Haven't written a story for Suits in a while, but still don't own anything except a heart that loves it. Hope you enjoy.

Red

Red has never been Mike's favorite color. There's too many shades, too many meanings possessed by the primary color. His brain subconsciously registers all of them, of course, but only remembers one. For all the things he knows is red, blood is the only one that he can actually remember. Apples are dark pink. Fire trucks are angry orange. Blood is red.

The blood on Harvey's hand is red. For a frozen moment, Mike is stunned that it isn't silver or gold, pouring from a man more valuable than the elements themselves. Harvey is a Specter after all, and the way the surname rolls off of everyone's tongue Mike doesn't think he's being irrational in his thinking. That's how he realizes the blood on Harvey's hand isn't Harvey's blood.

There's a man standing behind Harvey, cowardly so. The shaking through Harvey's frame makes perfect sense to Mike now. Anger quakes the muscular build of the only man who could look ten times stronger when he's shaking that much. Mike wants to take a step back away from it. Not to cower like the man behind Harvey, because there's a voice inside his head that sounds remarkably like his boss, and just maybe a little too loud to actually be in his mind, telling him his actions would result in making him a smaller version of Louis, or something equivalent. His body shudders before he makes himself completely still.

Mike pulls his gaze away from the coward and catches a better sight of Harvey's red hand. It's deep, dark and daunting. Mike blinks more slowly than he wants to. The blood swirls, slides and seeps into the identifying lines of Harvey's palm and snakes in between his fingers.

"What the hell were you thinking?"

Harvey's voice is in his head again and he takes his eyes off the blood to place them on Harvey. There's an expression so foreign on the man's face, one he can imagine himself wanting to see sometime before this very moment, but realizes it's too much. He looks back to the blood that gave him an eerie sense of familiarity.

"This is the only time I'll let you ignore me, kid." Harvey's voice is telling him, much quieter now, as he watches a droplet of blood trail down Harvey's thumb. Once the red bubble reaches the man's wrist and seeps into the exorbitant band of the closer's watch, Mike retraces the faint trail it left behind. His eyes scan over Harvey's knuckle and the length of his thumb. He follows it over the round tip and underneath it to the spring where the blood is pouring from. The source has a striking resemblance to the jacket he had put on this morning only in the color of blood.

It hits him then. The pain is blinding but meaningful all the same. He welcomes it with the familiar sight of the blood on Harvey's hands. Based on Harvey's uncharacteristic mantra of, "Easy, Mike. Easy," it should've told him his greeting was anything but stoic, but he takes the phrase another way.

"Yes." The three letter word slips from his tongue like the blood slipping through Harvey's fingers, fast and powerful. "It was easy."

Harvey's body jerks and it takes Mike a second to realize he felt it rather than saw it. There's a sound accompanying the buzzing in his ears. It tries to mock Harvey's genuine laughter, like the time they got high together, but it's way too forced.

"No. Pro bono cases are easy, dumbass. Putting yourself between a knife and myself, trying to get yourself killed, isn't."

Now Mike felt it was his turn to try to produce genuine laughter like that from one smoking pot. It hurts somewhere deep down in his stomach, just under Harvey's hand, but it feels good everywhere else.

He catches sight of Harvey's red hand again as the man lifts it from the knife wound to replace it with his other. His shaking blood soaked hand points to the coward behind him, directing the dark shadows that just entered the room. They follow the closer's directions, but their shadows spread around the edges of Mike's vision. He blinks, or at least that was his intention, but when his eyes reopen, the look on Harvey's face and the quake he can feel on the side of his face tells him differently.

"Stay awake, Mike."

The way Harvey's voice sounds in his ears, Mike starts to wonder if anger has anything to do with the tremble of his boss' body at all.

"'mkay." The response is thick in his throat, like the blood coating Harvey's hand at the side of his face. "Jus' never liked red."

"Come again?" It's the first time he's ever heard Harvey ask a question as if he didn't expect an answer. Rationally, he knows that should worry him, but it does nothing but make him sink down further in the hold he finds himself in, made from the expensive material of Harvey's suit.

Silence is painting a black picture in his mind, his body floating somewhere between the canvas and the paintbrush.

"Well, between you and me, kid, I don't like red either." The voice carries just enough gruff to confirm Harvey was the one to say it, with a ghost of solace to let Mike know their conversation was about more than color preference.

Red has never been Mike's favorite color. There's too many shades, too many meanings possessed by the primary color. His brain subconsciously registers all of them, of course, but only remembers one. For all the things he knows is red, blood is the only one that he can actually remember. Apples are dark pink. Fire trucks are angry orange. Blood is red.

And somewhere between the lines of their conversation, hidden in the shadows, Harvey knows Mike has seen too much red too soon, and now, Mike realizes Harvey has too.

AN: Thanks for reading! Let me know what you think.