Disclaimer: I don't own Suits or Sufjan Stevens. I'm still too broke to even justify buying the first season, which is unfortunate because I'm dying to watch the dvd extras! Every time I go to Target I walk down the dvd aisle and stare at it longingly. Maybe someday.

A/N: So just to forewarn you all, this oneshot is rather depressing and contains character death. I don't know what possessed me to write something so dark, but what can you do besides what the muse wants you to do? I know this is probably medically unrealistic but I was purposefully vague in describing the illness because the focus of the story is on the characters and not the disease itself. I wrote this as an intended bromance but if you want to tilt your head and squint at it, feel free to read it as Marvey slash if that's your cup of tea. I would say happy reading but I suppose it's more like try-not-to-get-too-sad reading?

I can't explain the state that I'm in

The state of my heart

He was my best friend.

From "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us!" by Sufjan Stevens

When Mike wakes up one seemingly regular Tuesday morning, it takes him about a minute to realize that he is not in his bed at his apartment, nor is he anywhere else that he recognizes off the top of his head. He sits up and instantly knows that he is in the hospital because there are tubes and an IV wrapped all over his body and a methodic beeping noise emanates from a heart monitor next to him. He feels the heady thrum of narcotics running through his veins and it's almost like being high. He scrambles to remember what has happened and why he is here— he remembers going to bed last night and waking up this morning and getting ready for work. Then he got on his bike and began riding to work when…shit. He remembers now. He had been riding to work when a fainting spell overcame him. He had only gotten a few blocks away from his apartment before dark, inky spots began to bloom before his vision and he got that weird adrenaline rush that accompanies fainting and it left him feeling sweaty and hot and cold all at once. He had gotten off his bike then and he has a vague memory of passing out in a patch of conveniently placed grass on the side of the road. From then on he remembers nothing.

The door to his hospital room opens suddenly and Mike's regular doctor walks in.

"Good to see you're awake!" Dr. Robbins booms and Mike cringes, his head aching sharply at this needless exuberance.

"Hi, Dr. Robbins. What's going on? Why are you here?" He can tell from the shoddy décor and the poorly spackled walls that this isn't the hospital he normally goes to, the nice one that is blessedly covered by his Pearson Hardman insurance.

"You apparently fainted on the way to work this morning, which I suppose is only to be expected given your worsening condition. Some jogger found you and called an ambulance and they brought you to the closest hospital. You're all right—good thing you got off your bike before you collapsed. They called me to come down when they looked into your medical history and saw your preexisting illness. Look, Mike, I need to talk to you about your scans from last week. I was going call you down to the office this afternoon anyway, so I guess it's good that this happened today."

Mike has a feeling that this isn't going to be good news.

"I don't really know how to say this, Mike, but…well, the cancer has spread throughout your body and has reached even your brain. Now that it's gotten to this point it will spread even faster. There's nothing more we can do," Dr. Robbins says, and Mike gets the sense that he is genuinely crushed to be delivering this news to him. They've been through a lot together the past two-ish years, he and Dr. Robbins.

Yep. Definitely not good news, Mike thinks numbly. But what was he really expecting on a day like today when he'd woken up in the hospital? Nothing good, he supposes. But nothing this bad, either.

(SUITS)

Harvey wanders in about an hour later, his face unusually tense with poorly-masked concern for Mike's wellbeing. As soon as he sees that Mike is sitting up in bed and eating porridge, he deflates a little and pulls up a chair to sit next to the bed, looking much more like his normal self.

"So what is this, just an elaborate plot to get out of doing the Thompson paperwork? And since when have I been your emergency contact? I got a call saying you had collapsed in a bush on your way to work— did you crash your bike? Maybe this weekend I can put the training wheels back on if I have a spare moment," Harvey quips snidely but Mike knows Harvey well enough to know that he is only trying to cover up his relief that his associate appears to be fully intact.

"What, did you damage your vocal chords somehow? I'm surprised you haven't been talking my ear off about how big and scary the bush was. So what's the prognosis?" Harvey asks, and Mike knows it's time to come clean and tell Harvey the truth that he has been hiding all of these months. But that doesn't make it any easier. How do you tell someone you're dying when they think you just fell off your bike?

"Harvey," Mike says in as serious a tone as he can muster under the influence of giddiness-inducing painkillers. "I don't have very long."

"You look fine to me. Don't think you're getting out of work today."

"No, Harvey, seriously. I don't have much time left. That's the prognosis," Mike says gravely. He knows he should break this news a little more gently but he just wants to come right out and get this over with.

Harvey looks at Mike then with a slight air of nervousness, as though he knows deep down what is coming. "What do you mean? I know you're broke, but even you could afford to stay in this hospital for a day or two," he says, looking around disdainfully. This is so typical Harvey, trying to play things off as a joke when they get too real or emotional. Harvey appears completely at ease now, but Mike has worked with the man for two years and knows all of his tells. Harvey's clenching his left fist slightly which means he's anxious. To any random judge or jury or client, however, he would appear as he always does— invincible and completely in control. Except not even Harvey Reginald Specter can control cancer.

"I'm not talking about how long I have to stay in the hospital. I'm dying, Harvey. And I don't have very much time left," Mike says bluntly, and he turns his gaze away from Harvey to stare out the window at the soft golden rays of the setting sun. He can't bear to see the look of utter denial on Harvey's face. It's an expression he knows well; he sees it in the mirror each morning when he thinks about the fact that he is 27 years old and dying.

He turns back to Harvey. "Cancer. I was diagnosed right before I met you. It's a really rare kind— inoperable and basically untreatable. And therefore, terminal."

He is expecting disbelief, sadness, maybe— but what he gets is irrational anger, which he supposes is probably the quintessential Harvey Specter defense mechanism.

"Is this supposed to be some kind of a sick joke? Because I'm not laughing," Harvey snaps fiercely.

"I wish it were a joke," Mike laughs humorlessly. Harvey still looks furious.

"What the hell is your problem? You're going to sit there and tell me that you're dying? You ride your bike to work every day; pull all-nighters all the time. You're a perfectly healthy twenty-seven year old." Harvey says tightly, his knuckles white with sudden, unwarranted rage. For a second Mike thinks that he's going to lunge forward and punch him in the face but he turns suddenly on his heel and makes as though to leave the room.

"Harvey, please…" Mike calls, suddenly feeling weak as the full burden of his grim future presses down on him all at once. He must sound truly pathetic because Harvey stops with his hand on the doorknob and turns back to him. All of the anger seems to seep out of him suddenly, and Mike can see it travel out of his body, shoulders sagging and fists unclenching.

"It's not true," Harvey says quietly.

"I should have told you sooner. I'm sorry."

Harvey comes closer and looks at Mike, really looks at him, and Mike knows that he can see it's true. Now that he's looking for the signs, they're all there— the unhealthy thinness, the unnatural pallor of his cheeks, the permanent bags under his eyes— despite Mike's desperate attempts to appear normal, it is becoming harder and harder to conceal the fact that he is not a healthy man.

Harvey sits down hard in the hospital chair.

"There's nothing they can do?"

"Nothing," Mike says calmly. He shifts through the Kubler-Ross stages of loss like waves crashing over a tide pool— some days he is violently in denial and is certain that this is all just a bad dream; that this can't be happening to him. Some days he sits for hours and begs and pleads with a higher being that he's not sure if he believes in that if he could just get better he'd never smoke weed again. Visit Grammy every day. Stop hurting Rachel with his lies. Hell, maybe he'd even go to church. Sometimes he's so angry that this is happening that he wants to punch a hole in the glass wall of Harvey's perfect office window and throw Harvey's prized basketballs and baseballs out the broken window hole at random passerby on the streets to make them feel some of his pain.Some days he is unbelievably depressed and he can't even get out of bed until he remembers that he has a limited amount of days left and he can't afford to waste time lying around and crying. And on some merciful, rare days, he is at the acceptance stage. These days are few and far between, but today is one of them because it has to be one of them for Harvey's sake. One of them has to keep it together during this conversation.

"So that's it? You're just going to give up? How the hell can you be so calm about this?" Harvey says, and the anger is back again. He stands up and begins pacing around, running his hands through his perfectly coiffed hair.

"Eh, I've had more than a year and a half to be upset about this. Plus these painkillers work wonders— you want a hit of my IV? Takes your worries away instantly," Mike tries to joke but it falls flat. Harvey glares at him. "Okay, okay, look— there's not much I can do. The gun-to-the-head-146-options metaphor doesn't really apply here because the gun is my body and it's pointing at my head."

He giggles a little then at the mental image of his body twisted around and pointing at his head like some sort of Olympic gymnast/contortionist/pretzel and wishes he were having this conversation when he wasn't high on pain meds. Judging by Harvey's frown he's wishing much the same thing.

The whole story comes out then because once Mike starts talking, (his tongue loosened under the influence of heavy narcotics) he can't stop. He talks and talks about how he was diagnosed a week before he met Harvey about a year and a half ago. Even though he knew then that the prognosis was bad and there was no real treatment available, he had known that he would need money for hospice care and hospital bills in the future, and money to take care of Grammy when he was gone. Plus they had raised the cost of Grammy's treatment. So he had agreed when Trevor had offered him the chance to be a drug mule— after all, what did a dying man have to lose? It had turned out that he had a lot to gain, however, because that was when he had met Harvey and been offered a job at Pearson Hardman. So he had taken it and never looked back— now he had health insurance and adequate money to pay for his future needs. It hadn't been easy, living the life of an associate and working 80 to 90 hours awake when he was so sick and tired a lot of the time, the cancer spreading slowly and insidiously through his body. But he genuinely enjoyed the work and he had always wanted to be a lawyer. It was the chance of a lifetime, he told Harvey, getting to work at Pearson Hardman and fulfill his dreams before he died. If the make-a-wish foundation had come to him to grant his last wish he couldn't have asked for a better miracle himself than Harvey Specter.

He had told Grammy a few months ago when she had started noticing obvious symptoms, and he had meant to tell everyone else but it wasn't exactly an easy thing to bring up in conversation so he had just continued his desperate attempts to hid it.

It has spread all over his body and now all the doctors can do is make him comfortable. He had several scans last week and 2 to 4 months is the prognosis he was given. It's time to start hospice care. Mike recites all of this robotically and factually while Harvey sits silently and absorbs this news equally emotionlessly.

"Where will you go?" Harvey asks tonelessly after awhile. Indifference is classic Specter defense mechanism #2.

"I dunno. Back to my apartment, I suppose. The doctors and hospice nurses can make home visits. I don't want to be cooped up in a hospital for my last few months."

The sit in silence for awhile then, and Mike overhears a young intern in the hallway talking about how he is leaving next week for a 6-month Doctors Without Borders mission trip. It is a strange thought to realize that if he were to go on that trip he probably wouldn't even make it to the halfway point before succumbing to his illness. The end is near, and he hopes things won't get too messy for everyone else's sake.

(SUITS)

Though they never talk about it, Mike goes home from the hospital and moves into the guest room of Harvey's apartment through some sort of mutual silent agreement (which Donna naturally finds adorable— she gushes about their 'bromance' to anyone who will listen). Harvey simply brings him there when he is released from the hospital and that is that. No discussion about the matter, as though there is no question that it is automatically Harvey's job to take Mike in.

There are a lot of other things they don't talk about. Like how Mike is steadily going downhill and getting weaker and weaker. Or how all the neighbors gossip that Harvey Specter's young gay lover has moved in with him, which Mike privately thinks is hilarious. Or how Mike, in the throes of a fever one night, hallucinates that Harvey is his dad and cries on his shoulder asking where Mom is.

Mike constantly thanks Harvey for all he is doing for him. Harvey just says that Mike is his responsibility and Mike hopes that he's not doing this out of some misplaced sense of duty but he doesn't press the matter further because he is afraid of the true answer. Harvey eventually gets annoyed with the excessive gratitude. ('Mike, I'm literally just sitting on the couch doing paperwork right now. There is absolutely nothing to be thanking me for'). But Harvey doesn't realize what a comfort he is to Mike- this is no longer his burden to bear alone because Harvey has stepped up to the plate unflinchingly and he always grabs the reins from Mike whenever things start spiralling out of control.

Though it often seems that nobody knows exactly what to say about the situation and words are scarce, there are definitely a lot of tears from everyone in his odd, makeshift little family. Like Rachel, for example, who comes over every so often to sit with Mike. They usually watch TV (Gilmore Girls a lot of the time, much to Harvey's amusement and disdain) and Mike knows that sooner or later he'll look over at her during the middle of an episode and she'll be sitting there with inevitable tears streaming silently down her face. Then he'll pull her in close and let her cry on his chest while she apologizes for being so upset when he's the one dying. He comforts her easily and doesn't resent her at all for her sorrow— she has lived a sheltered life and has never lost anyone she loves before. He aches for the future that they might have had together. This slow, drawn-out dying process is hard on her and he knows to expect crying from her every time she comes over. But he doesn't mind, because he enjoys the feeling of her in his arms. It makes him feel like just a regular guy watching TV with his beautiful girlfriend. It makes him feel alive.

Donna's tears are easier to bear. She comes over almost every night to mother him to death, which he can't deny that he enjoys. They act like everything is normal, bantering back and forth and quoting Shakespeare to one another. But every night before she leaves she comes and sits on the couch with him to say goodnight and her eyes fill with tears because she knows that this could be the last time she sees him. So he lets her hold him close while her body shakes ever so slightly with barely repressed tears. But Donna's tears are different from Rachel's— with Rachel he feels like he needs to be strong for her. But Donna is like the mother he hasn't had since he is eleven and she doesn't care if he cries too sometimes. So they sit there on the couch, clinging to one another on their own little island of sadness, weeping together over the time that they will miss in the future. Then Donna always pulls away and brushes the tears off of Mike's cheeks and kisses him on the forehead before she leaves. Her mascara is usually running and her hair is messed up from a long day at the office and her sleeves are smeared with ink, but Mike always thinks she looks beautiful.

When Jessica cries it's the most unanticipated thing ever and afterwards he wonders if it was just a trick of the light or if it really happened. On one of his good days about a month into hospice he asks Harvey to sneak him into Pearson Hardman so he can subtly clear out his desk and retrieve some of the old pictures of his parents and Grammy that he has there. He takes a long evening nap and then Harvey brings him into the office at about ten o'clock at night when most people are gone. Harvey is nervous about him being out this late and fusses over Mike like a mother sending her son off to his first day of kindergarten. Mike brushes him off and reminds him of some paperwork that he has forgotten so that he'll leave him in the associate bullpen and go to his office. Mike is sitting at his desk chair and rummaging through his drawers to decide what to keep (he find twelve empty cans of Red Bull in the three drawers and thinks he's amazed he's survived this long) when Jessica suddenly appears. She doesn't say much, but she tells him that she is sorry and that he probably would have made senior partner someday, even though he's not a real lawyer, which makes him smile. When Harvey comes back to shepherd Mike gently back to the car like some sort of baby duckling, Mike quietly thanks her as he walks by. And when she turns to look at him, her dark eyes are filled with tears that won't fall because she is too in-control to let them. She nods regally at him in farewell and then turns away and he thinks that this is how he will always remember her— standing straight and resolute and staring out the window overlooking the entire world, alone but strong.

Louis stops by Harvey's apartment one night a few weeks later, looking nervous and fidgety. Harvey can't bear to be around the man any more than is absolutely necessary so he leaves Louis alone with Mike. Louis bumbles his way through some vague and empty condolences— "you were a good associate, we'll all miss you, blah blah blah"— and Mike knows that most of that is untrue because Louis has never particularly liked him and has always been jealous of his camaraderie with Harvey. He's about two seconds away from fake-passing out so that Louis will leave and get Harvey when Louis suddenly turns very serious and looks at Mike earnestly. "When you…die," he says delicately, and Mike realizes that the other lawyer's eyes are filled with tears. "Will you find my cat and make sure he's okay? Nobody I've known has ever died before and I'm worried that he's all alone up there." Louis sniffs and Mike finds that he's suddenly laughing because Louis is such a poor, naïve, idiotic asshole but he really means well and some small part of Mike will miss the man and he can't help but believe that Louis will genuinely miss him too. And then suddenly he's laughing and crying at once because even in the afterlife he'll be working for Louis, chasing after his cat. And Louis sniffles pathetically again and pats him on the shoulder and thanks him before leaving. When Harvey comes back into the room Mike makes him promise to try and be a little nicer to Louis in the future.

Grammy is the hardest one of all to say goodbye to. She has been with him through it all— his childhood, his years of ostracism from his peers in school, his parents' deaths, cancer— she is everything to him and he knows it's killing her that there's no way to fix this the way that she fixed all his problems when he was younger. She has been cursed with an unfortunate lot in life— everyone she loves is dead or dying and she will soon be left completely alone. He makes Harvey and Donna promise that they will take care of her. He lasts about two months after he moves in with Harvey before he finally has to admit that he is getting too sick to go out again on a regular basis. Grammy isn't well enough to come visit him, so he makes Harvey bring him to the nursing home on one of his now-rare good days. He sits with Grammy for hours and they reminisce about nothing and everything, trying to delay the inevitable. And when it is finally time for him to leave, she draws him into a fierce embrace and holds him while they both cry and cry, knowing that it's the end of their story together for now. Harvey practically has to carry him out to the car afterwards, he is so emotionally exhausted. That night he lies in the bed of Harvey's guest room and curses the bittersweet ache in his heart. It's better when things are just plain sad; bittersweet is harder to deal with. On one hand he's glad that his pain and suffering will soon be over. But he doesn't want to leave Grammy and Harvey and Donna and Rachel and…well, everyone. It's almost easier to be the one dying, he thinks. Sure, he's afraid of being forgotten; afraid of what he'll miss out on. But at least he won't have to deal with the aftermath of his death like they will.

Mike only sees Harvey really cry once throughout this whole ordeal. It's towards the end, when he has been staying with his boss for almost two and a half months now. His health has gone steadily downhill and he knows with an unshakeable certainty that the end is close. He wakes up one night in a bed that is not his own and realizes that he must have passed out again. It's been happening more and more often lately, and Harvey usually just drags him to the couch or to his bed, whichever is closest. In this instance, he wakes up in Harvey's incredibly comfortable bed. He feels like he has been sleeping on a cloud and decides that if there is an afterlife and there are beds in the afterlife, then the beds will be like Harvey's bed. He opens his eyes and squints through the dim lighting to see that Harvey is sitting in a chair beside the bed slumped over, his elbows resting on the comforter. At first he thinks that Harvey is sleeping but then he hears Harvey's breath hitching and realizes that he is crying quietly, his face in his hands. He keeps mumbling "oh my god" brokenly and it makes Mike's heart ache and his own eyes fill with tears. He feels a sudden surge of sympathy for Harvey, who has been keeping all of his emotions to himself throughout this process in order to be strong for Mike. He knows how hard this will be on Harvey— after all, they've spent almost every single day of the past two years together. He reaches out with a shaky hand and weakly places it on top of Harvey's hands. Harvey draws in a sharp breath and slowly lowers his hands and Mike is struck by the raw pain on Harvey's face. His expression says all of the things that he will never be able to say out loud, like you're like my little brother, and please don't go, and I'm so sorry that you have to go through this. Any doubts that Mike might have had before about Harvey taking care of him out of a misplaced sense of obligation disappear as he reads the unmistakeable truth that is painted on Harvey's anguished features. The two of them sit there and cry together in the dark, hands laced together. Mike scoots closer so that his head is resting on Harvey's shoulder. And Mike wonders if he would have gone through with it and agreed to work at Pearson Hardman almost two years ago if he had known the heartbreak it would bring back then.

(SUITS)

Mike Ross dies three months to the day after he moves in with Harvey. He has been fighting his hardest to hang on but is fading quickly with each day that passes. By two and a half months, he's on heavy doses of morphine to combat the pain and it often makes him feel hazy and confused. He is almost constantly running a fever and oftentimes wakes up and thinks that Harvey is Trevor or his father or even his grandfather before he sinks back into an exhausted and troubled maze of dreams. He has his good days and his bad days and sometimes he has startling moments of lucidity and clarity. At 2 months and three weeks he makes Harvey take him outside to walk in the rain one last time. He falls ill immediately after that and never quite resurfaces coherently.

He has has no concept of time anymore— maybe he is an old man by now and has been here waiting to die for years. The one constant is that Harvey is always there. The doctors and hospice nurses come and go. He thinks that he hears Rachel's voice once or twice, feels her soft lips press against his cheek. Afterwards his cheek is damp with her tears. He knows that Donna is there sometimes because he easily recognizes her voice and her fiery red hair. But he gets confused sometimes and doesn't remember if she's his mom or if she's just plain Donna, so sometimes he calls her mom and her gaze softens and her face crumples and her eyes fill with tears. He gets the feeling that he is making everyone very sad for some reason but he can't quite remember why and it scares him.

During one moment of brief awareness, Mike blinks his heavy eyelids and realizes that Harvey is nowhere to be seen for the first time in his recent memory.

"H'vey?" he manages to get out weakly. Is Harvey sick? Is that why everyone is so sad? Is Harvey okay?

All of a sudden Donna is next to him, holding his hand and offering him water.

"Harvey's resting, sweetie. He's absolutely exhausted. But I can wake him up if you really want me to— you've been calling out for him in your sleep."

"No. S'okay, Donna. Stay with me?" He barely recognizes his own pitiful voice.

"Of course, honey," Donna says, and she begins to hum 'Let it be' quietly and gently cards her fingers through his hair until he is lulled back into sleep.

Some unknown amount of time later Mike wakes up and feels clearer than he has in ages. Harvey is back in the chair next to his bed and he is sound asleep.

"Harvey," Mike says, and his voice is surprisingly normal sounding.

Harvey jerks awake suddenly, his eyes scanning the room quickly until they meet Mike's. He smiles tentatively, obviously trying to assess the situation and determine the degree of Mike's lucidity.

"You sound good, Mike," Harvey says approvingly, his hand coming up to Mike's forehead to feel his temperature. "How are you feeling?" There is a hint of hope in Harvey's voice that Mike hates to crush but he has to because he has this terrible heavy feeling in his stomach all of a sudden, like a premonition.

"I think this is it, Harvey," he says quietly.

Harvey pales slightly. "Hey, don't talk like that. You're doing much better. The doctor feared the worst when your fever spiked— you've been mostly out of it for a few days. I knew I shouldn't have brought you go out in the rain last week when you begged me to, damn your puppy eyes. But it looks like you're on the mend."

"This is it, Harvey. I have this feeling… I can't really describe it. But it's peaceful," he says, relaxing back onto the pillows. He's suddenly exhausted again, but his mind is still clear. He reaches out with the remainder of his strength and captures Harvey's hand with his own, not caring that his old pothead buddies would joke about how gay this is.

How fitting that it should be Harvey seeing him off on the next great adventure. Harvey, who helped him turn his life around and gave him new adventures that he thought he'd never had during his time of dying.

Harvey is shaking his head fervently in denial now. Mike smiles at him.

"Really, Harvey, it's okay. I'm ready. Tell everyone I love them, would you? Don't look so upset; you'll be alright. I thought I'd be afraid when the time came, you know? But I'm okay. I'm glad you're here with me," he says, squeezing Harvey's hand. His eyelids are so heavy now and they drift slowly shut for the last time. After months of internal debate on the matter, he's still not sure if he believes in God and heaven or not (his rational side argues that religion seems counterintuitive but his heart says that he really just wants to see his parents again). But even if there is no afterlife, eternal sleep sounds pretty nice right about now and he surrenders to the cool, gentle darkness and the soft embrace of nothingness that is sweeping over him with a sense of utter contentment and peace, his heartbeat weakening and his breaths becoming fewer and farther in between. The last flash of sensation he feels before succumbing to infinite sleep is Harvey's hand in his own, squeezing tightly, anchoring him on his passage to…wherever he is going. He thinks that he can dimly hear Harvey's voice shouting, begging for Mike to come back but he is too far gone to respond. He drifts away lightly with a slight smile on his face, no regrets.

(SUITS)

It takes Harvey nearly two weeks to cry after Mike dies.

There is a wake and a funeral, of course, filled with hundreds of mourners who all knew Mike and were touched by his life. The demographic is a weird clash between Mike's former life (Harvey overhears some of Mike's young buddies planning to get high after the wake to cope with their feelings) and Mike's recent posh, corporate life. The two groups stay away from each other, each slightly uncertain and wary of the other's intentions. Suits vs. potheads. It would have made Mike laugh to see all of these people brought together on his account. The one thing that they all have in common is genuine grief and when they all cry together at the gravesite it doesn't matter anymore who is a stoner and who is a senior partner at Pearson Hardman. Trevor, back from Montana and crying openly, basically says as much in his eulogy and everyone nods and weeps some more. But Harvey doesn't join them in their tears. It all feels too unreal then, like he has just had the wind knocked out of him by this traumatic event and his body and mind are struggling to catch up to what has transpired. And once he catches up, the grief is a crushing ache that infiltrates and creeps into every crevice of his body and soul and immobilizes him so that he can't cry out against it. It is a stealthy thing, slowly seeping through his mind and filtering through the hidden crevices until suddenly there is nothing left but raw pain. For two weeks he feels it building up deep within him as he slowly gets his breath back after the initial blow of Mike's loss.

He tries to cry a few times because he thinks it might help. But he just can't do it. He lies in bed at night and aches because Mike isn't sleeping in the guest room like he should be. But he can't cry and the sorrow is drowning him.

Finally, a week after the funeral he is meandering numbly up the front walk to get to his apartment complex when he freezes suddenly and backtracks to stare at a spot underneath a tree in the courtyard. It has been a dry summer and hasn't rained in nearly three weeks, but it is raining today.

Harvey knows he probably looks deranged as he sprints across the courtyard to get to the tree but he doesn't care. Three weeks ago, when Mike was having a good day and he insisted that he and Harvey go on a walk outside in the rain, Mike had wandered over to this very spot under this tree and tried to pet a baby rabbit that had no mother— or waddled over to this spot, rather, because Harvey had bundled him up as tightly as he could as protection from the cool air and the rain.

Harvey had laughed at him because it was really such a Mike thing to do— a 27-year-old chasing bunnies, really? But it had been raining and Mike had left a trail of muddy footprints in the dirt around the tree in his pursuit of the bunny. Harvey remembered because Mike had tracked the mud all over the apartment with his dirty converse afterwards. And then he had taken seriously ill for the last week after that and hadn't ever gotten better.

Now, three weeks later he falls to his knees on the soggy ground in despair because it's raining again for the first time in 21 days and Mike is gone and the goddamn rain is quickly washing away the footprints Mike left here and soon there will be no tangible proof that Mike Ross ever stood here in this spot and chased a stupid baby bunny rabbit. No tangible proof that he was ever here at all— no proof at all that he had lived here and loved here and was happy and sad here and died here.

And Harvey knows it's ridiculous to cry over footprints being washed away by the rain but as he watches the last imprint fade away in the steady drizzle, he realizes that there are tears streaming down his face for the first time since it happened two weeks ago. And all of a sudden he is bawling his fucking eyes out in the middle of the courtyard for God and everyone in the apartment complex to see and he doesn't care that they'll probably all think he's crying over his dead lover because Mike isn't here to joke about it with anymore and he just wants his associate and his little brother and his best friend back and he can't remember the last time he has cried so hard or if he ever has.

When he finally pulls himself together and stands up and brushes wet grass off his expensive suit, he has moved onto a new stage of grief— depression. So he takes two weeks off of work and lies numbly in bed and sits on the couch and stares at the wall. Donna, struggling with her own grief, comes over and cooks for him and locks him in the bathroom every few days and won't let him come out until he showers and shaves.

The following months are really hard. He continues to go through his daily routine and eventually some semblance of meaning begins to creep back into his life. It is a guilty relief when everything stops hurting so much. Part of him feels bad for moving on but the other part of him relishes in the fact that the jagged-edged, gaping hole in his life that had formerly been filled by the constant chatter and presence of his associate is beginning to scab over slightly. But he is still oddly fragile and it is the strangest little things that set him off. Like when a young blond associate comes into his office and he assumes out of habit for a split second that it is Mike. Or when he goes and visits Edith for the first time since Mike's death and she cries and tells him how much Mike looked up to him. Or when he is reviewing files from an old case and spots Mike's asinine doodles on the margins of one of the papers. Or when clients that haven't heard the grim news innocently ask him where his bright young associate is. People are understanding and compassionate, and Harvey hates it. He hates how weak he has become. He knew that letting that kid into his life two years ago and subsequently coming to care for him was a mistake because it had only made him vulnerable to this kind of pain. But when he thinks about all the weird, good times they had together, he cannot bring himself to truly regret the day that he hired Mike Ross.

He is a different person and he lives life at a slightly different pace now. He goes and visits his father's grave more often. Takes the day off sometimes to go fishing or to go to a Yankees game. Goes to Chicago and visits his little brother, who welcomes him with open arms and a comfy couch and doesn't judge him when he tries to find the words to describe his late associate and winds up crying in front of his brother for the first time in twenty-five years instead. He is still good old Harvey Specter in many ways. He can still close a client like it's nobody's business and can swing a jury blindfolded with one hand tied behind his back, but he is older and wiser now too. He will never have a personal associate again and he doesn't get as much pleasure out of taunting rival lawyers anymore. And he never openly displays his grief to anyone besides Donna (at times he even refuses to acknowledge its existence himself), but it's always there, lurking under the surface of his polished exterior.

On the one year anniversary of Mike's death, Harvey waits until sunset before ambling over to the cemetery. He sits silently in front of Mike's grave for awhile, watching the last golden rays slip down below the horizon as a hushed dusk falls like a curtain over the night sky, the first stars barely visible in the dying light. A certain sort of resolution creeps over him. It has been one year since Mike has died and he is still alive. Still breathing, still living. And he's getting better and one day he'll finally be able to say that he's okay again. He won't forget Mike but he won't let the sorrow drown him anymore. He'll feel sad when he is sad and happy when he's happy, because that's what Mike would have wanted. And someday, if he ever finds a woman who will put up with him and has a son of his own, he'll name him Michael. And one day he'll tell little Mike about his Uncle Mike, who was brave and smart and good and fought till the end and never lost his spirit even in the darkest of moments. That's the kind of man Mike would have wanted him to be— and that's the kind of man he wants to be for his future son. And thanks to Mike's example and Mike's life, he realizes on a beautiful summer night a year after his world collapses, he will be that man someday as long as he picks up his sorrow and carries it with him on his back, never forgetting it but allowing its weight to make him stronger as he shoulders it through life.

As he stands up and brushes his hands off and leaves the cemetery, he thinks that maybe he will go for a bike ride tonight on a certain well-loved bike that he inherited a year ago but has not dared to touch since. It's time he stops tiptoeing around his grief and faces it head on. No regrets.

Yep. I really did it. I killed Mike. Please don't hate me? I know we all love to whump him but its pretty rare that he actually dies, so I'm sorry if this was a huge downer— I know we're all feeling angsty enough what with (spoiler alert!) Grammy's recent death and the swiftly approaching end of the first half of the season and this may have just made it worse (although maybe I'm making this out to be more dramatic than it really is; it's hard for me to gauge sadness levels of my own writing). A few weeks ago an old childhood friend of mine lost her long, valiant battle against cancer and passed away. I suppose that's where this story came from— it's been weighing on my mind very heavily lately. Oh and I haven't abandoned TBAH, this was just a quickie on the side. And I promise not to suddenly kill anyone off in TBAH. Now I'll go write some shameless fluff for the next chapter of TBAH to make up for this monstrosity!