” 

Mike imagines Harvey flicking an invisible cowboy hat like he’s in Tombstone .  God, when had they watched that together?  It was years ago.  Mike had ridden his bike over to Harvey’s with some briefs to sign, and Harvey insisted he needed to watch it with him.  

“You, Harvey, are no Val Kilmer.”

“Not even Val Kilmer with consumption?”

“Maybe Kilmer’s Batman ?”  The sound of Harvey’s scoff comes down the phone line and Mike laughs.  “Come on, he was pretty good as Batman.”

“Better than Clooney doesn’t mean he was good .”

Mike shrugs.  “I thought he was better than the previous dude.”

“The previous dude ?  That’s sacrilege.  Michael Keaton is rolling in his grave.”

“Michael Keaton isn’t dead.”

“He is now because of your Batman rankings.”

Mike laughs.  He wishes he could shake Harvey’s hand again, or maybe feel him squeeze his shoulder in that way he does when Mike really needs it.  A hug would be even better, Mike can’t lie.  Going to prison can make a guy need a hug.  Harvey’s gentle competitiveness about movie rankings is the next best thing, though.  It almost feels normal for a few wonderful seconds.

“I’ll be back up there soon,” Harvey says.  “I’ve got things cooking.”

“Just don’t burn yourself, Harvey,” Mike says, grinning to himself. When Harvey doesn’t continue, nor make a move to disconnect, Mike rolls his eyes.  “Just say it.  Whatever you’ve got up your sleeve, just spit it out.”

“I ran into Sean Cahill.  We got to talking.”

Mike nods, motioning his hand for Harvey to come out with it even knowing that he can’t see the gesture over the phone.  “And? What’s he got going on these days?”

“He’s working a case to put William Sutter behind bars.”

Mike frowns at the inmate who is making impatient gestures at him to get off the phone.  He turns his back on him.  “The investment guy?”

“The investment guy who is involved in insider trading.”

“Sounds like an everyday case for Cahill.”

“It isn’t.  This has something to do with you.”

“Me?  Why is anything the SEC is doing relevant to me?”

“Your cellmate is Sutter’s son-in-law.”

Mike’s eyes go wide and his stomach drops.  “You want me to flip him?”

“It’s your way out.  Cahill will make it happen.”

*****

“How was your meeting with Julius,” Kevin asks over a game of checkers in the rec room. In a room full of eyes, inmates and guards alike, sticking together is definitely the best plan.  You watch my back, I watch yours.

Mike shrugs.  “Fine.  He seems like a reasonable guy.”

Kevin leans closer, lowering his voice.  “You talk about the thing with Gallo?” 

“Yeah,” Mike answers, looking up at him. "He wants me to file a formal report.”

“That's all fine and good,” Kevin says, laughing in such a way that it’s clear he is anything but amused.  “But I need you to understand what he's asking you to do, because if you rat on Gallo, I'm gonna be left here by myself.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact I don’t trust Julius as far as I can throw him.  I'm talking about Mark Higgins. He was my roommate when I first got here.”  Kevin pauses and then lowers his voice even more, casting a nervous look over both shoulders for anyone listening in.  

Mike finds himself understanding why Kevin was a good target for Gallo: scared people are way easier to manipulate.  Mike knows it is a button he can push to get Kevin to move on Sutter, even if it would be a shitty thing to do to the guy.  “He was being harassed by some asshole – not Gallo, but like him – and he was taking a beating a couple times a week.  That counselor, Julius, convinced him to go on record. Three days later, they put him in a coma. He never came out.”

“Not to sound insensitive, but why would that make it Julius’ fault?  That sounds like him doing his job.”

“The guys who did it were bragging about having someone high up looking out for them, keeping them safe and in power.”

“Are they reliable narrators?”

Kevin shrugs.  “All I know is that they stayed at the top of Danbury’s heap until Frank Gallo got transferred in here, and then they went out on stretchers.”

Mike jumps his checker over Kevin’s and thinks.

*****

Dear Harvey, 

I missed my chance to start carving tally marks in my cell wall on night #1.  Is it too late to start now?  I may not be getting the whole prison experience.

The prison psychologist gave me homework: I’m supposed to write a letter.  So, here’s the letter.  Imagine it’s a postcard with a palm tree on it and I’m writing with a mai tai in the other hand.  

In case you’re overanalyzing this, wondering why I haven’t written “Wish you were here,” just stop.  I am the one who violated the law.  I’m the one doing the time.  It’s my time to do, not yours.

– M

P.S. Let me know when you get this. I'm curious about how fast this Pony Express works.

*****

Donna is hovering when Harvey gets to work.  

“I put a letter on your desk.”

“From?”

“Postmarked from Danbury.”

Harvey wastes no time sliding a pen under the envelope’s flap.  Donna smirks and goes back to her desk when Harvey pulls out stationery to write a response.  

M–

I don’t overanalyze.

What I do do is see through your ploy to keep me away from Danbury.  Having a prison pen pal isn’t my end goal.  You know what is.  We can make it happen if we stay focused.  

–H

P.S. Three days by the looks of it. I won't be putting money on these ponies.  If something is urgent, call and I'll drive up.

*****

“I just got out of a meeting with Dominic Barone,” Harvey says into his phone.

“And?”  Jessica’s question is sharp.  

“And McKernon Motors is sticking with us.”

Jessica’s relieved exhale is audible over the line.  “Good work.”

“Just one of many that will.”

“Your hubris is unbelievable, Harvey.”

“It’s how I’m built.”

“Don’t I know it.”

Harvey slides into the back seat of Ray’s car.  “I’m not letting this firm fail, Jessica.  Not after I caused this mess.”

“Good.”

Harvey is keeping his first ever client, and he is going to – somehow – keep the best associate-turned-colleague he’s ever had.  There will be something for Mike to come home to after all of this, Harvey will guarantee it.  

He pats his breast pocket.  The letter from Mike is still safely there.

*****

Mike’s mattress is lumpy.  Right in the middle of his back.  He should try flipping it end-for-end.  Maybe this is the way white-collar prison gets you.  One minor annoyance at a time, each wearing away at you like a little piece of sandpaper until it shaves off all the rough edges.  

Mike likes his rough edges.  

Or, does he?  

Loyalty, industriousness, persistence… All of those things are great.  Admirable even.  He’s proud of those aspects of himself.  But, Mike supposes, they have a bad side too.  It’s a spectrum.  Do any of them too little and you’re a lazy, selfish bastard.  Do any of them too much and you’re a self-righteous workaholic.  Commit yourself to using your big brain to solve pro bonos by finding loopholes, and get yourself committed to jail for fraud because you bent the rules until they broke.  

Julius would nod approvingly at Mike for this introspection.  

Mike rolls over onto his stomach and puts his face into his pillow.  He should probably get over the whole “needs external approval and validation from men in power” thing while he’s working on himself.

He mulls over what Kevin told him: Julius can’t be trusted.  That story about Mark Higgins getting killed after filing a formal report at Julius’ urging sounds… plausible.  It’s equally as plausible that Julius suggested Kevin do the same thing and Kevin refused.  Mike can’t really blame him.  Gallo has guards in his pocket somehow.  Who would even come to help if Gallo or someone else like him had Kevin in his crosshairs?  

Shit.  Mike rolls over again and stares at the ceiling.  His bedsprings squeak.  Kevin snores gently but doesn’t wake.  Getting Kevin to testify is going to be an uphill battle.  Julius told Mark Higgins to go by the book and look where it got him.  What irony that, in a place like this, following the rules to the letter is not a recipe for success.  

How’s that for a realization?  

*****

Dear Harvey, 

I met a guy here who knows computers inside and out.  So, email it is.  A little bit hush-hush.  Imagine the Mission Impossible theme playing every time you read an email from me.  

What do you figure the odds are on the cafeteria here serving pizza with cheese in the crust? I could really go for some of the garlic knots from Mancuso’s too.

I'm considering the deal you presented to me. My concerns outweigh the benefits. You know I'm all about that risk-reward calculation. 

– M

*****

M–

I am not Uber Eats. You'll have to petition the governor for garlic knots leniency. 

There are only benefits in that case. There are no downsides to this, Mike. You have to move on it. It's open and shut. Plus, your risk-reward calculation always gets sweetened by your love of the action.

–H

*****

Harvey’s never really noticed just how much downtime he has at night, alone, until he’s sitting there in the dark drinking a whiskey. He realizes these days he doesn’t listen to music, he doesn’t watch TV, he doesn’t watch movies.  He thinks about Mike.  He makes plans about Mike.  He imagines being the Big Goddamn Hero, for Mike.

He would wonder just when his life became so completely about this kid, but it’s kind of pointless.  The fact of the matter is, his life is completely about Mike.  That’s just what it is, for better or for worse.

This evening he’s caught up in a game of ‘let's figure out how many days Harvey’s been without Mike since first starting working with him’, because missing Mike right now physically hurts.  Harvey feels like an addict.  Surely they’ve spent more time apart than this, haven’t they?

There was the time Harvey gave Mike to Louis for a couple days and regretted it almost immediately.  

And there were the few days Mike took off for his grandmother’s funeral.  Understandable.  

There were the three months Mike worked at Sidwell Financial – the three lowest months in Harvey’s recent life until this recent fiasco – where Harvey and Mike barely spoke.  When they did talk, it was only to fight from opposite sides of Gillis’ and then Forstman’s cases.

A weekend day here or there.  

Mike and Harvey saw each other almost every day for the last five years with very few exceptions.  Harvey sits on his couch and tries to add it up, but it hurts just a little too much. 

He tosses a baseball up and catches it instead.    

*****

“Mike, how is the kitchen duty working for you?”

“I have to quit that job,” Mike says, leaning forward out of his chair to make his point.

Julius scoffs. “You can’t just quit a job in here.  That’s not how it works.”

“Well, it’s going to have to start working that way, because…”  Mike trails off, uncertain of how to make Julius know it’s about Kevin’s safety without having Julius know that this is about Kevin’s safety.  

Julius sits there, contemplating, for long enough that Mike stands up and frustratedly paces in the tiny office.  “Are you going to file the formal complaint against Frank Gallo like I advised you to?” Julius finally asks.

The tension in the small office is palpable.  Mike holds uncomfortable eye contact with the therapist.  “I’ll talk to the warden about it, but not you.”

Julius’s eyebrows rise sharply.  “Because?”

Mike levels him with a look.  “Because the memory of Mark Higgins compels me to play my cards close to the vest.”

Julius’ mouth falls open slightly.   “Who…  How did you…  What in the hell do you think–”  Cutting himself off from spluttering more half finished sentences, Julius jabs a finger onto the pile of paperwork on his desk, voice low and angry.  “You don’t know anything, Ross.” 

“I know he filed a formal complaint at your urging and he ended up dead.”

Julius’ eyes flick to the window, noting the guard walking past.  Mike doesn’t miss the fact that Julius’ complexion goes a little gray when the guard eyeballs him.  Mike doesn’t quite know what to make of that.

“You’re trying to make sense of something with 5% of the facts.”  Julius gets up and opens his office door, a clear sign that their meeting is over.  

When Mike starts to walk out, he catches Julius’ tense whisper:  "Warden Norton can't help you." 

Mike laughs coldly, raising his eyebrows at Julius.  "Is that a threat?" 

"Of course it's not a…”  Julius reaches up and runs his hands over his face, looking exhausted. "Goddamnit, Mike, I'm saying he can't–"  

“Don't give me can't ,” Mike hisses. “He's the warden. He can do whatever he–“

Meeting Mike's eyes, Julius looks disappointed but determined.  "I'm saying he won't help you, Mike.”  He nods, more to himself than anything.  “Now get out of my office.”

*****

Harvey knows it’s a problem.

His first thoughts of the day and last thoughts of the night are inevitably about Mike.  Is Mike sleeping okay?  Is he eating?  Is he keeping his goddamn trap shut around Frank Gallo and managing not to rile him up?

Mike’s rebellious insolence might be one of Harvey’s favorite traits of his, finding it both charming and amusing, but right now he hates that Mike’s never going to be the Go Along to Get Along guy.

He wishes he’d never stopped the car that day.  They should have kept driving right down that empty, winding road that passes in front of Danbury.  Harvey should have grabbed Mike’s arm before he went inside that building and said don’t.  Wait .

He’d promised Buenos Aires to Mike at one point.  He’d give anything to go back in time and make it reality.

Harvey wishes he’d just kept him by his side.  Safe, and where he belongs.

*****

Mike wakes up before Kevin does.  Kevin’s breathing is still slow and steady, and the light from their tiny window is the gray of pre-dawn.  Mike still isn’t sleeping well.  Hell if he knows how Kevin does it.  

Mike uses the time to consider the pros and cons of Harvey’s scheme with Cahill.  

Item 1:  Harvey Specter.  Harvey is safe from prosecution based on the deal Mike cut with Gibbs.  The rest of the firm is safe.  The language of that agreement was perfect.  He’d read it and read it again, and there was no way that Mike’s fraud was coming back around on them.  If Mike gets Kevin to testify against Sutter, it won’t lead to Gibbs getting up in their grills again.  Put a point in the Yes column.

Item 2:  Mike’s future.  Mike’s relationship with Rachel is over.  There’s no moving back into the condo.  When he gets out, he’s going to have to find a place to live.  His bank account can handle it for a while.  Working Kevin doesn’t change that.  One more month in here or doing the full two years, it won’t matter.  He’ll be by himself and a convicted felon either way.  So, that’s another point in the Yes column.

Item 3:  Mike’s conscience.  Getting out of here after a month doesn’t seem like paying for his crimes. Then again, there’s that little spark of defiance that lives inside Mike – the angel-slash-demon that lives on his shoulder – that tells him he did more good in corporate law than any twenty other lawyers in the city.  It also tells him he can’t have his cake and eat it too.  If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.  Suck it up, buttercup.  Mike’s internal voice is sometimes a motivational jackass.  Getting out early will feel like getting off easy, but he might still feel that way in 24 months.  Put this one in the Maybe column.  

Item 4:  Kevin clearly is afraid of prison retaliation.  That story he told Mike about his old cellmate turning up dead made his worries pretty clear.  And, Sutter has huge pockets and could pay someone off.  He could pay many someones.  (Maybe those someones would be the same someones that took out Higgins.  Which, if Mike could figure out… He’s getting ahead of himself, focus Mike, focus).  Flipping Kevin is a huge ask.  It’ll be an uphill battle.  Not that Mike hasn’t tackled something as the underdog before.  Put this down as a Maybe.

Well, fuck.  Two yeses and two maybes don’t add up to a no.  

Kevin snores a little and rolls over.  Mike stares at the ceiling and thinks about how he’s going to do this.

*****

Donna puts a latte in Harvey’s hand.  “Have you heard from him?”

Harvey sighs into his coffee, shaking his head.  “Not enough.”

“Will he be able to get his cellmate to testify?” Donna asks, leaning a hip against Harvey’s desk.

“You know Mike.”  Harvey throws up his hands defeatedly.   “His bleeding heart will get in the way until it doesn’t.”

“I do know Mike,” Donna says, nodding slowly.   “And his bleeding heart is one of his best traits.”

Harvey looks at her.  She’s got an eyebrow up in the way that says fight me . 

“You’re right,” he says, because she is.  

“So.”  Donna leans in until he meets her eyes.  “Will he be able to do it?”

Harvey shrugs.  “Able to?  Of course he’d be able to.  Mike is capable of… literally anything he puts his mind to.  The guy could sell ocean front property in Ohio.  Will he allow himself to, though?”  Harvey shrugs his shoulders.  “I hope so.”

Donna squeezes his arm and they look out the windows at Manhattan.

*****

“Tell me about your kids,” Mike says to Kevin.  

He and Kevin are outside waiting for a turn on the weight bench.  It’ll probably be a while.  There’s a line.  

Kevin has his face turned up to the sun.  His eyes are closed, and a little smile tugs at the corners of his mouth.  

“Nate and Maddy.  She’s older and bossier.”  Kevin’s smile gets wider.  “He’s the baby and has everyone he ever meets wrapped around his little finger.”

“Even you?”

“Especially me.”

“Do they ever visit?”

Kevin’s face gets hard in the space of a heartbeat.  “No.”  He gives up on the line to the work out equipment, instead walking away to gaze out through the fence.

Mike studies Kevin’s stance.  Strong and angry.  Kevin’s reaction right now is not just about Mike’s question landing too close to home.  This is about more.

“You know,” Mike says, stepping up behind Kevin and lowering his voice.  “You’re pretty smart too.”

Kevin huffs out a laugh.  “Yeah, why’s that?”

“Just seem like the type of guy that knows the ropes, knows what rules to break and what rules not to break.”  He steps even closer, even with Kevin and looking out at the same sunset as him.  “I’m saying, you asked me a while back who I’m in here for.  And I told you–”

“Whatever that ConAir quote was: There’s two people you trust and I’m not one of them.”

“That one of them’s me, and the other one’s not you,” Mike corrects.  “Because the other one’s Harvey.”

Kevin looks at him.  “Your lawyer.”

“My–”  Mike swallows, shifting slightly.  “He’s a hell of a lot more than my lawyer.  He’s my…  friend.  My–”

“Partner?”

Mike nods. His face feels hot and he ignores it.  “You’re very protective of your family, Kevin.  I’m not saying I know a whole lot about you, but I know that.  Very, very protective of your family.”  He leans into the word family to make Kevin catch his drift. 

Kevin frowns at him.  “Okay.”

“Why are you in here, Kevin?” Mike asks outright, finally turning to face him.  “Because I think you’re too smart to do something you’d get caught at unless it was for someone you really, really gave a shit about.”

“We all have that person,” Kevin says softly, quietly.  Sad.  “That person you’d do literally–”

“Anything,” Mike finishes.  “Anything and everything in the entire world is what you’d do to protect them.”

Kevin nods.  “Sometimes even stupid things.”

Mike snorts a laugh. “Most times, stupid things.”

Kevin laughs back, knocking his shoulder into Mike’s.  “Yeah.  I’m protective of my family. And maybe I did something stupid to help my family, Mike.  But what I don’t get is why you are asking me about this right now.”

“Your family is yours, and mine is...”  Mike takes a breath, swallowing the panic he can feel fluttering in his chest.  “Mine is Harvey.  I’d do… anything,” he says, shrugging and realizing it’s the 100% truth.

Rachel was never going to come first.  Harvey had that shit in the bag since day one.

“That’s a hell of a thing to do for a law partner, Mike,” Kevin says, turning to face him.  “I hope he earned that type of loyalty.  Somebody willing to go to prison for you for two years?  That’s doing a crazy thing for someone you love type shit, Mike.”

“Yeah,” Mike says, looking away and feeling a panic rise up out of nowhere and start to choke him.  “Yeah, it is.”

Kevin puts a hand on Mike’s shoulder and squeezes.  “It’s okay, Mike.”

Mike clears his throat, trying to ground himself back to the conversation.  The warmth of Kevin’s hand helps more than it should.  “But you’re right.  A person that’s willing to go to prison for someone, that someone better deserve it.  That someone better be someone that would do the same for you, or else what are you doing here.  Because Harvey would’ve.  Your someone… would he have done the same for you?”

Kevin’s eyebrows lower, eyes narrowing, and Mike knows exactly why.  Kevin has never once said he’d done this for his father-in-law.  But Mike just said he , when all hints given would have made anyone else think Kevin’s wife is who he’d done it for.

“No, Mike, he wouldn’t,” Kevin answers then, clearly having caught it but letting it slide for a moment.  He can see the gears working in Kevin’s brain though.   “But she would, and he’s her father, so…  We do stupid things.”

*****

Harvey: 

No downsides? I think you're forgetting I live in here 24-7. Not by myself, either. 

I’m making progress, but I need more time. 

– M

*****

Kitchen shifts are mostly monotonous.  It’s a good place for Mike to be alone with his thoughts.  Peeling carrots is meditative, who knew?

It’s no surprise, then, that he eventually lets himself wonder what it would be like if Harvey was in here and Mike was outside.  Would he still be with Rachel?  Maybe. There wouldn’t have been the physical separation as a catalyst for breaking up.  It would be easy to just stay with her.  But, then again, maybe not.  It wasn’t just Mike going to Danbury that broke them up.  It was Mike’s unspoken – pretty much unrealized – feelings about Harvey that did it.  

Mike puts a peeled carrot in a large metal bowl and takes another unpeeled one from the stack on the countertop.  

Harvey’s hair would be soft if he was here.  Weird that that is what Mike thinks of when he envisions him.  No hair gel.  He’d also have great abs.  And great shoulders.  Harvey would totally do calisthenics in his cell.

“Ross!  What are you doing to that vegetable?  Get moving,” the guard on kitchen duty yells.

Mike snaps out of his unexpected fantasy with a cough.  “Yes, sir.”

Mike forcibly turns his thoughts to Kevin after that, because Harvey is a minefield of distraction and confusion.  

In the end, Mike knows what he needs to do.  He needs to find a way to protect Kevin, to keep Kevin close.  Harvey would know what to do.  He’s got a gun to his head, so he needs to pull out a bigger one, or do any one of 146 other things to fix the situation.

When his shift is over, Mike pockets a label from an industrial sized can of tomato soup. Back in his cell, he flattens it and pulls out a pen.

Dear Mr. Rowe,

It’s your turn to get a letter from me.  You said to write a letter to someone who can make me a better man, and I’m hoping that you will honor this request in that spirit:  It’s a better situation for Kevin Miller to work in the kitchen with me, and I would appreciate it deeply if you could make that switch in his work assignment. You say the warden won't help me, but in this instance you can.  Will you?

Thank you for your consideration,

- Mike Ross

He folds the soup label over and then over again into a square.  It goes back into his pocket until he can see Julius again.  

*****

Harvey is bothered by Mike’s latest email.  Really bothered.  It gnaws at him, turning it over and over in his head.  He reads and rereads it several times over the course of hours.

It’s not until he’s nursing his second whiskey of the evening, laying in bed with some innocuous sports game on in the background, that he realizes:  Honestly, it pisses him off.

Does Mike think this is a walk in the park for Harvey?  That he’s just breezing through his life on the outside not even thinking about what Mike is going through?  

He throws his duvet off and walks to the kitchen.  His glass clangs loudly when he puts it in the sink.  

But, why should he expect Mike to think any differently?  Harvey’s never made it a practice to tell other people his own emotions on any given subject, much less the sheer amount of emotions he has about this particular thing.

He holds things close to the vest, and he always has.

He pulls out his phone and types a message back to Mike.  

M–

There’s no way in hell I could forget where you are and with whom.  

Cahill won’t wait forever.  What do you need to make it happen?

Let me help you, Mike.

–H

*****

“You and your boyfriend are writing letters, now?  I can’t wait to read the smut you’ll be sending each other.”

Gallo slithers up in front of Mike’s workbench in the kitchen.  

“What do you want, Frank?” 

Mike made his voice sound bored and dismissive.  The goading worked, because Gallo angrily leaned in.

“You know what I want, what I’m owed .  Thirteen years.”

“Stay out of my business.”

“I’m not gonna do that.  And you know why?  Because knowledge is a weapon, and I plan on getting all the ammunition about you and Harvey Specter I can.  Harvey can’t help you in here.”

Mike held up the potato peeler and a half-peeled potato.  “Anything can be a weapon when you’re desperate.  Doesn’t mean it’ll be an effective one.”  

Frank glares at him.

Mike laughs.  “You know it kind of loses its effectiveness when you tell me your big game plan.”

“I don’t need secrecy.  I’m gonna come at you right up front street. You’re gonna see me coming and there ain’t shit you can do about it.  Harvey will be begging me to lay off you.  He’ll be crying over your grave.”

An electronic bell chimes out in the common area.  Roll call for everyone not on work duty.  Gallo scowls menacingly and walks out.

Mike drops the forced relaxation. This is not good.

Because the thing is… how the hell does Gallo know he’s writing letters, physical or electronic, to Harvey at all?

*****

Mike hurries to the computer lab the first possible chance he gets.  Tech Wizard e-mail guy looks surprised and suspiciously looks everywhere but at Mike.  It seems like a pretty fair guess that he is involved in Gallo knowing about Mike’s emails to Harvey.  Mike’s not going to deal with that now. Instead, he sits down at the keyboard and thinks about movie nights with Harvey.  

Dear Harvey, 

I was thinking about Cool Hand Luke .  Remember when we watched that?  How often do you suppose prisoners ask for that book at the library, or to watch that movie on Movie Mondays?  

The main character reminds me of someone I used to work with.  The poker skills especially.  When he got that hearts flush.  Anyway, since that movie is all about prison breaks, you’d think it would be a big hit here.  Especially since the protagonist makes it out safely at the end, right?  

– M

*****

“Mike cc-ed me on an email to you.  It meant nothing to me, so I’m here to demand a translation.”  Donna sits on the corner of Harvey’s desk and waits.

Harvey pushes aside the papers he had been reviewing and pounds his fist on the space bar to wake his laptop.

“Oookay,” Donna says.  “Take a second before people start thinking you’ve got that kind of prison pen pal.”

Harvey is too busy reading Mike’s words.  At the first mistake, Harvey’s eyebrows crease.  At the second, he knows something is wrong.  He rereads the email twice to finally see the message hidden in Mike’s words.  

“Our correspondence is being monitored.”

“Can’t be. You’ve got attorney-client privilege. They can’t read that.”

Harvey shakes his head.  “This isn’t protected by attorney-client privilege. These are unsanctioned emails that no one should know about.  I’m not talking about the prison staff.  Someone else.”

“Did you and I read the same email?”

“He wrote about Cool Hand Luke .”

Donna squints at Harvey.  “Yes, and?  You still lost me.”

“He said we watched it together, but we haven’t.  Then, he misquoted the movie.  Mike doesn’t get details like this wrong.”  Harvey feels the moment when cold sweat coats his forehead.  This is not good.  Something is wrong.  

“The memory thing,” Donna gestures at her head.  “That’s enough to know someone who shouldn’t is reading your letters?”

Harvey wants to say obviously .  Instead he chokes out, “I need to find Sean Cahill.”

*****

“I got a letter from Jill today,” Kevin says happily, tossing a half-rotten potato in the garbage bin.  

Turns out Julius must’ve read Mike’s letter after all.  He could help Mike, and, just like Mike had hoped, he had .

They’re on their first work shift together in the kitchen. Mike’s scrubbing pans. Kevin is inventorying the produce.  

“Yeah? Anything to report?”

“Maddy had a dance recital.  Jill was all bent out of shape because they had to dye her ballet slippers gray so she could be an elephant.”  

“A what now?”

“An elephant.  I don’t know.  Some kind of Stravinsky thing.”

“Not the elephant ballet from Fantasia ?”

“You watch too many movies.”

“And you have a pachyderm for a daughter.”

They both laugh until Gallo and two enormous (dare Mike say, elephant-sized) goons come into the kitchen.

“Ha ha ha!  Ho ho ho!  Good to see you in such good moods, gentlemen.”

“What do you want, Frank?”

“Oh, I’m just passing through.  Thought I would introduce you to some friends of mine.”  He gestures to the elephant-goons and keeps walking, right out of the kitchen’s far door.  

Two of the other inmates assigned to kitchen duty take one look at the scene and silently and quickly follow Gallo out of the room.  

If there was any doubt left in Mike’s mind that Gallo fucking ran this place, it is gone.

“Shit,” Mike hisses.  “What is this?”

“A little correspondence from Mr. Miller’s father-in-law,” one of the big guys says.  He looms over Kevin.

“What? I haven’t–”

Kevin’s sentence is cut off with a wheeze as the second goon punches him in the side.  Something clatters to the floor.  Kevin crumples.  

The big guys leave out the kitchen’s other door, but Mike can’t look away from the growing red stain on the side of Kevin’s shirt.  Mike thinks of tomatoes.

“Fuck, Kevin, are you alright?”

Kevin’s eyes are filled with panic and his breath seems trapped in his throat.  Mike shoves a kitchen towel against Kevin’s side. Warm wetness seeps out and touches Mike’s fingers.

“Help. Help! Shit, help!”

*****

Harvey’s hair is damp from the drizzle.  A text from Donna comes with the news of Kevin ending up in the infirmary.  Harvey feels like he might crawl out of his skin.  The need to act, to protect Mike is all-consuming.

When Sean finally arrives home, he definitely isn’t expecting a wild-eyed, soggy Harvey to be there on his front step.  “Jesus, Harvey. It’s midnight.”

Harvey barely holds himself back from grabbing Cahill’s lapels and shaking him.  “It’s important.”

“What–”

“I need you to get me inside.”

Sean grins.  “Inside my condo? Harvey.  Is this you flirting with me?”

Harvey rolls his eyes.  “Inside with Mike.”

“Inside Danbury ? As an inmate?  You’ve got to be joking.”

“Look at my face, Sean.  Do I look like I’m goddamn joking?”

“How am I supposed to get you into a prison?”

“Call the warden.”

“And tell him what exactly? That Harvey Specter, J.D. needs to get into Danbury to… what?  To strongarm evidence out of a potential witness?”

“No, so I can keep Frank Gallo off of Mike.”

Cahill blanches, his usually pink skin going pale as a sheet.  “Frank Gallo?”

“Yes.  I put him away years ago and he got transferred–”

“I know about Gallo. But what are you going to do about him?  Put yourself bodily between them?  Get real.”

“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.  Sean.”  Harvey pulls out his phone and shows the frantic texts from Donna.  “Your informant-to-be just got stabbed.  I’m not going to stand by and let the same thing happen to my guy.”

Sean looks at Harvey then, really looks.  The mania in Harvey’s eyes should tell Sean everything he needs to know.  This is a terrible idea.  But something else tells him that Harvey will not stop until he’s inside or on trial for something much worse.    

“Goddamn Mike Ross.”

“Listen, my motives don’t matter.  The fact of the matter is I’m the best goddamn closer in the business, and if you want Kevin to roll over on Sutter, you need to put me in there with him.”

“You’re psychotic,” Cahill says, but he doesn’t say no.

Chapter Text

The guard shoves Harvey’s shoulder.  “Quit dawdling.”

Harvey rolls his eyes and bites back his usual sharp words.  The next thing he’ll be accused of is lollygagging, or maybe dilly-dallying.  Never in his life has he done any of those things.  Plus, there’s no turning back now, so he’s sure as hell not going to go slowly to his fate.  Instead, Harvey looks straight ahead down the long hall from intake to the prisoners’ common area.  

Finally, there is Mike.  

Mike and a skinny kid with glasses are playing chess. Even from across the room, it's clear that Mike is schooling him. He undoes one of the kid’s moves and quietly explains the better strategy. That's Harvey's guy. So caught up in being a bleeding heart that he doesn't see Gallo lurking on the metal stairs to the upper cells. 

Gallo's a bottom-feeder that wishes he was an apex predator.  He’s perched up there like a vulture, waiting to take advantage of any situation that will give him a bit of power.  He probably thinks he’s some kind of prison Nero, ready to throw a thumbs down to the colosseum.  

Harvey draws his shoulders back and straightens to his full height. Gallo’s cackling hyena facade slips away when his gaze finally lands on Harvey.  Surprise and horror splash across Gallo’s face for the briefest moment, and Harvey claims a little victory.  

Gallo recovers smoothly enough, baring his teeth. It’s melodramatic theater. Harvey just rolls his eyes in response. It's a surprise that Gallo didn't draw his thumb across his neck like a pirate.  Still, Harvey isn’t going to ignore that Gallo is dangerous even if it’s a predictable flavor of dangerous.  

From across the common room, Mike’s eyes lock with Harvey’s for a long moment, an inhale and an exhale. Calm like Harvey hasn't felt in months washes over him. Then Mike's out of his seat in a shot, bumping all the chess pieces across the table. The glasses kid yelps.  Everyone in the room is suddenly watching the show.  

Mike grabs Harvey by the elbow and hauls him into an adjacent reading room. The glass walls offer limited privacy.

“No.”  Mike is white as a sheet.  

“I’m here to–”

“You self-absorbed asshole.  You–”

“Self-absorbed?” This is not going how Harvey envisioned it. His anxiety tries to rear its head and it comes out as anger that mirrors Mike’s. “Hey, I’m in here to watch your back.”

“--can’t let me be the one to jump on the grenade, can you?”

“We got into this together, and we’re sure as hell going to get out of it together too.”

Mike’s breaths are heaving.  His cheeks are going from pale to red.  Harvey’s collar is in one of Mike’s fists.  His anger is rolling over Harvey in a scorching wave.  

“When did you plan on telling me about this?” Mike growls.

“Now.”

“You presumptuous fucker,” Mike says through gritted teeth.  

He leaves Harvey standing there and goes back to pick up the scattered chess pieces.  

*****

Mike is so angry he can hardly see straight.  

Yes, he felt a moment of surprised joy at seeing Harvey’s face across the common room.  But then Harvey’s soft, short hair and blue prison uniform registered and Mike saw red.  

He storms into his cell and yanks the notebook Julius gave him off the shelf.  Harvey’s going to get a piece of his mind in the only way Mike can do it without having the whole prison know their business.  

Mike’s first pencil stroke rips the paper.  He wads it up and throws it in the corner before starting again.

Harvey,

You son of a bitch. 

What are you doing here?  I gave up my goddamn freedom for you to not end up in here, and yet here you are.  Do you know what this feels like?  This is you spitting in my face.  

And why?  Because you don’t trust me?  Because you think I’m weak?  What is it?  All because of some piece of trash you put away umpteen years ago has a vendetta against you.  What is it about you, Harvey? You inspire vendettas.  

Mike takes a deep breath and thinks about wadding this paper up too.  He crosses out the previous paragraph and tries again. 

Look, I get it.  It’s about Gallo.  You’re protecting me, especially after Kevin got stabbed.  I get it.  I’d probably do something equally as stupid for you.  Hell, I did, didn’t I? I went to prison in the first place to spare you.

But I cannot look at you day in and day out.  Danbury was giving me space.  Space away from you, because lately...  

Mike squeezes the pencil so hard it snaps in half.  The pieces drop to the desk.  Mike tugs at his hair until it hurts.  “Fuck.”  He picks up the sharpened half of the broken pencil and starts again.

Lately, Harvey, I don’t know.  Lately I’ve been feeling things.  No, I mean, I am finally putting a name to things I’ve been feeling for a long time.  I’m starting to think that everything I thought about myself before is a lie.  Lying to myself is something I swore I'd never do.

Every time I see you, I hear it in my heart.  My head still tells me the logical arguments, the pros and cons.  But my heart is only saying one thing.  

My inner monologue is enough to drive me crazy.  It’s asking, Why?  Why didn’t Rachel come first for me when I made my choices?  Why didn’t Rachel come before everyone else?  She was my girlfriend.  I thought I loved her.  Maybe I did for a while.  

But the answer to why she didn’t come first is you .  It’s you, Harvey.  It’s your perfect, stupid face and your perfect, stupid hair.  It’s baseball and movie quotes and your sharp corners meshing with mine.  It’s both of us wanting to be better men and, I think, both of us needing the other to get there.  Deep inside, I knew this was more than mentor-mentee from about Day 2 of this whole thing.  I knew something was there when I learned to admire your suits and the man inside them.  Goddamn it, despite every one of your flaws… probably because of your flaws, I can’t look away.  It’s more than some vague questioning of my sexuality. Jesus Christ, Harvey, your ass in those suits.  I feel like some kind of Victorian lady when I catch a glimpse of your wrists for Christ’s sake.  

This letter is a mess.  Mike’s a mess.  Harvey makes him feel like an emotional mess.  He wants him, and he wants him to leave.  

Two years in prison is how I feel about you.

So, please.  You have to leave.  I can’t stand to see you in here.  I can barely stand to see you at all.  Not right now.  Not while I'm still trying to piece together just when exactly I started valuing you – and us, you and me together – more than I valued the woman I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with.

Also, don’t go.  Don’t leave me.  I need you.  Stay.

The pencil tears the paper as he crosses out the line.  The idea of Harvey reading this makes Mike feel nauseous.  He wants him to know all of this without having to say it, but he also wants all of these feelings to disappear.  Mike picks up the eraser and pushes it across the page.  Gray smudges replace some of what he’s written, but it can’t hide the emotions splashed across the letter.

I’ll most likely burn this letter rather than have the balls to give it to you, but it helped somewhat to get it out.

Forever fucked,

Mike.

After he signs his name to the page, Mike rips it from his notebook and makes an aborted move to crumple it up, intending to toss it into the trash can.  He looks down at his words.  They’re too important, too true to get thrown away.  Instead, he carefully tucks it between his mattress and the wall.

Out of sight, out of mind.

*****

It takes less than ten minutes for Gallo to gather his minions and come over to goad Harvey.  The rest of the inmates in the community room go quiet.  

“I see you and your boyfriend are having a spat,” Gallo says, slimy as ever.

“I see you are too small and scared to talk to me without backup,” Harvey grins.  

“Fuck you.”

“Not even in prison do you have a chance in hell to fuck me, Gallo.”

Gallo bares his teeth.  “All I know is that you owe me thirteen years.”

Harvey laughs, loud enough it echoes slightly in the quiet room.  “I owe you nothing.”

“We’ll see which one of us gets out of here first, Harvey,” Frank says with a sneer. 

“The judge gave you thirty-five.  You’ll be in diapers before they let you out.”

“We’ll see about that,” Gallo says.  He turns to his minions.  “Come on,” he growls and they stomp away.  

*****

Mike avoids Harvey for eighteen sleepless, confusingly grateful-then-infuriated hours.  He’s not in his best headspace when he walks into the bathroom the next morning to find himself alone with Harvey. It’s all the excuse he needs to open the floodgates.  

“Why,” Mike barks out.

“What do you mean, why,” Harvey asks, throwing his arms out.  “Because it’s my fault you’re in here!”

“ Why any of it?  Why give me a job? Why protect me all these years? Why are you in here, throwing your career away to defend me in a lie you know is true? Why do any of this ?”

Harvey looks away, grinding his teeth.  “Because, I like–”

“Don’t give me the here versus here line, Harvey,” Mike says, moving his hand from his chest to over his head.  He steps closer to Harvey, staring at his cheek because Harvey won’t look at him.  “It’s more than that, it’s… Why me ?”

“Because you’re goddamn special, Mike,” Harvey yells, shoving him back.  “Because I give a shit about you!”

Mike’s mouth shuts in shock because Harvey is not a declarer of emotions.  “Wh… Why, though,” he asks, feeling near either tears or hyperventilating.  

“Because I’m an idiot, apparently,” Harvey says, throwing his hands up.  “I don't know Mike, how do you define shit like that.  I just…  I give a shit.  About you.  Specifically.”

“Me too,” Mike says, the anger drains from him and is replaced by confusion.  This isn’t what he expected to be doing ever .  “I give a shit about you too.  Specifically.”

“Then stop dragging your goddamn feet, Mike!”  Harvey leans in close, his chest right up against Mike’s.  Toe to toe, inches apart, Mike can almost taste the breakfast Harvey must’ve eaten before arriving at Danbury.  Their eyes meet, and the electric charge between them makes Mike think for a breathless moment that Harvey might…  But then Harvey whispers, “Cahill worked it out with Warden Norton, but there’s a clock on this.  I help you flip Kevin, we both get out and so does Kevin.”

A sharp intake of breath is Mike’s first response.  Then, “Fuck. Harvey, this might be bad.”

Harvey leans back.  He searches Mike’s face and must find genuine worry there.  “Why?”

“Because,” Mike hisses, leaning back in to whisper against the shell of Harvey’s ear.  “I’ve been thinking about all the things going on in here.  Nothing adds up.  I think the warden might be corrupt.”

“Bullshit.  This isn’t Shawshank –”

“It might be closer than you’d goddamn think.”

“No.  Cahill’s got it sewn up. We’ll be out of here as soon as we get your cellmate to roll over on Sutter.”

“Sewn up?”  Mike fights down a flare of something. A memory of piercing blue eyes and white-blond hair and a smart smile directed at Harvey after they sewed up the Forstman case.  If he didn’t know any better he might think it was jealousy.  “Got a lot of faith in Cahill, huh?”

“He’s a man of his word, Mike, and a damn good lawyer.  I can tell these things.”

“Sure,” Mike says, gesturing to himself.  “I mean, I met you with an open briefcase of weed and you gave me a ticket to a life I’d given up on.  Your track record for reading people’s reliability is spot on.”

Harvey rolls his eyes but he’s smiling as he does it.  “Do I need to tell you to fuck off? Because I will.  I read you spot on, Mike.  You are a great lawyer and a good man, license or not.  No one disputes that.”  Taking a breath, Harvey decides to press again.  “Now, about Kevin.”

“He’s not going to do it.”

“Of course he will. We’ll full court press him.”

Mike’s eyes go hard.  The memory of Kevin laying there on the kitchen floor is too fresh.  “I’m not going to do that to him.”

“What?” Harvey asks too loudly.  “Yes, you are, Mike.”

Mike pushes Harvey away.  “No, Harvey.  He almost just got killed right in front of my face.  I can’t be the one to stab him further in the back.”

“You’re not stabbing him in the back! You’re giving him a way out, and putting the right guy behind bars. Plus, you’re getting yourself out.”

“That’s what I’m talking about! You want me to go in there and tell him he needs to endanger his whole family because I want to cut my sentence short?”

“You know that’s not what–” Harvey gets a handful of Mike’s prison uniform, and then the guard whistles.  The shrill sound has both of them freezing.

“Hands off!” the guard yells.

Mike gives Harvey one more look.  All of this is tearing him up inside.  “He won’t do it, and I won’t be the one who talks him into it.  Kevin’s a good man, better than me or you, and I won’t be the one to twist him up to satisfy my need to get out of a punishment I fully earned.”  

“He’s in here just like we are, so don’t give me the ‘good man’ bullshit,” Harvey says.  “Do it, and do it soon.”

Mike shakes his head.  “You’re not my boss anymore, Harvey.”

“No, but I am your friend.”

Mike looks at him hard for a long moment, and then he turns and walks away.

*****

Julius doesn’t look up from his paperwork when Mike enters his office.  “Are you here to tell me you told me so?  Blame Kevin on me?”  

“It doesn’t add up.”

That makes Julius meet Mike’s eyes.

“What doesn’t?”

“Kevin has exactly zero power in here,” Mike says.  He starts laying out his logic. “If you really did make Mark Higgins’ death happen and Kevin had figured that out, exactly zero people outside would believe him over you.  He’s in here on a conviction based on lying.  It doesn’t matter that he’s not actually guilty of the crime he was convicted of, the perception that he’s a liar would mean you’re safe from his accusations.  You’d have no reason to organize that attack on him.”

“You think Kevin’s innocent?”

Mike ignores the question and continues with his voice barely above a whisper.  “Furthermore, your body language and words the last time I was in here say that you’re caught in the middle of something much bigger.”

Julius shifts uncomfortably.  “Why are you in my office, Mike?  What do you want?”

Mike pulls his shoulders back a microscopic amount.  Julius notices.  “I want to see Kevin.”

Julius presses his lips together hard.  After a few moments he lets out a resigned sigh.  “I suppose it wouldn’t do me any good to encourage you to let sleeping dogs lie and not rock the boat, would it?”

Mike laughs.  “Sorry, yeah, no. That’s not me.”

Julius nodded, somehow managing to look both annoyed and amused.  “Somehow I knew that about you.”

*****

Mike can feel Harvey staring as Mike exits the common area with the guard.  

Up the stairs, buzzed through four gates, and Mike is in the infirmary.  Kevin is pale, but awake.

“Mike!”

“Hey, man.  I’m really glad to see you up and alert.  Not going to lie, I was pretty scared you weren’t going to make it.”

Kevin answers with a weak smile that doesn't fully reach his eyes. Mike pulls up a chair. 

“Do you need anything? A glass of water, or–”

Kevin leans toward Mike and speaks quietly.  “I need… I need to get out of here.” 

It's whiplash. Mike truly did not expect this from Kevin, even after…

Kevin takes a deep breath and it looks like it hurts him.  “If my father-in-law can do this to me in here, what is he going to do to my wife and kids out there?”

Mike swallows down his nerves.  “I’m going to tell you something that you probably already have figured out:  I have a guy in the SEC.   We’ve been working together.  I can help get you a deal with them.  They’ll protect you and Jill and the kids, put you in witness protection.  You just have to–”

“I’ll do it,” Kevin interrupts.  

Mike gapes for a second.  “You will?  I wasn’t sure you’d want–”

“I have to.  It’s the only thing that’ll keep my family safe.”

“You’re 100% about this?”

“How fast can you do it?  If you can get up here to see me, who else could?”  Kevin’s eyes flick around the room, scanning it for danger.

Kevin’s right and Mike knows it.  If word leaks out that Sutter’s little message had the opposite of the desired effect, they’ll come for Kevin again, even up here.  

“I’ll make the call.”

*****

Harvey picks a table where he has a view of the stairs Mike went up a few minutes ago. This one lets him have his back to the wall. No reason to give Gallo or his minions a free swing at him by leaving himself unguarded.  

Without Mike in his line of sight, Harvey feels twitchy.  He saw him in a heated conversation with a man upstairs – an employee – moments before a guard escorted him out of the common area and behind a locked door.  

Mike hadn’t even looked at Harvey.  

Harvey drums his fingers on the table impatiently.  His eyes flick to the clock high up on the wall near the window to the guards’ office.  Five minutes.  Ten.  

Where did they take Mike?  Is he getting disciplined?  Knowing him, there’s a nonzero chance he was insubordinate to that guy.  Or, is Mike actually doing what Harvey told him to do. The infirmary has to be up and out of that door somewhere. Maybe Mike’s there, working on Kevin.  Better that Mike is working while mad as hell at Harvey than not working at all.  

The problem is that Harvey isn’t there – wherever there is – to have his back.  He hates this feeling.

Harvey stares at the door and then at the clock.  Fifteen. Twenty minutes have gone by.

Of course, Gallo picks now to sidle up. 

“I’m wracking my brain, Counselor, and I can’t seem to figure out what you get out of being in here.”

“Nothing brings me more satisfaction than keeping you guessing,” Harvey replies.  This is the last thing Harvey needs or wants.   

The same two very large men Gallo appeared with earlier are now leaning against the wall to Harvey’s right. One flexes his fists conspicuously. Both of them are watching Gallo as if for a sign. The guards are doing a loop around the far end of the room. 

Harvey’s glad he picked the table against the wall.

“Huh,” Gallo continues. “I thought maybe you heard about how little Mikey's roomie got hurt. Thought you maybe were thinking you could move in together, make a little love nest.”

A flare of anger spikes through him.  He plants his feet on the floor.  “What do you know about the attack on Miller?”

Gallo shrugs, the bastard. “Only that working in the kitchen is dangerous. All those sharp utensils around. And, you know, Mike and Kevin didn't exactly start out on the right foot. People hold grudges.”

And that gets Harvey standing. He's got a good three inches on Gallo and uses every one of them.  Looking down at him, he says, “Instead of dancing around it, why don't you say what you mean, Frank.”

The big guys push off the wall. 

“What I mean is: Mike will fit right in here. He's scrappy. Not afraid to do what's gotta be done.”

Harvey flexes his jaw hard, but impugning Mike’s honor is like waving a red flag in front of a bull.  “Are you trying to get under my skin with this?”

“Trying?”  Gallo sneers up at him. “Nah. Succeeding, though…”

The truth in Gallo’s words is all it takes.  Harvey fists a hand into Gallo's shirt and shoves him hard into the table. 

“Mike's my guy. I'll tear you limb from limb before I let you or your hired goons touch him,” Harvey spits.

Gallo grins with teeth and holds up his fist. He strokes over his knuckles with the other hand with a lascivious look. “Oh, you're too late there, Harvey. I've already given Mike that little love tap–”

Harvey’s ears ring and his vision goes red at the edges. Gallo is bleeding and curled into the fetal position when the guards pull Harvey off him. 

*****

“Donna, did you know?”

“Know what?”

“Seriously,” Mike mutters.  Not for Donna’s benefit, but as if Harvey could hear him through the layers of concrete blocks between them.  “Do you know where your boss is?”

Donna’s pause is noticeable.  “You’re asking me that in a way that tells me you know exactly where he is.”

“I do.  I saw him about an hour ago, putting his fist in Frank Gallo’s nose repeatedly.”

“What?  He’s supposed to be in a meeting with–”

“I’m sure he is, but now he’s in solitary confinement.”

“Wait, what ?  Solitary confinement?”

Mike waits patiently, fuming at Harvey while Donna puts two and two together.

“That idiot,” she yells.  

“Exactly.”  Mike holds the phone away from his ear while Donna creatively curses.  “Look, there’s nothing to do about that for at least a day.  They don’t put you in solitary and drag you back out again a few minutes later.  He’ll be in there until tomorrow.”

“I can’t believe him.”

“My feelings exactly.  But in between now and then, I need you to get in touch with Sean Cahill.  I need to know the exact wording of the agreement he and Harvey worked out.”

*****

Harvey… has regrets.  Solitary confinement is not worth punching Gallo in the face.  

Not that it didn’t feel great in the moment.  The solid impact of fist on flesh.  The look of pain as Gallo crumpled at Harvey’s feet.  The adrenaline rush of looking down on him being humiliated.  

It feels considerably less good now.  His knuckles hurt.  His ribs hurt where he took a returning punch from one of the big guys.  The thin mattress in the corner of this cell smells like urine.  Mike’s out there alone.  

His regrets pinch and twist in his gut after lights out.  He stares at the bare ceiling of his cell and thinks about Mike.  He thinks about Mike gazing out the huge window of Harvey’s condo, and Harvey has regrets.  

If Mike would just wake up to reality and let Harvey back into his good graces, they could fix this.  Together.

*****

“Mr. Specter.  Good to meet you,” Julius says as Harvey sits down in the hard-backed chair across from his desk.  

He’s handsome, has an approachable face.  But, he’s looking at Harvey piercingly now.  He holds up a manila folder and lets it fall open, revealing nothing inside.

“Looks like you’re a bit of an enigma.  Until your records show up, want to tell me how you found yourself here in Danbury?”

Harvey does not, in fact, want to tell him any of that.  It’d blow up everything Cahill had arranged. He gives Julius the scripted lie instead.  

“Anita Hill is a lying son of a bitch.  She put some double talk in the agreement Mike signed.  He thought it would keep me out of jail, but instead I got to ride the express train to the state penitentiary as well. Unfortunately.”

Julius nods slowly.  “I see,” Julius says.  “And the first thing you do when you get in here is get in a fist fight?”

“He had it coming.”

Julius’ eyebrows go up.  “Want to try answering that question again?”

“I put Frank Gallo in jail.  He’s been threatening Mike since he found out Mike used to work for me.  Frank Gallo had it coming.”

“Aha.  And you think that’s a good choice during your first week in Danbury?”

Harvey seethes internally.  It wasn’t a great choice.  He spent all night thinking about how it wasn’t a great choice.  “Look, I’ve seen a therapist before.  I know how this goes.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, it taught me a lot about myself but it also was an ethical morass.”

“Sounds like you know all about being in a legal morass.”

Harvey presses his lips together hard.  

“I’m just wondering how stupid you think I am,” Julius says, scribbling something in his notepad.  “Your name is no stranger to me, what with Mike having been here a minute. And suddenly here you are just after his roommate is sent to the infirmary?” He looks up.  “My main question is: Is this a reaction to that, or was that orchestrated to get to this?”

Harvey smirks at him but stays quiet.

“Lucky for you I like a good puzzle, and despite him being a little shit, I like Mike too.  So I’m not going to raise any flags about your presence… yet .”  

Harvey moves to stand.  

Julius isn’t finished. “But you’re going to come see me every day you’re here until you talk.”

*****

Harvey uses his first phone call inside to get in touch with Cahill.  Mike is right at his shoulder while he dials.  He’s been glued there since Harvey emerged from Julius’ office.    

“I can move him tomorrow,” Cahill says.  

“Good,” Harvey acknowledges.

“Tell him that he and his family need protective custody,” Mike whispers.  “It’s non-negotiable.”

“Miller and his wife and kids need protection.”

“It’s already in the works.  After the stabbing, I’m not taking any chances.”

Harvey nods at Mike to pass the message.  “And then?”  Harvey doesn’t want to wait any longer than they have to to get out of here, not with Gallo circling.  Pain lances through his side where a huge bruise has formed over his ribs.  He winces a little, and Mike furrows his brows.  

“And then, if his testimony is airtight, we get you and Mike out.”

“How long,” Mike hisses. He can’t hear Cahill’s side of the story. Harvey silently shushes him with a motion of his hand, but repeats the question into the phone.

“There is no if about it, Sean.  How long?”

Sean sighs.  “A week? It’s hard to say.  It’s not like I’ve got a precedent for this.”

“A week.  Fine.  We’ll make it work.”

Mike looks cautiously optimistic, and he’s not yelling at Harvey anymore.  Harvey will put that in the win column.

*****

Mike hands a six-pack of beef-flavored ramen over to Fitzgerald.  Fitzgerald in turn hands over two recent issues of Car and Driver to a guy Mike has only ever heard called Shorty.  Shorty has a minor favor stored up with the guard on day duty, Trujillo, who agrees to get Mike back up to the infirmary again.  It’s Danbury’s version of the telephone game.

He gives Kevin a chocolate chip granola bar.  “I thought maybe pudding and plain soup were getting old.”

Kevin grins without wincing in pain. His color looks better than it did yesterday. “This whole place is getting old.”

“About that,” Mike says.  “Sean Cahill from the Securities and Exchange Commission is going to be reaching out to you.”

“When?”  Kevin tries to sit up straighter, but clearly his strength is still diminished.  

“Today.”

Kevin pales.  

Mike hurries to add, “He’s going to get you and your family into protective custody in exchange for your testimony.”

Kevin blows a long, relieved breath out.  “It’s fucking hard to stay optimistic in here.”

Mike tries to keep his emotions off his face.  He must fail, because Kevin lays a hand on his arm.

*****

The next day, Julius is standing in Harvey’s cell door just after breakfast.  “I think it’s time we had another tête-à-tête.”

“You were serious about the daily meetings.”  Harvey feels… impatient.  Mike is alone in his cell.  Hopefully he’s alone.  Harvey should be there.  

Julius nods.  “I sure was.”

Might as well get this over with.  He gestures Julius inside and lets him sit on his bunk.  Harvey leans against the wall – leans his good side against the wall, and holds in a wince – with his arms crossed.

“You’re here for a matter of days and I hear that Kevin Miller is getting moved out of Danbury.”

Harvey doesn’t hold back his smile.  “Kevin who?”

“Don’t give me that. Seems like a pretty interesting coincidence.”

“Circumstantial evidence is just that: circumstantial.”

Julius stares at him.  Harvey grins back.  

Eventually, Julius says, “I hear that you and Mike had quite the shouting match when you first arrived.  Is that going to be something that repeats itself?”

That hits home.  His grin drops off his face.  Harvey can’t hold back the twitch his body makes.  He really would rather be where he can see Mike right now.  It’s not helping his anxiety to be reminded of the details of the last few days.  

“Not if I can help it.”

Julius looks at him appraisingly.  “Say more.”

“Why?”

The exasperation in Julius’ voice is obvious. “So I can figure you out, Harvey.  That’s my job in this place: to figure people out, and maybe to help them figure themselves out.  You’ve got to give a little to get a little.”

Harvey can understand the give-to-get game.  That’s lawyering.  “Fine.  I know Mike.  I know his strengths and weaknesses, and he knows mine.” Harvey holds up his hand, fingers crossed to make his point. “As long as I’m in here, I’m going to be keeping Frank Gallo and anyone like him off Mike’s back.”

“Why would they be after him to begin with?”

Harvey huffs.  “One, because he can’t keep his nose out of anything that looks like a mystery.  And, two,” Harvey pauses, because this part is going to sting, “...two, because I can’t keep my nose out of anything where a good quip takes an idiot down a few notches.”

Harvey’s words are the verbal equivalent of tipping his king over in a chess match.  Julius knows it.  Harvey knows it.  Goddamn shrinks.

“I think it would be better in here if you keep your provocations to words instead of fist fights.”

“I can see your point.”  Though Harvey knows if Gallo comes at Mike, Harvey would take him out again without hesitation. 

“Okay then,” Julius says, standing.  “Pack up your stuff.  You’re moving.”

*****

“That didn't take long,” Mike says to his half-empty cell.  He whispers, “Thank you, Cahill, even if you’re exactly the kind of sassy that Harvey loves and I a little bit hate you for that.”

A guard had come through the cell a few minutes prior like a cyclone and unceremoniously dumped all of Kevin's things into a plastic bin. It wasn't much. You don't really accumulate possessions in prison. A few pictures. Some drawings his kids did. Some books. A pair of slippers and the cardigan that Mike had started calling Kevin's Mr. Rogers’ costume. 

Mike hopes things will work out safely and with some justice. Sean Cahill is beyond competent.  (Mike can shove his minor jealousies into the background for a little while and acknowledge Sean is good at his job.)  So, Mike figures that yes, things will work out for Kevin Miller and his family. 

“Mike.” Julius raps softly on the cell door frame, interrupting Mike’s thoughts.  “May I come in?”

“You literally don't have to ask, but I appreciate that you did.” He gestures Julius in. “Did I miss an appointment with you?”

“No, but I do need to talk to you about your new cellmate.”

Mike grimaces. “That bad?”

“I'm frankly not sure.” He waves behind him and Harvey rounds the corner looking annoyed and possibly a little contrite. 

They stare at each other.  Mike’s cheeks burn knowing that the letter he wrote to Harvey is still hidden between his mattress and the wall not four feet from where Harvey is standing.  “You fucking arrogant asshole.”

“And here is where I bow out. Make it work, gentlemen.”  Julius leaves with a small smile that Mike might call knowing .  In the moment, it’s irritating as hell.

Mike watches as Harvey makes his way into the room with a bin of his belongings.  It’s an even more meager stash than Kevin’s had been.  

“Seriously?  You are never going to let me just fight my own battles, are you?” 

“Nice to see you too.”  Harvey drops his things on the other bunk.

“How did you convince them to move you in here?”

“I didn’t.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Are you going to believe me when I tell you it was Julius’ idea?”

Mike looks at the cell door that Julius had walked out moments earlier.  “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Well… shit.”

Harvey grunts slightly as he settles onto the too stiff cot.  Mike frowns at him in concern.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Harvey gripes.  

“Like what?”

“Like you feel sorry for me.”

Mike scoffs.  “Says the guy who felt sorry enough for me that he broke his way into prison about it.” 

Harvey snorts.  “I did kind of do that, didn’t I?”

Mike smiles and rolls his eyes.  “You are a piece of work.”

“Back atcha.”  Once again, Harvey is not wrong.

“Why are you wincing, though?”

“Gallo’s guy got a shot in on my ribs.  It’ll be fine.”

Mike runs his gaze along Harvey’s side where his cradling his forearm against it protectively.  Harvey’s hip and leg are tense, holding him upright to protect his ribs from the strain.  Mike has an ill-timed urge to somehow make Harvey feel better.  Maybe he could soak a towel in cool water.  Maybe he could trade something for aspirin.  

“Look, Harvey, I still don’t understand why–”

Harvey holds up a hand.  “I’m tired, Mike.  I barely slept in the hole, and my body hurts.  Think you can wait a few hours before you perform this morality monologue you have planned for me?”

Mike considers getting up and ripping the pillow off of Harvey’s bunk just to be spiteful.  He also considers aggressively kissing him.  It’s confusing.  He’s never had an angry crush on someone, and that’s the best description of how he feels.  So, Mike folds his arms over his chest and decides to take his own nap.  

“This isn’t over,” he mutters just to make sure Harvey knows he hasn’t won.

“I wouldn't dream that it ever was, Mike,” Harvey says, and grins with his eyes closed.

He’s asleep in minutes, and Mike finds himself drifting alongside him.

*****

When Mike wakes up at the lunch bell, it’s to find Harvey sitting there staring at him.  

“Hi,” Harvey says.  He looks zero percent apologetic.

“You’re an asshole.”

“This isn’t news.”

Mike snorts and sits up.  “You’re right about that.”

“I’m right about most things.”

“You were not right thinking that I’d thank you for getting yourself put into this hellhole after I carefully convinced Gibbs to take the possibility off the table.  Did you seriously think I’d be glad?  That I’d swoon at your prince in shining armor schtick?”  Mike’s volume is crescendoing.  He stands and walks the two steps to Harvey’s bunk.

Harvey stands too, standing his ground.  “It was to grease the wheels on Kevin and you know it.”

“Helluva lot of good it did.  Sutter’s goons and a well-placed shiv did the job of convincing him. All you got is a night in solitary confinement.”

“Cahill hearing from me got Kevin’s family into witness protection within hours.”

Mike can’t really refute that.  He also doesn’t have to acknowledge the twinge that goes through him at Sean’s name on Harvey’s lips.  

Harvey says, “With Kevin out, I’m here to watch your back.  Gallo is still here–”

“And now he’s got you in his crosshairs.”

Harvey rolls his eyes.  “I was already in his crosshairs.  I’ve been in his crosshairs since I got him convicted.”

Mike glowers at him.  “Are you being obtuse on purpose?  He couldn’t get to you because he’s in prison, and oh, hey how about that?  You weren’t at the time!”

“No, but you are and he can get to you.”

“I’m not your responsibility, Harvey.”

“Maybe not, but you’re my–” Harvey pauses for the tiniest moment, “-- friend.”

Mike meets his eyes and deflates a little.  “Yeah, you are.  Even though you can be infuriating.”

“Pot, kettle.”

Mike rolls his eyes and pulls Harvey into a hug.  

Harvey hisses.  “Ribs.”

“Sorry,” Mike says, but doesn’t let him go.  

Harvey doesn’t let Mike go either.  

*****

The following day is Mike’s turn back in Julius’ office.  

“Are you going to explain this ménage à quatre you’ve got going with your former law partner, your former cellmate, and the most dangerous guy in Danbury Federal Correctional Institute?”

Mike doesn't quite know what to say. It is indeed a clusterfuck. Plus, he's still pissed about Harvey being here.  But he's not about to get Sean Cahill in hot water about it. And, as much as Julius is acting trustworthy, there is still the tiniest, niggling doubt in the back of Mike’s head: What if Julius really is involved in prisoner deaths?  Nothing he’s done has set off Mike’s bullshit detectors, but Kevin seemed so convinced.  

Julius lets Mike ruminate for a long time before finally breaking the silence. 

“It's a weird job being a prison psychologist. Even weirder when it's a white collar prison full of narcissists run by even bigger narcissists.”

“Is that my diagnosis?”

Julius raises his eyebrows at Mike, unamused.  “You know it isn't. Your Dark Triad score would be in the negative.”

“Even the Machiavellian part of the test?”

Julius laughs at that.  “Mike, you're more Shaggy Rogers than Nicolo Machiavelli.”

Mike grins a little. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“The hard part,” Julius continues, “is you have to turn that investigative mind on yourself.”

“You’re professionally obligated to say that,” Mike groans.  “This is worse than confessional.”

Julius shakes his head.  “Nah. The stations of the cross are a way worse penance than two years in here.”

“They sure feel longer than two years,” Mike laughs.

*****

Harvey tags in right after Mike leaves Julius’ office.  At least Mike is smiling on his way out.  

“So, should we start with the fact that you’re a narcissist or that you and Mike Ross are codependent as hell?”

Harvey isn’t even seated when Julius springs that on him, and he tries manfully not to stumble at the words.  He smooths his shirt and sits.  

“If I pause too long here, it’ll look like I’m pulling a power move and it’ll reinforce that bullshit diagnosis,” Harvey replies.  “If I get violent, shove your desk, yell, then it’s sociopathy or daddy issues.  If I refuse to answer, then it’s some cocktail of depression and oppositional defiance.  Nothing I do or say is a win for me here.”

“Does it need to be a win or a loss?  We’re just talking.”

“We aren’t just talking.  You ambushed me with a psychological sucker punch.”

“Words like that only sting if there’s truth in them.”

Harvey presses his lips together and seethes at how Julius always gets him against the psychological ropes.  Goddamn this guy.  It’s got to be his friendly face.  It makes him a ninja of introspective questions.  

“Ok,” Harvey concedes, “this is me giving a little to get a little.  You put me in Mike’s cell, and this is a thank you.”

“This isn’t a tit for tat, Harvey.”

Harvey ignores Julius’ comment.  “You want to know about my mother?  How she asked me to keep her affairs a secret from my dad for years when I was barely in my teens?  Or how about the guilt I have over telling my dad about it finally, breaking the family apart, and sending my brother into a spiral of gambling addiction?  How about throwing myself into work to avoid relationships?  Maybe you want to know about how I got into an unwise relationship with my last shrink who apparently thought fixing me was more important than professional integrity?  You want me to say I’ve got issues?  I know what my issues are.”

Julius listens carefully and quietly.  Then he says, “Mommy issues, check.  Daddy issues, check.  Finding your worth in others, check.”  He taps his pencil to his pad.  “Now tell me how that makes you different from any one else in the entire world.”

Harvey quiets but doesn't lose any of his intensity. “I don’t claim to be a perfect man, but I’m sure as hell a better one since Mike Ross stumbled into my life.  Maybe we are codependent.  It’s better than I was before.”

Eventually Julius nods.  “Did you just say you had sex with your last shrink?”

Harvey rolls his eyes.  “You had to pick that one out of the bunch to zero in on.”

“It seems relevant,” Julius answers, shrugging.  “One might even say it leans a little towards codependency on its own.”

“I was no longer her patient at the time, but in retrospect it was still a terrible decision on both our parts.”

“And I’m just saying if you value your relationship with Mike, you may want to evaluate the hows and the whys before you start making bad decisions in regards to him too.”  Julius frowns, and then looks around his office.  “Oh, wait a minute. You’re in prison, and you didn’t even have a trial first.”  He looks back at Harvey.  “Too late.”

“He makes me a better man,” Harvey says, hardly aware of what he’s about to say before he’s already said it.  “He makes me…  I want to be a better man, for… for him.”

Julius nods.  “Then maybe the first step is figuring out why you needed him in order to feel like you wanted to be a better version of yourself in the first place.”

Harvey looks at him and feels just a little bit too seen.  “What do you know? You chose to be a psychologist in a prison.”

Julius raises an eyebrow and says nothing.  He and Harvey both know he’s won this battle too.

*****

Mike has seen Escape from Alcatraz .  

(Call him a glutton for punishment.  He watched it during his trial.  By himself, with a beer.  It was not Mike’s high point.)  

He knows he’s no Clint Eastwood, so he makes sure he’s got eyes in the back of his head in the showers.  The last thing Mike needs is a mountain-sized guy calling him pretty… or a guy like that backing up Gallo while he threatens him with something sharp.

Maybe Harvey’s seen it too because he picks the showerhead next to Mike’s like some kind of bodyguard.  Mike makes sure Harvey sees him roll his eyes about it.  

Then Harvey unwraps his towel and Mike has to avert his eyes.  

He’s not quick enough.  Harvey catches the lingering once over that Mike gives him. He catches the flush of pink on Mike’s upper chest.  

Harvey turns to rinse and to give Mike a better view if he wants one.  He knows what the curve of his back to his ass looks like.  He spent enough hours in the gym to have reaped the benefits.  

Mike fumbles his shampoo bottle.  

Harvey slowly reaches down and picks it up from the floor.  “Dropping the soap are we?”

“Uh, yeah,” Mike stutters. Both of them have their hands on the bottle now.  “Wet.”

Harvey raises an eyebrow and a smile blossoms across his lips.  

*****

Gallo hounded them from the yard to the cafeteria to the library.  He wanted to get a rise out of them with comments about lovenests and honeymooning at Chateau Danbury.  It didn’t work.  Mike and Harvey ignored him and continued tossing a softball back and forth. Gallo slapped Harvey’s lunch tray down the long table, making it slide off the end into the lap of another inmate. Harvey and Mike shrugged at each other, and Mike shared his chicken nuggets and steamed corn with Harvey.  Gallo stomped off while the other inmate cursed at him, kicking kernels of corn as he went.  

Harvey knew Gallo would try something worse eventually.  Interestingly, though, his attempts at provocation were having a different consequence.  Mike subtly put himself between Harvey and Gallo every time the two were in the same room.  Harvey had definitely noticed when he had tried to do the same and Mike nearly did a two-step to get back between them again.  Harvey was annoyed for a moment (because Harvey can take care of himself), and then decided it was kind of naively sweet (like a boy scout scolding a biker gang), and then decided he himself was being an asshole (because Mike is definitely no boy scout) and a hypocrite (because Harvey was stepping in front of Mike in the exact same way, not trusting him to defend himself).

At least for now, Mike was sticking by Harvey’s side.

Back in their cell, Mike is sitting cross-legged on his bed.  He somehow unearthed William F. Buckley’s “God and Man at Yale” at the meager prison library.  With a 1950s copyright, it’s probably the most recent thing they’ve got in there.  Whatever the appeal, at least it’s keeping Mike from being pissed off (at Gallo or at Harvey).  Judging from Mike’s muttering and occasional derisive snorts, he is wringing some joy out of picking apart every one of Buckley’s statements.

Goddamn if Harvey doesn’t find it fascinating to watch.  He’s got last week’s issue of the Financial Times – missing about half of its pink pages, and which has a second page story about William Sutter’s profits – but he’s not really reading it.  Instead, he runs his eyes over Mike slowly.  He takes in Mike’s shorter hair, the scowl and then rise of his eyebrows, how he is biting on a broken pencil while he reads.  Mike’s blue uniform shirt is hanging over the back of the desk chair.  His white undershirt sleeves are pushed to his elbows.  When he shifts the book from his left hand to his right, the tendons stand out in his forearms.  Mike’s thighs fill out the legs of his pants.  The inner seams are pulled taut.  

Harvey looks away, back at the newspaper, staring blankly.  He’d told Julius that he wants to be a better man for Mike.  He’d said that out loud .  He’d meant it.  He’d say it again.  Crap.  Where did that even come from?   

Harvey wipes a hand across his face.  He knows where the words came from.  The feeling has been there for years.  Every time he called Mike a good boy.  When he paid a little extra to have Rene use the fabric with the nicer drape, just so he could admire the cut of Mike’s new suits.  When Mike finally convinced him to high five.  When he goddamn told Jessica and Darby “My date just got here” and then scared away Rachel just to talk to Mike in that tuxedo. When he saw how smart Mike is, how handsome, how loyal.  When the list of positive attributes was too long to keep track of.  He should have known way back then.

It was when he started letting Mike in that he should’ve figured it out.  Harvey doesn’t let people in. Not like this. It’s dangerous in all the ways Harvey hates.  

“Oh, fuck Yale and everything about it,” Mike mumbles.  “Harvey, we’ve got to find a shredder.  That’s all this book is good for.”

Harvey feels his mouth turn up in a grin about it.  Dangerous in all the ways he likes too.   

*****

A guard summons Harvey from the lunchroom the next day.  “Let’s go, Specter.”  

“Go where?”

“Visitor,” is the one word response.  

Harvey looks over at Mike and shrugs before following the guard.  

Two minutes later, he’s in a meeting room across from none other than Cameron Dennis.

“Thank you,” Cameron says to the guard.  “I’ll only need a few minutes with my client.”

Harvey bites his tongue long enough for the door to close.  “Your client?  What the hell is going on?”

Cameron’s face does that thing he’s really good at, which is to look both pissed off and disappointed, while also looking proud and amused.  “You’ve really got yourself up shit’s creek this time, Harvey.  Truly an asinine piece of work.”

Harvey leans back in his chair.  “You came here just to lecture me?”

“No,” Cameron says, leaning in closer and lowering his voice.  “I came here because Sean Cahill called in a favor.”

Harvey goes cold.  “What happened?”

“What happened is Samuel Norton, the warden of this beautiful establishment, is going back on your deal.”  Cameron leans back then to smirk at him in that way he does.  As if to say, did you really think you had this locked up? I taught you better than this, Harvey.   “He’s not letting you out.  Not you.  Not Mike Ross.”

“Excuse me?”

“Open up your bank account, because he wants a payoff to keep this whole thing under wraps.”

Harvey snorts out a derisive laugh.  “Bullshit.  I’m not–”

“Unless you’re willing to blow up Sean Cahill’s career alongside your own, you will.”

Chapter Text

“What happened?” Mike is pacing their cell, chewing on the side of his thumbnail.  “Tell me again.”

“Stop that.”  Harvey tugs Mike’s fingers away from his mouth and holds him still by the wrist. 

Mike scowls in response. He makes a come on expression with his free hand. 

Harvey repeats the details for the third time in the last ten minutes. “Cameron didn’t know much.  Sean called him in to relay the message because it would have made things worse for Sean to show up here. The warden is backing out of our deal.  Because I’m in here extrajudicially, he’s extorting me for $10 million.”

“Us.”

“What?”

“He’s extorting us .”

“No. No way.”

Mike gets up in Harvey’s face.  He doesn’t have to move far, since Harvey still has a hold of his wrist.  

“Yes, us .  You’re in here to help me, despite me doing everything I could to keep you away.  There is no fucking way I’m letting you take the fall by yourself.”

“I chose this!” 

Harvey matches Mike’s intensity beat for beat.  He tightens his hand around Mike’s arm.  Mike jabs a finger in Harvey’s chest.  Their faces are inches apart.    

“Do you even hear yourself?  You come at me for taking Gibbs' deal to protect you , and now you are going to get righteous about shouldering a $10 million extortion bill by yourself?”

Mike’s words hit him like a train. The force of them pushes Harvey back a step, and then another.  Harvey sits down hard on his bunk.  The fight drains out of him in a rush.  It’s replaced by a squirming discomfort in his gut.  This is the second time in two days he’s realized he’s a hypocrite.  

“Shit.” 

Mike’s right.  Harvey can’t bring himself to say it, but he is.  How are they going to get out of this?  It won’t be by paying up, because there’s no way in hell someone is taking Harvey’s money – or Mike's – through force.  But they’re in here, without access to their usual bag of tricks.  No law library.  No private detective.  No paralegals.  No driving across town for a face-to-face meeting that charms or intimidates the right person.  

The mattress dents downward on Harvey’s left.  Mike leans solidly against his side.  “Sorry I yelled.”

Harvey gives a short, morose laugh. “Since when do you apologize for yelling?”

“Since when do you back down when I yell?”

“Mike, I’m in here without an end date.”  Harvey looks over at Mike. The idea of fighting with him right now makes Harvey so tired.  “No paperwork means I could be in here indefinitely.  It’s pretty fucking humbling.”

“No, look.”  Mike pulls out his notebook and a stub of a pencil.  He jabs at a page in the middle.  “Maybe we can kill two birds with one stone.  I’m starting to put things together about Julius.”

Harvey rolls his eyes but finds himself smiling.  “Of course you are, but how does that help us with the warden?”

“Julius told–”  Mike freezes mid-sentence.  His eyes go huge and his mouth snaps shut.  

“What’s wrong?”

Mike slaps his hand over Harvey's mouth and whispers, “Hold on.  Rewind.  Our emails.”

“What are you talking about,” he asks into Mike's palm.

“Oh my God.”  Mike stands up and frantically shoves his notebook under his mattress.  His face reads panic, and it starts filling Harvey’s veins too.  

“Mike.”  Harvey stands and puts a hand on Mike’s shoulder.  

“ Fuck .”  He's pale now.  “Hudson v. Palmer.”

Harvey creases his brow and shakes his head.  “Remind me.”

“Fourth amendment case.”  As Mike pauses, Harvey can see him go inward, to that place where he’s remembering every single word, period, comma, and colon of a case.  “No protection from search or seizure in our cell.”

“We knew that they could search our cell.”

“Yeah,” Mike says, nodding and looking slowly around their cell.  “But it means that while there are generally no recording devices in cells, they aren’t explicitly prohibited by law.”

Harvey stiffens.  If they can’t speak freely in here, planning a way out that doesn’t involve millions of dollars will be next to impossible.  “Help me look.”

Mike meets his eyes.  His fear and determination are both clear.  “I’m not letting them keep you here,” he says and flips up his mattress.  

Harvey doesn’t mention the folded paper that drifts to the floor from beneath it, not even when Mike hurriedly shoves it in his breast pocket.  

*****

They don’t find anything.  Nothing that looks like a camera.  No microphones.  They checked on the walls near their cell door this morning when the doors unlocked.  Nothing.

“You two look… paranoid,” Gallo says with squinting eyes.  Everyone’s supposed to be lined up for roll call, but here he is, in front of their cell.  His goons loom over his shoulders like cartoon gorillas.  “Why might that be?”

“Fuck off, Frank,” Mike says.  It comes out too aggressively.

Gallo’s eyebrows go up and a huge, shiteating grin takes over his face.  “My, my, my!  Woke up on the wrong side of the prison fence, did we?”

“Fuck off, Frank,” Harvey echoes.  He sounds infinitely more calm and more threatening.  

The gorillas puff up a little at that.  

bing bing bong

The electronic chime of the breakfast bell disperses the inmates.  Gallo looks like the cat that ate the canary, and it’s worrying.

Not finding any surveillance equipment in their cell should mean that Mike could tell Harvey his ideas.  Instead, it means Mike never moves out of eyeshot of their cell all day.  They play cards.  They read books.  They make small talk with other inmates while guards patrol the cellblock.  Every time anyone goes past the door, Mike feels a flare of terror that the guards will choose now to turn their cell over.

Harvey shoots him meaningful looks.  Mike knows what they mean.  No bugs, so now tell me what’s in that journal.   But Harvey didn’t see the terror and agony on Kevin’s face when he got stabbed.  Mike doesn’t want the warden sending people after him, and he definitely couldn’t handle the warden sending people for Harvey.  Gallo hovers, reinforcing Mike’s worries. 

All day, Mike perseverates on how his notebook is in there.  Every one of his proto-ideas is written in that notebook. Connections drawn and theories tried out.  If he’s right – and Mike knows he is – that notebook is the key.  If it gets confiscated, they’re as good as dead.  

Harvey smuggles Mike food at lunchtime – an apple and a half of a sandwich wrapped in a napkin – and he insists Mike go to dinner while he takes a watch at dinnertime.  The food tastes like nothing.  Mike’s spinning thoughts focus all his senses on sight and sound, leaving nothing for his taste buds.

Finally, it’s lights out and Harvey unceremoniously bundles Mike into their cell.  He can’t relax though. He stands near their door while Harvey brushes his teeth.  Mike looks obliquely out through the window in their door, trying to see if anyone is nearby.  No one should be.  The guards are on a twenty minute rotation.  Prisoners should all be in their cells.  But Mike’s first night in here told him that Danbury’s routine can be broken for the right person, for the right bribe, and/or given an order from the right person.

“Will you at least sit?” Harvey asks.  Exasperation and impatience color the words.  “Please?”

Mike looks away from the door at that. Harvey Specter asking nicely? They share a long look.

“Yeah,” Mike eventually says.  He gives another worried look toward their window before stepping away from it.  

He kneels to pull his notebook from between his folded shirts in his property box.  Nothing has been disturbed in it.  He carefully put his toothbrush on top of the shirts at a 45 o angle in case anyone came in and rummaged through it.  

“Is it ok?” Harvey asks.  

“I think so,” Mike says.

Harvey pats the bed next to him.  They’ve got to keep this quiet.  

“Lay it out for me,” Harvey whispers.

Mike takes a deep breath and starts.  “I was going to say that Julius told Higgins to file a formal report and three days later Higgins was jumped in the showers and shivved.”

“Who is Higgins?” Harvey asks. 

“Kevin’s old cellmate,” Mike replies.  “It’s not important.” 

“It might be.  Tell me everything.”  Harvey is all in.  His focus is complete.  He’s looking at the notebook page, following Mike’s fingers.  He’s glancing at Mike’s face, reading the expressions there.

“What is important is that Julius somehow ended up taking the blame for it among the inmates. He got the reputation as a mediocre counselor that the inmates don’t trust. Rumors start swirling that the guy who stabbed Higgins did it on the order of someone working at the prison.”

Harvey nods.  “Julius?”

“That’s what the rumor mill says.”  Mike looks up at Harvey then.  The truth is they both know he doesn’t need his notebook of notes at all.  “But that doesn’t sit right with me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because he’s good.”

“That’s it?”  Harvey gestures, he needs more than that if they’re going to do anything with this.  “Because he’s good?”  

Mike looks at Harvey with an expression that says yes, clearly.  Harvey holds up his hands in surrender.

“Yeah, Harvey.  He cares .  He listens .  He… he gives a shit.”   

“I’m not arguing.”

Mike carries on with his evidence.  “It didn’t seem right, so I started digging.”

“Digging? Mike, you’re in Danbury Federal Correctional Institution, not a law library.”

Mike gestures to himself.  “This is what I do.”

“Christ,” Harvey curses.  He grins.  “You’re right.  How dare I impugn your reputation.”  Harvey mimes zipping his lips.

“I tracked down Higgins’ cellmate.  Turns out he works in the kitchens too.  He doesn’t know much, but he says that Mark got hauled up to Warden Norton’s office after filing that complaint.  I asked if that happens to inmates often, and he says never.”

Harvey’s eyebrows wrinkle in thought as Mike continues to rapid-fire lay out his burgeoning mystery.

“Monaghan – have you met Monaghan?  He’s the old guy with the flannel always carrying around that copy of Yeats – so, Monaghan says that he only knows one other guy who has gotten hauled up to the warden’s office.  It happened like ten years ago.”  Mike's eyes spark with excitement at following the trail and it sends a similar thrill of the hunt through Harvey.   “And just like Higgins, that guy was dead within the week.”

“Ok, Spartacus.  You’re going to take down the Roman Empire here?”

Mike grins and puffs his chest out like a warrior.  “I.  Am,” he bellows.  “Get it?  I am Spartacus ?”

“Do I get it?  What I get is that you am an idiot,” Harvey says, but a smirk slips through.  “Hand over that notebook and quit your posturing.”

“Says Manhattan’s biggest peacock.”

“That’s Connecticut’s biggest, now.”

“How the mighty have fallen.”  Mike winks at him.

Harvey pushes him over sideways on the mattress with a good shove to his shoulder, and then snags the notebook.  Mike laughs as quietly as he can.  Maybe the two of them can figure a way through this.

*****

Harvey shoots the ball.  It’s a miss.  He’s distracted by moving the pieces of this mystery around in his mind.   “H,” he calls out and then passes the ball to Mike.  

Mike shoots.  His shot also misses with a clang on the rim.  “H,” he echoes.  He rebounds the ball and walks it over to Harvey.  Shoulder to shoulder he says, “H, we need something concrete to take down the warden.  If we’re ever going to get out of here.”

Harvey dribbles twice and lines up his next shot.  It wobbles around the rim before going back out the way it came from.  He’s more of a baseball guy.  “O.”  He hands the ball off to Mike and whispers, “Do you think Julius knows anything we can use? One of us could try to convince him to talk.”

Mike tries to dribble behind his back.  The ball bounces off his heel.  He should stick with riding his bike.  (Though, when he leans over to get the ball, it does make for a nice view.)  Mike does a layup on his way back and it goes wide.  Harvey chases it down and hands it back to Mike for his next shot in HORSE. Their fingers brush.  

“O,” Mike says, defeatedly.  “He might,” Mike says in a low voice.  “He told me I should stay away from the warden.”

“He’s right.”  Harvey hits his next shot and has an epiphany at the same time.  “Oh!”

“You already got your O.”  Mike catches Harvey’s wide-eyed expression then.  Mike asks, “What?”

“Shit. I know who Christofferson’s informant is.”

“Who’s Christofferson?”

“Leave the ball. Come on.”  Harvey pulls Mike by the arm toward the fenceline.  It’s not privacy, but it’ll have to do.  

“Harvey, what is going on?”

Harvey looks at the sky and decides he has to tell Mike everything.  “I drove up here on your first day inside and just sat in the parking lot.”

Mike makes a ‘you’re fucking with me’ expression and holds up questioning hands.  “And you didn’t come inside?”

“You know I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Remember Ally Sheedy’s character in The Breakfast Club ?”

“You couldn’t come see me because of pixy stix?”  Mike grins.  “You drew me a picture and your dandruff was the snow?”

“As if I would ever have--” Harvey cuts himself off and rolls his eyes.  “No.  I couldn’t come inside because I was a fucking basketcase.”

Mike’s expression softens.  He clears his throat and quietly prompts, “And what does that have to do with this Christofferson person?”

“I ran into Sean Cahill at a diner on the drive back.”

“Fucking Sean Cahill.”  

Harvey’s eyes snap to Mike’s.  “What?”

“Fucking Cahill.  If he’d done his job right we wouldn’t–”

“Stop.”

“No, he’s why we’re in this mess.”

“Are you joking?  He’s not why…”  Harvey trails off.  He looks at Mike’s flushed face.  “Why do you get snippy every time Sean comes up in conversation?”

“I don’t,” Mike denies.

“Yeah, you do.”

“No, I don’t.”

Harvey levels him with a look.  Mike doesn’t back down but color rises high on his cheekbones.  Harvey doesn’t have time to process whatever this is right now.  “Do you want to hear this, or what?”

“Yes.  Just… whatever.  You and your Pixy Stix ran into Cahill at a diner near here.  That’s random.”

“That’s what I thought.  He was there with James Christofferson, an attorney at the DOJ.”  Harvey groans, because in retrospect it seems so easy to guess who his informant must’ve been.  Gallo has a history of violent crimes.  Way too violent to be in a cushy place like Danbury. “He has an informant here.”

Mike steps closer in interest.  “And they told you who it is?  That’s gotta be a huge no-no.”

“Of course not,” Harvey says, shaking his head.  “But the only one that makes sense is Frank Gallo.”

Mike’s mouth works open a few times.  “Shit.”

“Yeah.  Shit.”

“This fucking guy is every-goddamn-where,” Mike says, teeth together in aggravation.

“Which should have been our first clue,” Harvey says with a shrug.  “But my head was…”

Mike meets his eyes.  “Elsewhere.”

“Yeah,” Harvey says, unable to rip his eyes from Mike’s.  “Elsewhere.”  Maybe he should think a little deeper about why that blush rose up on Mike’s cheeks when Sean’s name came up.

*****

Mike knocks softly on Julius’ office door.  “Are you busy?”

Julius chuckles.  “I work for the government.  I literally will never dig myself out from under this pile of paperwork.  So, yes, I’m busy, but I can give you a few minutes.”

“Thanks,” Mike says, stepping inside and closing the door behind him.  

This is a huge risk.  He and Harvey had walked through this conversation in every way they could dream up.  The most plausible outcome is that Julius will be on their side in this, but there is still a chance that Mike will never emerge from this meeting.  

Harvey actually gave him a hug on his way out of their cell.  It lasted minutes.  Harvey’s eyes were wet.  Mike will definitely let himself think about that later.

“I thought you’d be heading out of here.  Wasn’t that the deal?”

“It is the deal, yes.  But my deal – and Harvey’s – hit a roadblock .”

“The court system can be a labyrinth,” Julius nods, clearly not getting Mike’s point just yet.  “I know you know that.”

“It’s not the courts that are the problem.”

“Oh?”

“The problem is… a little closer to home.”

Julius squints a little. “I’m not following.”

“Have you ever seen When a Stranger Calls ?”

“Is that the one with the whole ‘the call was coming from inside the house’ babysitter thing?”

“Exactly.”  Mike looks at Julius intently, eyebrows raised to coax Julius in the right direction.

Julius continues to squint for a long moment, before anger takes over his expression.  “Are we doing this again? I’m not responsible for those prisoners’ deaths.  I’m not responsible for Kevin–”

“That’s not what I’m saying!”

“I’m going to need you to lay it out for me then.”

“I’m trying to,” Mike says.

“I don’t speak in whatever code this is, Mike.  You’re going to have to say whatever it is plainly.”

“You know that’s what someone who was recording me for evidence would say.”

“Christ almighty.  I’m not recording you!”  He shuffles the papers on his desk, showing Mike there’s nothing underneath.  It proves nothing.  

This is Mike’s rubicon.  He’s going to have to go all in and trust Julius fully.

“I’m saying the roadblock is coming from inside this house.”

“You haven’t left Danbury because someone here is blocking it?”

“Yes.”

“That someone isn’t me.”

“I believe you.”

“But?”

“But I think you know who is blocking things.”

Julius goes still.  Then he says, “Get out.”

*****

“The commissary was all out of red string, but I did get you a stack of post-it notes,” Harvey says, dropping the gift onto Mike’s lap.  

The fire was starting to burn inside Mike again.  It was the same light in his eyes that he’d had years ago when Harvey had first hired him.  

“We’re close, we just have to… we have to put pressure on the right wound ,” Mike says, flipping through his notebook and idly grabbing three post it notes to immediately start scribbling on.  “He said get out, but he wasn’t angry.  As much as he wanted me to think he was, he wasn’t angry.  He was fucking scared.”  Mike looks up then, grinning at Harvey like they’d already won.  Cocky little son of a bitch he’d always been.  “Scared for me, Harvey.  Not himself.  I told you he was good.”

How the hell did Harvey not realize what was going on in his own head about this guy.  Mike Ross is at the center of Harvey’s whole existence.  Co-dependence?  Maybe.  But Harvey feels a spark inside himself while he looks at Mike using his eager mind to unravel their predicament.  And the relief Harvey had felt when Mike came back in one piece from Julius’ office…  

“Alright, Columbo.  Tell me what new clues you’ve got.”

*****

From his bunk, Mike says, “My brain hurts.”

“I’m surprised it’s not your fingers that hurt after filling that notebook with everything we think we know.”

Mike chuckles.  “I’m just glad it’s not my body hurting from Gallo’s enforcers using me for punching practice.”

“I’m glad for that too,” Harvey says.  He rolls onto his side to look over at Mike.  “What are you going to do when we get out of here?”

Mike rolls over to look at Harvey.  “I don’t know.  I thought about that some before you got here.  But we’ve been too busy for me to dwell on it.”

Harvey nods.  

Mike asks, “What are you going to do?”

Harvey shrugs.  “I suppose it depends on whether I’m ten mil poorer.”

“Do you really have that much money saved up?”

“In cash?  No.”

“In wealth?”  Mike props himself up on his elbow.  “Investments?”

“Not quite.”

“But close?”

Harvey shrugs.  “I wouldn’t have to work if I didn’t want to.”

Mike flops back down.  “Damn.  I thought buying a condo in Manhattan meant I was rich.”

“It does.”

“Not at the ten million level.”

Harvey lays quietly for a while.  Seeing him get contemplative is strangely charming.  It’s a side Mike figures almost no one has ever seen of him.  

“We weren’t rich when I was a kid.  We had enough, but we weren’t rich,” Harvey eventually says.  “We could get by without all that money now, too,” he says, meeting Mike’s eyes.  

It’s too much like hearing what Mike wants to hear.  It sounds like Harvey saying he’d give up all of that to have a future with Mike.  The way he’s looking at him… it’s too much.

“What movie should we watch?” Mike asks.

Right then, “Lights out!” comes over the intercom followed by the metallic clang of the building’s lights turning off.

Harvey looks over at Mike in the near-darkness and lets Mike’s change of subject slide.  “Last time I checked, inmates don’t get perks like watching a movie whenever they want.  Do you have a contraband laptop?  An 8mm projector?  A slide show?”

“Play along, Harvey.  What movie?”

Harvey rolls onto his back, arms crossed under his head.  “ Dirty Harry .”

“Seriously?”

“Why not?”

“He’s a dirty cop.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.  He takes justice into his own hands.  Isn’t that what we’re trying to do here?  Solving a crime from the inside?”

“Yeah,” Mike concedes.  “But we’re not going to be the jury and executioner.”  

“Fine.  Let’s watch Serpico then,” Harvey smiles.

“You’re just choosing that because Pacino is hot with that beard.”

“Correct.  But it’s also about rooting out corruption from the inside.”

Mike smiles in return.  “We can remake your millions by selling our story to Hollywood when we get out of here.”

Harvey snorts.  “Who would they get to play you?  Child actors can only work six hours a day.”

“Ha ha,” Mike says.  “I thought you were gonna say monkeys.”

Harvey huffs outs a laugh.  “This is not a western, cowboy.”

The banter feels like home even if the prison bed is still uncomfortable.  As he’s drifting off, he mumbles goodnight to Harvey.  

“Sleep well, Mike.”

Mike finally sleeps through the night for once.

*****

The phone line clicks while Harvey waits for his call to be connected.  No privacy.

“Cameron Dennis here,” the voice says on the other end of the line.

“It’s Harvey.”

“Clearly.  Who else would be calling me from Danbury?”  

Cameron is an asshole.  He taught Harvey a lot, both about what to do and what not to do in the law.  Maybe Harvey ended up more like Cameron than he’d have liked.  They’re both assholes who show affection through insults and dismissiveness.  It’s not great.  Harvey has always hated this about Cameron, but he knows he’s treated people around him exactly like this.  Mike included.  

“Good to hear a friendly voice.”

Cameron snorts.  “What do you need?”

“A meeting.  ASAP.”

*****

When Julius returns to his office, Harvey is already sitting in the chair across from his desk.  

“Is this a full court press?” Julius asks.  “First Mike, now you?”

“We do make a good team,” Harvey smiles. “But no, not exactly.”

“Then what?”

“This is my therapy session.”

“Is it?”

Harvey leans back and swings the door closed.  “I thought we could talk about my big brother .”  He winks.  

“Christ,” Julius curses.  “You two act like you’re World War II spies.”

*****

“Do you think he’ll do it?”

“Julius?  Maybe.  I’m meeting with Cameron tomorrow and I’ll send him over to talk to him.”

“I think this could actually work,” Mike says, staring down at the notebook between them on the bed, reading over it one more time.  

“We always did make a helluva team,” Harvey says, looking down not at the book but at the profile of Mike’s neck, bent and angular, his adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows.

“Harvey.”  Mike says his name gently.

Harvey looks up then to realize Mike’s looking at him.  “Mike?”

“You know how Colombo always had one more thing?”

“Yeah,” he replies.  His eyes go back to the notebook.  He scans the page, looking for something they could have missed.  

A soft touch, Mike’s fingers brushing over the side of Harvey’s neck, brings his eyes back up to Mike’s. “One more thing, Harvey.”  His gaze drifts lower, to Harvey’s lips.

The air leaves their cell.  Harvey can’t breathe, and he doesn’t want to.  “Just one?” he breathes.

Mike leans in, his fingers coming up to brush lightly against Harvey’s stubbled cheek.  “Did you know?”

Harvey can’t keep his eyes off of Mike’s mouth.  He watches as his tongue peaks out to wet his lips.  “Know what?”

“It was always leading here, wasn’t it,” Mike whispers, leaning closer, close enough that Harvey can feel the heat of his mouth near his own.  “That we were…  It’s always been you , Harvey.”

“Stop talking,” Harvey whispers, and leans that last little bit to press his lips against Mike’s.  When he pulls back Mike’s eyes remain closed and he doesn’t say a word.  “I know now.”

*****

“What’s this?”  Cameron flips the notebook over and looks at the nondescript cover.    

“It’s Mike’s notebook,” Harvey replies.  “It needs to leave here.”

“What’s in it?”

“A solid argument for us to use to push back.”

Cameron looks down at it, and then flips to a random page.  He flips to another, and then another.  “He wrote it?”

“Most of it, yes.”

“And you wrote the rest,” Cameron asks, tapping at the harsh black lines and angry scratches Harvey had written in the spaces around Mike’s.  

“Yes.”

Cameron laughs. It’s not particularly friendly. “Am I going to find hearts in the margins?”

Harvey rolls his eyes.  “Just take it to Cahill and see where you can get with it.  And then see if you can intercept Julius Rowe and get him to talk.”

Cameron’s head cocks to the side in true ‘what bullshit are you cooking up, son?’ fashion and levels him with a look.  “And what will you be doing while we’re doing all the work?”

Harvey shakes his head.  “Never change, Cameron.”

Cameron smiles broadly.

*****

“Specter!” The morning guard yells down the line. “The Doc wants to see you.”  He points up and behind himself toward Julius’ office.

Harvey nods in acknowledgement.  They’re standing outside their cell for roll call. Harvey leans close to Mike and says, “You look pretty hot in prison blues.”

The guard yells at Harvey again (“ Hurry the fuck up! ”) when Mike laughs.

Mike smirks, staring ahead.  “If i didn’t know any better, I might think you were hitting on me.”

Harvey smirks back as he steps out of line, motioning at the guard to calm his tits.  “Maybe you don’t know as much as you think.”  He thinks he feels Mike’s gaze on him as he walks away.

“Get in here,” Julius growls when Harvey arrives at his office.  He slams the door in the guard's face.  

Given Julius’ angry welcome, Harvey doesn’t sit down this time.  He grips the back of the chair he usually sits in.  Clearly Cameron paid Julius Rowe a visit.

Julius ratchets down his volume, but his intensity doesn’t diminish.  “You sent the slimiest attorney I’ve ever met.  Did you scour the sewers and scrounge him up, or is this just the company you keep?”  Julius knocks an angry knuckle on the desk beneath him.  “He came to my house!  My house, Harvey.  I was carrying in groceries and this… this slimeball comes up.”

Harvey should have known.  Julius is more like Mike than he is like Harvey.  Harvey should have known that Cameron Dennis would turn Julius off harder than a bad toupee.  

“You sent him to my house?”

Harvey shrugs noncommittally.  “I didn’t send him to your house.   I don’t know where your house is.”

Julius rolls his eyes hard enough Harvey’s worried they’ll get stuck like that.  “That is not the point, and you know it.”

Harvey capitulates.  “Yes.  But I thought he could shed some light on things.”

Julius’ voice drops into a ragged whisper.  “The only thing I learned is that your lawyer talks exactly like Samuel Norton.”

The warden.  Crap.

*****

Mike is in line for the phone when Gallo finds him.

“Who are you going to call, Mikey?  Rach?  See if she’ll take you back?  I bet she’s moved on, Mikey.  Nice piece of ass like that won’t be on the market for long.”

The dig about Rachel only stings in that abstract way of long ago love. He’d worry if Donna and Harvey hadn’t helped her get safe from this.  “Go away, Frank.  I don’t have the energy for your games.”

“Why’s that?  Harvey keep you up late working ?” Frank tsks him, shaking his head even while leaning into the innuendo.

Mike levels him with a blank look.  “I’m just here to make a call.  Leave me alone.”

Gallo pushes into line ahead of Mike.  “Maybe I’ll make a call too.  Maybe I’ll check in with a friend of mine.  He’d love to hear about you and who you’re calling.”

Mike feigns heavy confusion.   “You want to hear about me calling the florist to deliver flowers to my grandmother’s grave?”

That pulls Gallo up short.  “Boo hoo,” he eventually says before leaning in close and whispering, “Careful you don’t end up joining her there.”  Then he pushes off the wall and saunters back into the common area.

Mike’s stomach drops, his heart beating a mile a minute.  Every second around Frank Gallo feels like it just might be his last on this Earth.  But it’s his turn on the phone now, and he has no choice but to keep up the ruse for the people still nearby him in line.  

“Hi, I’d like to order a bouquet of spring flowers, please?”

On the other end of the phone, Donna asks, “What the hell are you talking about, Mike?”

“Oh, sorry.  Maybe the line isn’t great. I said I need to order some flowers to be delivered.”

Donna doesn’t respond for a long second.  He imagines she’s pulled the phone away from her ear and is looking at it.  Eventually she says, “Flowers.  Uh huh.  And who are they for?”

“My grandmother’s name is Jessica.”

“I met Edith and she was a treat.”  Another long pause comes over the line.  Mike fidgets.  “This is some kind of ruse.  I love it.  Give me more clues.  I’ll Miss Marple the hell out of this.”

“Yep,” Mike says, “Send them to her in care of Cameron Dennis.  He’ll know how to deliver them the rest of the way.”

“Alright,” Donna says.  “So, Timmy’s fallen into the well and you need me to get Jessica to talk to Cameron?”

“Exactly.  I have an account with you.  You can bill me.”

“Oh, I will, Michael,” Donna says, and the grin is blinding, even through the phone lines.  “You’ll be paying me in cappuccinos for the rest of your life.”  

*****

It’s a day later and Mike and Harvey are playing five-card stud in the rec room.  Watching the way Harvey’s long, agile fingers hold his cards, elegant and firm, Mike can’t help but smirk at the name.  Stud.  It’s a word his grandmother would have approved of. He’s pretty sure he remembers her using it when talking about Magnum, P.I. once.  

Mike’s eyes lower to Harvey’s mouth, and he thinks about the all too brief kiss they’d shared a few days before. And then the second they’d taken from each other last night, soft and lingering, almost deepening until the guard called lights out too near their cell door.  And once more this morning, mouths warm and musty from sleep, a bastardized version of domesticity in prison.  

“Did you notice?”  Mike nods his head up to where Julius’ office is dark.

Harvey cranes his neck to look at the darkened office with the closed door.  “He’s out today.  What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that maybe the flowers got delivered to Grandma Jessica.”

Harvey grins and shifts the small bag of potato chips that he’s using to place bets.  His fingers draw Mike’s attention again.  “You’d better never let her hear you say those words.”  

“Seriously, Harvey,” Mike asks suddenly, abruptly lowering his voice to a barely audible whisper.  

Harvey looks at him, clearly concerned and confused by the sudden change from light to dark in Mike’s tone.  “Seriously what?”

Mike blinks, finding it a little hard to breathe.  The hugeness of this – of them, he and Harvey, together – hits him like a freight train.  “Why anything .  I’ve asked you before but I still don't understand.”  He gestures to himself.  “Why me, why this, why this job, why this friendship, why…”  He gestures to himself, getting frustrated.  “Why me ?  I was just a poor, fucking slob with jeans filled with holes, high as fuck at 2 on a Tuesday delivering other people’s bullshit mail when you met me.  Why…”  He runs out of words, gesturing helplessly.  “Why any of it?”

“First of all, you were wearing a suit,” Harvey answers, leaning closer.  “A piece of shit, $50 K-Mart suit, but a suit.”

“In life, Harvey,” Mike grits out, squeezing his eyes shut.  “In life, that part of my life, I was nothing. I’m nothing. I’m not. I wasn’t.”  He gestures again, at a loss.  “I’m nothing .”

"Because I can't see being a lawyer without you by my side," Harvey says easily, as if that’s all there is to it.  As if it’s just that obvious.

Mike meets his eyes, scoffing and starting to say something only for Harvey to reach out and grab his hand under the table.

"You and your cheap suit and your skinny tie and your budget briefcase stumbled into my life, and I would never look back.  You didn’t just change my here," he gestures with his hand at chest height, "to somewhere too high for me to measure. You changed me . There's no going back.  There is no career for me without you there. There’s no… anything without you there."

Mike feels like he’s either going to burst out in uncontrollable giggles, or start sobbing in the middle of this room full of convicts.

"So, yeah, Mike, that's why I'm in this godforsaken shithole. Why you, why here, why now.  I'm getting you out, because Specter Ross doesn't exist without both our names as partner."

Mike can't breathe as he realizes what Harvey isn't saying.  He can not say it too.  "Wait, why's your name first?"  He threads his fingers tightly through Harvey’s.  

"Because I'm the best closer.  I'm closing you now, aren't I?"

If they were anywhere else, Mike would lay Harvey out on this table and take so much more than a kiss.

*****

When Jessica appears in the prison’s counsel room, every inmate in the place has eyes on her.  It’s not surprising, but it is very inconvenient.  It’s impossible to know if Gallo, his heavies, or anyone else is spying for the warden.  

“I got the flowers Mike sent,” she says when Harvey enters the room.  Her expression says she also got the Grandmother part of the message.  

“We thought you might have.  There was a conspicuous absence around here today.”

“I would say I can’t believe you’re in here,” Jessica says, “but I should have known you’d pull this. You can’t leave him alone, can you?”

“He’s my guy.”

“Since day 1, I know.  Took you long enough to figure it out.  Don’t you think you could have done it without the prison time?”

Harvey laughs.  “You could have told me.”

“Like you’d have listened.  Also, can you seriously see me telling you anything about your love life?  Not my job, Harvey.”

“Touche.”

She still hasn’t taken a seat.  “I’m not staying.  Just here to let you know that the flowers arrived.”  

Jessica extends her hand to shake Harvey’s.  His eyebrows go up when he feels the paper palmed there.  

“Good to see you, Jessica.”

“Hopefully the next time will be elsewhere.”

Harvey tucks his hands and the folded paper into his pockets with a casual motion, nodding to her as she walks out.  

*****

“Bathroom break,” Harvey says, walking past Mike.

“Uh, yep.”  He gets up and follows Harvey down the hallway.  They go into adjacent stalls.  

Mike can see Harvey’s pants puddle around his ankles before a piece of paper appears under the stall wall.  Mike follows Harvey’s lead, snagging the paper and sitting down on the john, pants around his ankles.  

The paper reads:

J.R. has agreed to consider testifying.  Safe.  Has some paperwork that will corroborate.  Fears rest will get disappeared from office.

F.G. was supposed to be getting info on this for DOJ.  Clearly was not.  Deal will be revoked.  

Be careful.  

Mike tears the paper into tiny pieces and flushes them down the toilet.  

When he emerges from his stall, Harvey is meticulously washing his hands.  They look at each other in the polished, stainless steel plate that serves as a mirror.  Even without words, the look says everything.  

Things are about to get intense.

*****

There’s an electric feeling in their cell as lights go out.  Things are happening, the meeting with Jessica wasn’t concrete, it wasn’t finished yet, it wasn’t a slam dunk, but things are starting to move.  

Harvey has a feeling this could even be the last night they spend in this shoebox of a room.

He’s sitting on his bed and toeing off his shoes when Mike startles him.  He steps in front of him and reaches out to cup both of his cheeks, tilting his head to look up at him.  

Mike doesn’t say anything. He simply puts his knees on either side of Harvey’s legs and lowers himself to straddling Harvey’s lap. It’s only been two days and change since Harvey first tasted Mike’s lips.  He’d immediately wanted more, to have everything and to give everything, but this is Danbury Federal Correctional Institution. Privacy is hard to come by, and Harvey has some decorum.  Now, however, under the cover of darkness, behind their cell door, Harvey curls his hands around Mike’s waist. He feels the softness of Mike’s stomach under his thumbs and the firm muscle of his ass brushing the tips of his fingers. Harvey’s eyes close when Mike leans down and winds his tongue slowly into his mouth.

“Mike,” Harvey whispers into the darkness when they pull apart.

“Stop talking,” Mike hurriedly says.  He leans back and yanks off his own shirt, tossing it across the room.  His pale skin draws Harvey in like a beacon.  The rough brush of Mike’s chest hair against Harvey’s cheek has Harvey hardening in moments.  Mike reaches down and starts to unbutton Harvey’s shirt, slowly, maddeningly slowly.

“You know they do rounds at lights out,” Harvey protests.  He doesn’t want Mike to stop, but…

“And in seventeen minutes and thirteen seconds they’ll get around to our cell. Stop talking so we can be done by then,” Mike says against his ear, yanking Harvey’s shirt out of his pants and starting to work on his zipper.

Harvey could argue.  Harvey’s always able to argue.  Tonight he won’t though, because Mike’s teeth against his neck feel so fucking good, and his own hands have started working on Mike’s pants.  “Smart boy.”

“When we get out of here, I want you to fuck me,” Mike whispers against his skin before pushing his torso back as he slips his hand inside Harvey’s underwear.  Warm fingers circle the base of Harvey’s cock and Harvey can’t help the guttural sigh he lets out as his eyes squeeze shut.  “When we get out of here, I’m gonna take my time.  Take back all the time we wasted not doing this, but now.  Harvey, now?”

“Now what,” Harvey gasps out as Mike strokes his fist slowly up his length.  

“Now touch me, Harvey.”

Harvey does.

Neither of them last seventeen minutes.

*****

The sweat has cooled and evaporated, and Harvey’s smiling softly to himself as he closes his eyes. Slowly, he starts to drift to a place where he might be able to sleep.  He wishes Mike was laying right next to him in the bed.  The cell is so small, he practically is.

“What am I going to do?”  

Mike's question is quiet in the darkness. It is well past midnight.  

“When we get out?” Harvey asks.

“Yeah.” Mike is quiet for a long time. Then he says, “I don't have anyone… I mean, Grammy is gone. Trevor's out of my life. I burned my bridges with Rachel.”

“I’m chopped liver?”

Mike sighs roughly.  Even from across the cell, Harvey can sense the tension in Mike’s body.

“I can’t keep asking you to–”

Harvey sits upright.  “I’m stopping you there. Are you kidding me, Mike? I came for you in jail. Not only did you not have to ask me, but I came even when you told me not to.”

Mike snorts a laugh.  “You’re such a jackass.”

“Takes one to know one.”

“Oh, so we’re doing junior high insults now?”

Harvey wishes he could see the expression on Mike’s face more clearly.  

“Look, Mike, I don’t know what you’re going to do when we get out.  I don’t know what I’m going to do when we get out either. Our bank accounts will tide us over until we figure it out.”

Mike is quiet again. 

Eventually, Harvey says, “Remember when I said I don’t have dreams, I have goals?”

Mike’s face turns to him, studying him in the darkness.  He sits up too.  “Where are you going with this?

“I met my goals.  I was name partner.  I had more money than I could spend.  I worked some of the most intricate, high-powered cases New York has seen in decades.”

“But?”

“No buts.  I’ve done those things and maybe now it’s time to dust off some of my dreams.”  

“These dreams...” Mike asks after a while, voice barely audible.  Soft and insecure.

“Yeah,” Harvey says, knowing exactly where this is going.  “They include you, Mike.  All of my dreams include you.”

“Not just the dirty ones, right,” Mike asks, but his voice is stronger now, more secure that Harvey’s removed the doubt lingering.  “I mean, I’m not just a piece of meat.”

“Not just the dirty ones,” Harvey answers, smirking back into the darkness.  “But they’re there.”

“They better be,” Mike says, and Harvey’s relieved when he can hear the smile in his voice. 

“Go to sleep.”

“How am I going to sleep now?  I just found out that Harvey Specter has dirty dreams about me.”

Harvey throws his balled up shirt at him in the darkness.  

*****

“Let’s go, Ross.  Get up.”

The guard takes hold of Mike’s upper arm and yanks him up from the cafeteria table.  Ketchup splatters across the tabletop.  

They’ve been in a holding pattern all morning.  Waiting.  They’d just been laughing at the thought of this fiasco of a case landing on some poor judge’s desk.  Whichever judge gets this one is going to need a long vacation afterwards.  

But now, Mike is being dragged past Gallo who is grinning like the Cheshire cat, glad for the chaos he’s a part of.  Now, Mike is listening to Harvey yell after him, struggling against the other guards as he tries to follow.

“Inside,” the guard grunts.  

He shoves Mike into an office on the upper floor.  The windows here don’t have bars.  The desk is sleek wood.  A cart stands to the left with crystal brandy snifters and a decanter filled with booze.  A series of portraits hangs on the wall to the right, paintings of the former wardens.  

“Hello, Michael.”  The man standing at the windows is wearing a utilitarian suit, but one that is well fitted.  His hair is cut like he used to be a drill sergeant.  His glasses are round and severe.  “I’m Warden Norton.”

“I know who you are.”

“Very good.  Then you, perhaps, will know how this meeting will go.”

Mike tries to pull out of the guard’s grip, but his hands are like iron.  “I have my guesses.”

“Yes, you’re quite good at making guesses.”

This is the worst possible scenario.  He and Harvey hadn’t let themselves even say this one out loud.  

The warden says, “You probably know that I’ve been the warden here for twenty-six years.”

“Twenty-six years of corruption,” Mike says.  He can’t help himself.  If this ship is sinking, at least he’ll say what he’s thinking before it goes down.    

The guard shakes Mike hard enough by the arm that he slumps into the chair.  It’s not even a comfortable chair that matches the opulence of the rest of the furniture.  This one is hard backed and metal.  Clearly it was brought in here for this moment.

Warden Norton tsks him.  “Twenty-six years of efficient management, of profit-driven success, and of strict prisoner reform.”

“More like: Anyone who stepped out of line got a visit to your office and never came back,” Mike retorts.

“Exactly as I said.  Efficient and strict.”  The warden rounds his desk.  On his way, he pulls his handkerchief out of his breast pocket and begins polishing a dagger-shaped letter opener.  

Mike knows this is intimidation.  He hopes it’s not more.  “The whole block saw me dragged out of the cafeteria.”

The warden nods at another guard who has appeared in the doorway.  He begins unrolling a plastic sheet.  

“They saw you resisting the guard.  It’s an easy and logical leap to assume you’d fight back.  Maybe you’ve got a knife from your kitchen duty hidden in your clothes.  We had to put you down.”

The first guard pulls Mike to standing and forces him to the center of the plastic sheet.

“You won’t get away with this,” Mike says.  He hopes.

He thinks of Harvey.  He’s probably laying into anyone and everyone down there, his words cutting like knives.  Gallo will be gloating.  He doesn’t know yet that his deal is getting yanked, so he’ll be acting like the king of the prison.  Mike hopes Harvey can hold back his anger before it erupts in desperation.

“I already have,” Warden Norton says.  “For a quarter century, I’ve run this prison exactly like this.  I’ve gotten awards,” he says, gesturing at the plaques by the paintings.  “There’s no reason to change methods that work .”  

The second guard comes up on Mike’s left, taking hold of his other arm.  

“This prison,” the warden continues monologuing, “is full of men who are too smart for their own good.  They think they know how things should work in the world.  They take and take, and they just can’t learn.  They struggle to be humbled.”

“Like you?” Mike spits.  “Taking and taking.  Extorting money from people.”

“Like they don’t have enough,” he replies.  The letter opener glints.

“And you’ve got Julius lined up to take the fall if things go sideways.”

Warden Norton steps closer.  “This is why, Mr. Ross, you’re going to have to be removed from the prison population.  You’re too smart for your own good.”

He draws the letter opener back right as the door is flung open.

“Drop it!  Back away and show your hands!  Put it down!  Now!  Drop!”  

A cacophony of yells and a sea of black uniformed bodies spill into the office.  FBI is emblazoned across the backs of the new arrivals.  One drags Mike out into the hallway, passing him to a medic who shout-asks if he’s injured.  Mike isn’t, though he might need a new pair of shorts after this.

They leave him leaning against the hallway wall, heart rate way over what is probably healthy.  Yelling and protests continue from inside the office until a tantruming Warden Norton is led out in handcuffs.  He shouts expletives at Mike as the FBI agents march him out.  The two guards, relieved of their weapons, follow silently.

A suited man that Mike could pick out as a fed from a mile away walks up the stairs to him.  He hands Mike a trifold legal document closed with a string.

“Open it,” he says.  

Mike does, skimming the top page.  It’s his deal with Cahill and his release papers.  

“I’m James Christofferson.”  He hands Mike another set of papers, this one calling out Mike and Harvey as his informants in the case against Norton.  “Let’s get you out of here.”

“And Harvey?” Mike asks frantically.  “We can’t leave him in here with Gallo.”

“He’s already outside.”

Mike slumps against the wall in relief.

“I’m really glad you guys didn’t take any longer to get here.”

“Me too.  You’re one of our star witnesses.  I need you alive.”

Mike laughs, a little unhinged as the adrenaline keeps pumping through him.  “Ready when you are.”

Christofferson guides Mike downstairs, through the discharge offices and the locker room where Mike is given his original clothing.  He slips the suit on like it’s his second skin, leaving his prison blues stamped with number 53296 laying on the bench.  It’s like emerging from a chrysalis.  

Outside, the sunlight is brighter, the sky is bluer, and Harvey Specter is more handsome than Mike thought possible.

"When you're backed against the wall, break the goddamn thing down," Harvey says, leaning into Mike’s shoulder with a wide grin.

They step out of Danbury’s fenceline together.  Ray is waiting, the back door of the sedan open and a bottle of champagne waiting.  

“We made it,” Mike says.  

“For a while there, I wasn’t sure we would.”

“I just like proving you wrong.”

Harvey laughs.  “Don’t I know it.  Come on.  Let’s get out of here.”

Mike slips into the backseat with a sigh of relief.  He slouches into the leather.  “You know, we’re kind of living out the plot to All The President’s Men here.  Found the incriminating tape.  Brought down the presidency of the prison.”

Harvey looks at him with eyebrows raised, waiting for the pun to drop.

“Something, something, Deep Throat,” Mike grins.  

“Is that the title of your autobiography,” Harvey asks, reaching over and taking Mike’s hand in his.

Mike grins over at him.  “Yeah.  The mystery.  The intrigue.”  He waggles his eyebrows.  “The sex appeal.”

Harvey snorts.  “Maybe I’ll write an autobiography too,” he muses.

Mike laughs.  “What will yours be called?”

Harvey thinks for a moment, before looking at Mike and makes a put out kind of face.  "How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.”

Mike tries to take his hand back.  “I? I'm not the bomb, Harvey.”

Harvey grins.  “You're the bomb, Mike.”

“I’m thebomb.com,” Mike snarks back, and then cringes.  “Forget I said that.”

Harvey shakes his  head.  “I will do no such thing.”

*****

Epilogue

Mike walks down their short driveway to get the mail.  He never ceases to be amazed by how fresh the air in Cooperstown is.  Maybe his City lungs will never really recover.  

The flowers on their porch are finally blooming in the colorful pots they had shipped back from their month-long trip to Buenos Aires last year.  Mike pulls a few blossoms out to give to Harvey when he goes back inside.  Mike should get the neighbor kid to come over to mow the lawn.  

An old pickup rumbles by.  The driver waves, and Mike waves back 

“Mornin’, Mike!”

“I told you to wash that truck, Bert.”  

“Dirt’s the only thing holdin’ her together!”

The mailbox has the usual junk mail, the town newspaper, a few letters from prospective clients that came here instead of their office in town… 

And a letter from Julius Rowe. 

Mike hurries back inside, flopping down beside Harvey on the couch.  Harvey holds his coffee cup high to keep from spilling it as Mike bumps against his side.  

Mike unceremoniously tosses the flowers into Harvey’s lap before ripping open the envelope.  He starts reading, with Harvey over his shoulder.  

Dear Mike and Harvey,

Thank you.  

I know you aren’t in it for the thanks, Mike.  And you, Harvey, are only in it for Mike (and probably the glory).  Nonetheless, thank you.  

You know, Harvey, despite our antagonistic meetings, I can relate to you.  Mike showed up at Danbury and the whole place is better in his wake.  He’s like a planet with enough gravity to pull truth out of the darkness.  How on Earth did you find him?

And, Mike, I can relate to you too.  It’s my job to unravel the metaphorical ropes around the guys who pass through here, and to help them find something good hiding in there.  I think you do that too, in your job before prison and while you were here.  

It was good to know you both.  But I have to say:  never come back to my prison.  Even if you did manage to find a way to make it mine again, don’t think I owe you forever for that.  Just for the first few years, maybe.

Maybe!

Best,

Julius