Chapter Text
Mike’s head rose and fell with the steady rhythm of Harvey’s breathing, cheek pressed against the warm skin of his chest, one arm slung loosely over Harvey’s stomach. The afterglow curled around him like a satisfied cat, warm and heavy, and he let his eyes fall shut for a minute. Everything smelled like clean sweat, sex, and Harvey’s cologne—that absurdly expensive one Harvey insisted wasn’t "just cologne" but a "statement." Mike still didn’t know what statement it was making, other than I am very rich and I smell like cedar and manhood, but he didn’t really mind.
He smiled lazily, letting himself enjoy it. This was good. This was better than good. This was what he used to fantasize about when he was scraping together ramen money and convincing himself that working with Trevor was definitely a real job and not just slow-motion career suicide. He had everything he wanted. He had a job that didn’t make him hate himself—most of the time. He had a partner who was smart, sexy, maddening, and deeply invested in pretending he wasn’t a romantic at heart.
Mike exhaled, his breath warm against Harvey’s chest. Perfect.
And then, because his brain was a traitorous bastard, a thought hit him like a cold slap: Harvey is ten years older than you.
He froze. Not physically—not enough to wake Harvey, who was gently snoring with the self-assurance of a man who believed REM cycles were for closers—but inside, something clenched.
It wasn’t new information. It wasn’t even particularly scandalous. Mike wasn’t twenty and naïve anymore. He was thirty-three, kind-of-legally employed, with only a medium-sized imposter complex now. And he’d always known Harvey was older. That had been part of the appeal—the confidence, the experience, the way Harvey could cut through a room like a bullet in a tailored suit. But suddenly, the number "forty-four" lodged itself in his brain like a splinter.
Forty-four. Not old. Not really. But older.
Statistically, Harvey was already halfway through his life. Maybe more. And okay, maybe that was a dark place to go, especially when still lying in post-orgasmic bliss, but now it was there, a little existential barnacle clinging to the hull of Mike’s contentment.
He glanced up at Harvey’s face—relaxed, mouth slightly open, brows smooth. Completely unbothered. Bastard. Mike felt a flash of resentment that he wasn’t also spiraling. But of course not. Harvey probably had a ten-year plan for aging with dignity and would somehow come out of it with even sharper cheekbones.
Still. Mike’s eyes wandered to the faint crow’s feet at the corner of Harvey’s eyes. They crinkled when he laughed. Mike loved those. He loved that Harvey wasn’t trying to hide them. But now he found himself doing the math, not about how many years they had together—because that was a ridiculous and depressing exercise—but about Harvey’s lifestyle choices.
Sure, he jogged. He boxed. He looked damn good naked. But the man consumed red meat like it was a competitive sport and treated single malt scotch as a food group. Not to mention the job. The long hours, the stress, the daily exposure to Louis. It couldn’t be good for his heart.
What if Harvey dropped dead of a heart attack at sixty? Mike would only be fifty. That was so many possible years alone. And God, what if Harvey lived long enough to develop some tragic memory-robbing disease, and Mike had to watch the love of his life forget who he was?
His heart started racing. He pressed his palm to Harvey’s chest like he could check for abnormalities. Just steady thumps. No alarms. But what if he missed something? What if Harvey’s heart was sending secret Morse code distress signals through his ribcage and Mike just wasn’t bilingual in cardiovascular panic?
Harvey snorted in his sleep and muttered something that sounded suspiciously like Tell Louis to stop quoting Les Misérables, then fell quiet again. Mike stared at him, feeling absurdly fond and stupidly panicked all at once.
This was not how this was supposed to go. He was supposed to be floating in happy haze, not calculating actuarial tables in his head. Why did his brain have to do this now? They had just had really good sex. Like, really good. The kind that left him wrung out and smug and deeply satisfied. The kind that should have left no room for mortality crises.
But no. Of course not. Because his brain apparently hated him and had decided to weaponize statistics against him at the worst possible time.
He shifted slightly, careful not to wake Harvey, whose arm tightened instinctively around him. Mike stared up at the ceiling, as if the paint swirls might offer answers.
What was he supposed to do? Put Harvey on a health regimen? Start sneakily replacing his scotch with kombucha? No, Harvey would notice immediately, probably before the glass even reached his lips.
Maybe he could cook healthier meals. Ease him into it. Less steak, more salmon. Start talking about the Mediterranean diet during pillow talk. Hey babe, that was amazing. Have you considered switching to olive oil and leafy greens?
Yeah. That’d go over well.
He sighed through his nose, pressing a kiss to Harvey’s collarbone. He shouldn’t be thinking about this. It was irrational. Harvey was strong. Sharp. Unstoppable. The kind of man who wouldn’t let something as boring as biology or mortality slow him down. Harvey Specter didn’t age—he just got more expensive.
And yet, the thought wouldn’t go away. That someday, maybe not soon, but inevitably, Mike would be the one left behind. Left to pack up the suits and the cufflinks and the damn vintage record player. Left to argue with hospital administrators and write the obituary and smile politely at people who never really understood who Harvey was.
His chest tightened. He hated this. Hated that he was even capable of thinking this way now. But maybe that was the price of finally being happy—you started worrying about losing it.
He glanced back up at Harvey’s face, slack with sleep, utterly peaceful. Trusting him to be there when he woke up.
Mike reached out and brushed a fingertip lightly along Harvey’s jaw, just a whisper of contact. His throat felt tight.
"Okay," he whispered into the dark. "You’re not going anywhere. Not if I have anything to say about it."
Harvey snored again. Mike smirked faintly, then pressed his cheek back to his chest.
He wouldn’t wake him. Wouldn’t say anything. But tomorrow, he was buying vitamins, scheduling boxing together, and maybe switching their dinner reservations to that new vegan place downtown.
For now, he just listened to Harvey breathe and made a silent promise.
--
Harvey woke to the smell of something... cooked. Which, in and of itself, wasn’t suspicious. What was suspicious was that it didn’t smell like bacon or pancakes or anything a human would traditionally associate with "breakfast." It smelled... vegetal. And slightly nutty. A little sinister.
Still groggy, he shoved the comforter off and sat up, rubbing a hand down his face. Sunlight filtered through the blinds in that gentle, mocking way it did on days when the universe was about to throw something weird at him. And the bed was empty. Which wasn’t unusual, exactly. Mike was an early riser—insufferably chipper in the mornings sometimes—but he usually woke Harvey up with coffee and some gratuitous groping before starting the day.
But this morning: silence. And that smell.
Harvey grabbed a T-shirt off the floor, slipped it on, and padded barefoot into the kitchen, blinking against the light. He found Mike standing at the stove like a domestic god, spatula in hand, looking suspiciously pleased with himself.
"Morning, sunshine," Mike said, grinning. "Hungry?"
Harvey squinted at the plate on the counter. He didn’t recognize any of it. There were greens. So many greens. And something that might’ve been tofu. Or possibly a white brick of sadness. Beside it sat a glass of... sludge. Vivid green, the kind of color that usually meant toxic in cartoons.
Harvey stared at the glass. Then at Mike.
"What the hell is that?"
"It’s a green smoothie."
"That’s not an answer. That’s a warning."
Mike rolled his eyes. "Come on. It’s got kale, spinach, cucumber, ginger, banana, almond milk—"
"Jesus Christ. Is that all in one glass?"
Mike pushed the plate toward him. "And this is scrambled tofu with turmeric, black salt, and sautéed spinach. No cholesterol, no saturated fat. Pure energy."
Harvey blinked slowly, like his brain was buffering. "What happened to eggs? What happened to toast? What happened to God?"
"You’ll live," Mike said cheerfully. "Longer, even."
Harvey picked up the fork like it was a weapon he didn’t quite trust yet. "Is this because I wouldn’t watch that documentary about food fascists with you?"
Mike just smiled, tight-lipped and suspiciously innocent. "Try it. Trust me."
Harvey took a bite. It wasn’t awful. It wasn’t good, but it didn’t make him want to die, so that was something. He washed it down with a sip of the smoothie, immediately gagged, and reached for a napkin to spit it into.
Mike gave him a look.
Harvey swallowed it like a shot of cheap tequila and looked his boyfriend in the eye. "That tastes like a garden threw up in my mouth."
"You’re being dramatic."
"I’m being accurate."
But Mike just hummed, content. Too content. Harvey narrowed his eyes. Something was off. But before he could prod at it after finishing the technically-a-breakfast, Mike was handing him a travel mug (probably full of more vegetable goop), and they were heading out the door.
By the time they got to the building, Harvey was still trying to scrape the taste off his tongue with his teeth. The elevator doors pinged open and he stepped forward, but Mike made no move to follow.
"Let’s take the stairs," Mike said brightly.
Harvey turned, slow and deliberate. "Ha. Good one. Get in the elevator."
"I’m serious."
"You do remember we work on the fiftieth floor, right? As in, five-zero. That’s not a number you climb. That’s a number you avoid."
"Come on. It’ll be good for us."
"There’s no ‘us’ in stairs."
"Technically there is—"
"Don’t do that."
Mike sighed. "Look, just a few flights, then we’ll take the elevator the rest of the way."
Harvey stared at him. His boyfriend—the man who once fake-sprained his ankle to get out of a company softball game—wanted to take the stairs? And eat tofu? And drink liquified swamp?
No. Something was wrong.
"I’m not walking up a skyscraper before I’ve had caffeine and a reason to hate the world," Harvey said. "That’s final."
Mike raised his hands in surrender. "Fine. Elevator it is."
But the tension lingered.
Later that morning, after two meetings and an awkward encounter with Louis involving an unsolicited monologue about the poetry of team-building exercises, Harvey cornered Mike in his office.
"Okay," he said, leaning against the doorframe. "What’s going on?"
Mike didn’t look up from his desk. "What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. Breakfast. Stairs. You’re acting like a FitBit commercial. What gives?"
"Nothing’s going on."
Harvey tilted his head. "Mike."
"I’m fine."
"Mike."
Mike looked up, wide-eyed and evasive. "I just thought we could be a little healthier, that’s all."
"Healthier. You—the man who once ate an entire pizza by himself and called it ‘carb loading.’ You expect me to believe this is just... spontaneous self-improvement?"
"Maybe I had a moment of clarity."
"Bullshit."
Mike shrugged and went back to typing. Harvey stared at him for a long second, trying to crack the code, but Mike was a vault.
Fine. If he wanted to play it that way, so be it.
--
By the time lunch rolled around and Mike passed him a container of quinoa salad with "a tahini drizzle," Harvey had come to the only logical conclusion: Mike was trying to break up with him.
And he didn’t have the balls to say it.
Of course. This was classic misdirection. The sudden lifestyle changes. The avoidance. The aggressive enthusiasm about leafy greens. He wasn’t trying to improve Harvey’s life. He was trying to escape it. Slowly, subtly, so Harvey wouldn’t notice until he was sipping spirulina alone and wondering where his dignity went.
Well, screw that.
If Mike wanted to break up with him, he could damn well say it. Until then, Harvey was going to grit his teeth, down every sludge-smoothie and chickpea-powered lunchbox, and endure. Because he wasn’t going to give Mike the satisfaction of walking away first. Oh no. He would suffer with pride. Like a man.
That night, Mike made lentil soup.
Harvey took a bite, smiled tightly, and said, "Delicious."
Mike beamed. "You really think so?"
"I could eat this every day," Harvey lied, shoveling more into his mouth like it was lava. "You’re amazing."
Mike’s smile turned into a small, surprised laugh, like he hadn’t expected Harvey to go along with it.
Which only confirmed Harvey’s theory.
Mike was trying to get rid of him.
Well.
Not on his watch.