For Anna ( sapphicsrlit), who had a bunch of assignments that she had to do and deserved a reward.

I haven't written from Mike's POV, so this was a really interesting challenge and angle that I enjoyed.

As always, reviews are gratefully received.

Mike picked it early on.

It was something. He wasn't sure exactly what, at least not at first. They were friends. Good friends. They've worked together for a long time, and they weren't strictly work friends either. They didn't hang out at each other's houses or make weekend plans or have mutual friends to gossip and worry about, but Mike sees and hears enough of them in the office to know they call each other at night and drink together when everyone's gone home and they have a shorthand way of communicating that draws a curtain around the two of them that nobody else gets to pull back.

They're not what any other two people would be in the same situation. Mike knows that. He knows it's not … that.

But it was something.

It first comes clear when Donna pulls him into Harvey's office and tells him he can't be with Rachel because Harvey told Donna, and Mike only told Harvey late last night, and Mike realises that there's either a phone call or a late night visit that happened sometime between midnight and 8am, and also that Donna didn't think it was weird Harvey called or visited her between midnight and 8am.

And then he'd asked her how to do it, how to not be with someone you wanted to be with that you also worked with, and Donna looks wistful and she looks sad and says things to him he knows are lies.

It's possible.

It is?

It is.

And that's when he knows that the thing he's felt simmering under the surface is not just him projecting his adolescent fantasies of lawyers and secretaries engaging in secret late night trysts.

It was something much more than that.

The day he sees that it's more than friends and colleagues is also the day he starts noticing moments.

Harvey is both the most and least subtle person he's ever noticed. He's the least subtle because he's not able to extract himself from her, and it's not just work.

He's the most subtle because the only person he's convinced he's not in love with her is himself and so he walks through life with a bizarre obliviousness to the way he looks at her and shuffles closer to her and glances at her before he makes any decisions that are more important than what he wants on his bagel in the morning, but even so, there's something about the way he doesn't know he's doing it that seems to hide how deep it runs from almost everyone else.

Louis calls Harvey Superman, and it's fitting because Clark Kent puts on a pair of glasses and nothing else and expects to go unrecognised, and it works even though it shouldn't. Harvey puts on Scottie or Paula or Zoe and expects the gravitational pull he has towards Donna to go unnoticed and that works too even though it shouldn't. Harvey doesn't notice the moments.

Mike does.

Mike sees that the look between them when Jessica fires her is much more than sympathy. There's I'm sorry you were fired looks, he's seen those looks before - he's been on the receiving end of them often enough. This isn't that. It's not a look that says 'I'm sorry you were fired', it's a look that says 'you're being cut out of me and I think it might kill us both'. He pushes the elevator button like it's the only thing he can do, even though it isn't and they both know it.

Mike sees the look Donna gives him when he goes to her on the street to help Harvey, and the look Harvey gives him when he rushes past him out of the mock trial to help Donna. It's the same look. It's feelings and it's avoidance of those feelings and it's terror over what avoidance will mean. They're both leaning into each other and away from each other all at once. Mike thinks privately that they're both idiots.

He sees Harvey triumphant and relieved a couple of weeks later when Donna walks back in and fires whats-his-face, and if he didn't know any better he'd call her the closest thing Harvey knows to peace. Mike sees the thing that makes Harvey go to Jessica and demand Donna back and sees that it's the same thing that paralyses him when it really counts and Mike wonders if it frustrates Harvey as much as it frustrates him, before he wonders if Harvey's even noticed it in the first place.

He sees them when he goes home late at night with the stubble of an 18 hour day on his face and sees them still there, together, in the darkened corners of his office, and it feels more like a sanctuary for both of them at night than it does like an office, and there's the ritual they do. He's always got his shirt sleeves rolled, leaning against his desk, one hand in his pocket and the other lifting a glass to his lips so he can laugh into his drink while Donna leans back in his couch with her stocking feet on his glass table and she's got some record in his hand, and she's making a joke about his taste in music or album covers, and in amongst the laughter he lifts his glass and she lifts hers, and they say 'cheers' to each other across the room but their eyes say 'need'.

He sees him hanging over the edge of her desk and smiling into her space like he doesn't realise that his space and her space should be separate. Maybe he's not aware he's drawn the line between himself and Donna so thin that there's no way for him to be him without stepping over it almost every time he breathes. Donna leans into him as well and it's like their lines are drawn in chalk, erased with the friction of being crossed over and over, and hastily redrawn whenever something gets too close or too real.

He sees them when they do all go out for drinks, every now and then, when there's a big case that's been settled and Jessica rallies everyone down to whatever bar is quiet and close and will let them all decompress from the stress and the long nights. He sees Donna and Harvey, sees that they sit together, sees the unconscious way that everyone else leaves a space next to Harvey if he sits down first or Donna if she sits down first. Nobody else sees things with quite the clarity Mike does, but there's enough under the surface that Louis and Rachel and Jessica have started to think of them as a matched pair.

He watches them get closer as the empty glasses stack up in front of all of them, watching him lay a hand at the small of her back and her leaning into him to murmur into his ear so he can giggle into her shoulder. He watches Donna fix his tie and Harvey absentmindedly tuck Donna's hair behind her ear when it threatens to spill into her drink. He watches Harvey flag her a cab outside the club and hold the door for her, watches them share a look that lingers just a moment longer than it should, watches him make her promise to call when she gets home safe.

Later, Rachel tells him about Donna, and how Donna calls him and is called by him, and that they talk, a lot, about things that aren't work. Donna tells Rachel that Harvey falls asleep on the phone a lot. Donna doesn't tell Rachel what Harvey says, because Donna protects Harvey. But she does tell Rachel that there was a time that he showed up at her door before they both went to work to Jessica, and they crossed that line in chalk like it had never existed in the first place. That makes so much sense that he's not sure why he's surprised by it.

Harvey's oblivious, but Mike's pretty sure he loves her.

He calls Harvey on it, once. It's before Paula, and before Gibbs, and before Donna goes to work for Louis.

Mike's shuffling through Harvey's records while rattling off the details of some case, and Harvey's making 'mmm' noises instead of calling him an idiot or a kid, so Mike turns to look at Harvey but Harvey's mind is a million miles away.

Well, not a million miles away. To be precise, Harvey's mind is fifteen feet away, at Donna's desk. He's watching her make notes, the phone propped up against one shoulder, and she's smiling her way down one end of the line which means she's probably talking someone into something they don't want to do, and Harvey is studying her like she should be in the Louvre.

"I think if we drop that affidavit on them, they'll back out before it even gets to trial," Mike finishes.

"Mmm."

"And if we hold back the toxicology reports we can probably get them to double whatever settlement they offer."

"Mmm." Harvey is knocking the butt of his pen through his fingers and he has his head tilted to the side like he's trying to solve a particularly challenging legal puzzle except Donna isn't one. Well, not a legal one.

"I scratched your Coltrane and I slept with Jessica," Mike offers.

"Great," Harvey says, then blinks back to himself when Mike says "Oh my god Harvey," and drops into the couch.

"What?" Harvey is too oblivious to himself to look caught.

"Just tell her."

Harvey lifts his palms at Mike and shoots him a look of utter confusion. "Tell who what?"

"Who? The woman you've just been staring at like your life depended on it."

Harvey glances out the door to Donna and then back to Mike with that uncomprehending, open mouth face he throws him whenever he thinks Mike's being stupid. He points out towards her desk. "You mean Donna?"

"Of course I mean Donna," Mike says, sitting forward on the couch. His heart is in his mouth suddenly, for some reason. He hasn't thought kicking Harvey's ass would feel so … important.

Harvey sighs, and it feels like he's had this conversation one too many times. "I do not have feelings for Donna."

Mike notices his hand shift to his phone as he says it so he can make sure the intercom isn't running.

"You spend every moment you can justify with her and some that you can't -"

"We work together," Harvey protests.

"- you keep telling me that she's different but you never admit why. You guys stay behind for drinks every night, you sit together when we go out, you call to make sure she gets home, you go to her shows, you kicked Stephen's ass -"

"Because he killed people."

"Because he hurt Donna." Mike sits back. "Harvey. Just admit it."

Harvey also sits back, leaning on his chair with one elbow and smiling at Mike like he does when he's digging up patience for a particularly stupid client.

"Please. Mike, I know you've fallen in love with every single woman you've ever talked to or walked past or been in the same general space as, but I don't feel like that about her, and she definitely doesn't feel like that about me."

"You're sure."

"I'm sure. Drop it." His tone is harsher than it needs to be.

Mike doesn't speak to Harvey again about Donna until he ends it with Paula.

Instead, Mike keeps watching.

He watches Harvey fall apart when Donna goes to work for Louis, and Harvey never says it's because Donna's not outside his desk anymore, but it's an easy conclusion to draw. He sees how the tension sits uneasy under his skin and how his suits don't fit him quite the same and it feels like all the insecurity and doubt that Harvey has spent years beating out of his personality has suddenly appeared like a wrecking ball, and it tears through him like tissue paper.

He watches him claw his way back to sunlight, mostly when Donna returns to him after Mike's yanked out of the firm in cuffs.

He watches Harvey fight like hell to get him out of prison and he knows it's guilt, but he doesn't think the guilt is all just the verdict and the sentence. He watches Harvey finding his conscience, slowly, and Mike knows it's been sparking awake over the last few years but the four walls that slam down around Mike aren't the only thing that he thinks haunts him at night. When Mike gets out there's a way that Harvey looks at Donna that looks the same as when Harvey looks at Mike, and Mike knows when Harvey looks at him it's because Harvey feels like he owes Mike for prison.

Mike wonders what Harvey feels like he owes Donna for.

Probably everything.

Finally, before he moves to Seattle, Mike watches Harvey and Donna at his wedding. Harvey's worn out and flat after the ceremony, after Mike drops the hammer on him that he and Rachel are moving to Seattle, and Harvey takes it magnanimously but he can see that it hollows him out. Harvey once said, everybody leaves, and in his head, Mike was proving him right again. If it was Harvey from a few years ago, Harvey from interviews and skinny ties and get-in-front-of-the-eight-ball, he probably would have smirked and told Mike he worked better alone anyway and sauntered off to find some blonde to waste a few hours with.

This Harvey looks disappointed and shocked and wrung out, and he tries to hide it behind a handshake but can't really. Harvey's poker face has slipped over the years and that's good but it also hurts more that Mike can see how deeply he's struggling written right on his face.

And then Donna was there. She was the only person in the room who could have brought him back into some of us stay. And she takes the hand he offers out and they dance, and they've danced before, but not like this. This wasn't friends and it wasn't coworkers and it wasn't even friends and coworkers the way Harvey and Donna did friends and coworkers.

This was Harvey leaning into the only person alive who really understood him, who saw how thin and troubled he was, who saw how goddamned hard he was trying to be better, who knew he didn't want to talk, who just wanted to be quiet and okay for a moment, and who managed to be everything he needed just with the way she touched him. Mike had carried a low level worry for Harvey for years now and this was the first time he'd thought with any certainty that maybe he'd be okay.

The next time Mike comes back to New York, Harvey is completely different to when he left, and it's like Harvey has finally learned what peace is, out in the open for himself and not hidden and visible only to Mike when he peeks behind the curtain of them, and he's found it in Donna. So he marries her, and he kisses her and tells her, out loud, how he feels, and that's when Mike knows Harvey's where he's always hoped he could get to.

He watches them laugh, and dance, and later, he watches them move to Seattle, and buy an apartment, and become godparents, and then become parents themselves.

Mike thinks privately that other than watching Rachel become a mother herself, they're almost the best thing he's ever seen happen.

end