The first time it happened was a few days after they'd gotten in the fender-bender with the overzealous cabbie. Harvey and Mike had just run through what had quickly become their typical morning routine: first Harvey stole Mike's coffee, then Mike pulled out the puppy dog face, and finally Harvey sighed and let him tag along to the client meeting.

Ray had popped on a new CD - the Moody Blues this time - and, accompanied by the cheery guitar work of "You and Me," Harvey had begun explaining to Mike the importance of netting this new client - a thirty-year old programming genius who'd turned a thesis project into a billion dollar company in just under two years.

Suddenly, there was the sound of screeching tires and honking horns, and Ray quickly slammed on the breaks. "Sorry, guys," he called from the front seat, "Didn't mean to jolt you there."

Harvey was just about to throw out a quick, "Don't worry about it," when he was distracted by the sensation of pressure on left hand. Glancing down to investigate, he was somewhat astonished to see that Mike had clamped his right hand over Harvey's left and was squeezing it with surprising force.

Harvey looked to Mike's face for some sort of explanation, but Mike was rather pointedly staring out the window. Harvey had just made up his mind to do something, whether it was to make some sort of joke or just yank his hand away, when he heard a little voice in the back of his head telling him to stop.

He considered for a moment, letting Mike's hand clutch his as he scanned his admittedly impressive mental compendium for any sort of reason why on earth he, Harvey Specter, ruthless closer, legal shark, heartless bastard some - or at least Louis - would say, should allow his associate to continue holding hands with him without even a comment.

The second he accessed his ever-increasing mental file labeled "Mike Ross," however, a small alarm went off in Harvey's head. Oh God, his parents, the car accident, he thought, giving his associate another glance, this time noting the increased pallor of his face and the slight tremor in the hand which was still clinging tightly to Harvey's.

As the gears in his mind continued to turn, Harvey found himself swiftly putting the rest of the pieces together. The collision with the cab must have triggered some pretty terrible memories, Harvey thought, Although he had been too busy saving Ray from legal disaster to really notice at the time, thinking back on the incident now, Harvey remembered that Mike had seemed a bit shaky after they'd hit the cab. He'd just put it down to the basic shock of the accident and the subsequent yelling, but he realized now that it hit a lot closer to home for Mike.

Poor kid, he thought, a wave of sympathy rushing over him unbidden. Harvey decided that it wouldn't do any harm if Mike's hand happened to occupy space adjacent to his for the short duration of the limo ride. After all, he reasoned, there was no one there to see but Ray, and he had certainly witnessed many more scandalous things than this during his eight year tenure as Harvey's driver.

So Harvey resumed lecturing Mike on the client as if nothing had changed, although when he quizzed Mike on the billionaire's particulars and the kid got them all right, Harvey made sure to beam at him little more than usual. By the time they arrived at the client's offices, Mike seemed fully himself again, so Harvey felt comfortable simply sliding his hand out from under Mike's as they both exited the limo. And that should have been that.

And maybe it would have been, if not for the winding country roads the two of them found themselves hurtling down a few days later. The client was one of Pearson Hardman's oldest, a retired army colonel whose vast millions were matched only by his many eccentricities, one of which was refusing to take meetings anywhere other than his hunting lodge an hour from the city.

The last half of the drive took place entirely on barely-paved country roads, which, even with Ray's superior driving skills, resulted in Mike and Harvey finding themselves jostled all over the back seat. During one particularly sharp curve, the car lurched left so suddenly that Harvey didn't have a chance to brace himself, and found his hand clamping down on Mike's to keep from tumbling into his lap.

Mike laughed, and though he stifled it quickly at a hard stare from Harvey, he didn't suppress the smile that remained. After they both had regained at least some of their composure, they resumed their discussion of the corporate restructuring they were going to attempt to sell to the colonel. It was only a few minutes later that Harvey realized that he had somehow forgotten to let go of Mike's hand.

He felt his cheeks heat up - obviously the limo was too hot, he concluded, because there was no way in hell that Harvey Specter could be blushing - as he instinctively wanted to pull away, embarrassed. Before he could, however, a strange thought occurred to him which made him pause; it was unlikely that Mike had also not noticed, yet he had shown no sign of being self-conscious or confused, nor had he tried to subtly slide his hand away. No, Mike had continued to chat and strategize as if there was nothing in the least bit strange about Harvey holding his hand while debriefing him about a client.

Harvey had to admit, it was kind of nice. It was very different from both the overtly sexual way he would touch the women on his revolving roster of one-night stands and the testosterone-fueled arm punches and high fives he exchanged with his basketball buddies. There was a casual intimacy to it that he'd never experienced with anyone else.

Harvey would later tell himself that it was simply the novelty of the sensation that made him keep his hand on Mike's until they reached the hunting lodge, not the strange feeling buried further back that he couldn't quite name.

So, really, it shouldn't have surprised Harvey as much as it did when it happened again the following week. He and Mike were finally driving back to the office after a beast of a day in court; Harvey had fought like a tiger to keep the damning video of their client from being admitted, citing everything from the Constitution to French common law, but the judge had overruled him, and he was very much afraid that, thanks to his failure, they had lost the jury.

Consequently, he was not feeling at all like the bold, cocksure Harvey Specter that everyone expected him to be; he was just feeling tired. And since no one but Ray and Mike was there to see, Harvey indulged his bad mood a little bit, laying his head back on the headrest with a groan and closing his eyes. He nearly opened them again in surprise when, out of nowhere, he felt Mike's strong fingers slide through his own, which had been hanging loosely over the edge of the seat, and squeeze his hand ever so slightly.

Harvey fought this instinctual urge to open his eyes, however, afraid that it would frighten Mike into drawing back, because at the moment, Harvey was startled to discover that there was nothing he wanted more than to stay just like that, with Mike's fingers linked through his. After a couple of minutes, Mike began to move his thumb in soothing little circles over Harvey's palm, and Harvey had to resist the urge to let out a noise he was very much afraid would have sounded like a purr.

When they finally rolled up in front of the office, Mike murmured a quick, "Good night, Harvey," before slowly extracting his fingers and slipping out of the limo. It was only when he was quite sure that Mike was gone that Harvey finally opened his eyes, though he shut them again after a minute, and was astonished to find that he could still feel the ghost of Mike's hand pressing against his palm.

Over the next few weeks, Harvey found that his hand somehow managed to find its way into Mike's on an increasingly frequent number of occasions. Whether it was one of them bolstering the other after a bad day, or the result of Ray's driving - which Harvey would have sworn had gotten more erratic as of late - or any one of a dozen other perfectly sensible reasons, somehow Harvey and Mike holding hands in the limo had become part of their normal routine.

It wasn't that strange, Harvey told himself; after all, there wasn't quite enough room in the backseat for both of them to put their hands on the middle seat without joining them together in some way, so really, when he thought about it more, it all boiled down to a simple issue of efficient space management. It's not like it meant anything, he kept telling himself, although he was beginning to realize that a growing part of him that didn't believe that for a second.