The title, however vague, is from the song Weather by Summertime's End because the song seems to fit this story. It's not really Harvey/Mike romantically, however, it's more like in a friendship-y sort of manner.

I own nothing :)

The morning after the end of the mock trial, Mike Ross woke up to the buzz of a slight, nagging headache, the constant reminder of the alcohol consumed the night before. However, the groan that left his lips was not from regret toward last night's escapades (for not much happened) but instead from remembrance of his conversation with Harvey.

Relunctantly, he forced himself to untangle his limbs from the restraining sheets that had left patterns pressed firmly into his skin while he slept. The rest of his morning before work was spent running through excuses in his mind as to why he shouldn't have to go to work as his body prepared for the day. He moved around as though in a trance. While in the shower, he simply stared at the wall in front of him and allowed the water to pour onto his body, barely noticing it. Droplets streamed down his face and fell into his eyes, his nose, his mouth, not once even causing a reaction. He made toast, brushed his hair which had been battered down in every direction from the shower's water, and dressed in another god dammed suit for another day of god damned work that he was becoming less sure of each day. Maybe he wasn't cut out for this life.

Nonetheless, he trudged out the door - trudged being used figuratively, though, for he actually rushed from his apartment in order to make it on time - and onto his bike. Any other less experienced bike rider might have used the opportunity to distract his or her brain from the pressing issue that was on Mike's, except Mike had been using his bicycle as his main mode of transportation through the city for years, and swerving in and out of traffic, dodging cabs and buses and cars, that was a second nature for him. Even while unable to drive his mind away from the argument with Harvey, his wheels spun swiftly and efficiently in between cars without Mike even breaking a sweat.

Upon arriving at the firm, after securing his bike outside of the building and ignoring the scoffs of Harvard bastards pertaining to his bicycle, he did his best to get all his work done while avoiding a certain Mr. Specter, which was endlessly difficult considering he was Mike's boss. Needless to say, he failed.

"Done with those briefs yet?" Harvey asked, suddenly appearing alongside Mike as he walked to the copying machine. It was phrased like a question, yes, but the true meaning behind it that anyone could've sensed was "give me the briefs, they had better be done because I don't want to spend a second more with you than necessary." His hand lay outstretched between them as they walked down the hallway. He gestured rudely for Mike to hand him the papers.

As the associate silently fumbled for his bag in order to retrieve the files, a body collided with his bag and nearly spilled the contents all across the hallway had Mike not managed to grab it. He mumbled a few words while figuring out whether to be angry or apologetic before looking up and realizing it was Rachel, who looked down at him and said, biting her lip a little bit, "Sorry."

Mike straightened his back, closing his bag while keeping the briefs for Harvey under his arm. "That's all right," he said, and after she turned around and had begun to walk away, he called toward her back, "Uh, hey!"

She looked back at him and opened her mouth as though she wanted to say something. Instead, though, she closed it and shook her head a little bit before walking away, leaving Mike staring after her. (A/N: staring at her ass)

Grabbing the manila folder from his hand and snapping him out of a trance, Harvey remarked, "I'm glad to see that things are working out between you two. Worth losing the trial, huh?" With that, he turned around, done with dealing with the kid he had hired, except Mike wasn't done with him. He wasn't going to keep avoiding confrontation.

"If you expect me to regret what I did, I won't." Harvey looked back and stared Mike hard in the eyes. "I'm not going to just ignore people's feelings to win a case. Not the client's, not anyone's."

Harvey walked up to him, each footstep loud and intense. "Where's the guy I hired, huh? Because the man I brought into this firm was willing to blackmail a top notch lawyer such as myself to keep this job because he knew what he wanted, and he wouldn't let some pretty paralegal get in the way of it. That was the man I hired." By now, Harvey's face was only a little more than a foot from Mike's and, had they been in a more open part of the office building, quite a crowd would have gathered to watch the confrontation.

"Yeah, well, maybe it isn't. Maybe you never knew the guy you hired, never even bothered to."

Harvey got that look on his face that said "listen, I'm a fancy-schmancy lawyer and I'm about to say something smart and witty and you won't be able to counter it so don't bother trying." It was amazing that one man could have so many different shades of arrogant expressions. Mike hated it.

"Maybe you didn't either, kiddo."

With that, he walked away, and Mike didn't bother trying to stop him. The discussion was over, and the associate was filled with a deep sort of dread that said that he had, once again, lost.

Drugs.

It wasn't as though he didn't know where to get them. Quite on the contrary. Even after joined Pearson Hardman and deleting every single dealer's number from his cell phone, he had more than enough sticky notes with phone numbers and addresses that had been shoved into the bottoms of boxes but not forgotten in the least. If needed, such boxes could certainly be dug up from the confines of Mike's small closet and the contents be put to good use. It would help, if he got high. Help him relax, take the strain off his job. It was a tempting option.

Who could blame him for thinking about it? After all that had gone down in the past two days, his allegiance to Harvey was at an all-time low, so the fact that the suit-obsessed attorney was strictly against what Mike was about to do only spurred him on. There was nothing standing in his way.

Except the one thing that was pissing off Mike more than he could imagine. Even after fighting with Harvey and him saying that Mike wasn't cut out for working at the firm, he still felt this irrational, idiotic loyalty to Harvey. Despite every reason he had to just forget everything and fall back into the bad habit of relaxing and getting high, there was this small, naive part of his brain that insisted on not disappointing his boss.

He hated it just enough to entirely ignore it.

So that's how he ended up sitting on his lumpy couch alone in his apartment after a strenuous bike ride to an abandoned place that he hadn't been to in a long time. He held a plastic bag in his hand, tossing it back and forth indecisively while continuing to contemplate his options in his head. He thought of his job, of everything he had worked for, of his grandma, and especially of Harvey. Harvey, who he was currently trying so hard to hate but couldn't manage to. Harvey, who neither cared for nor believed in him. Harvey, who had done endless amounts of favors for him. The bag was tossed, back and forth, back and forth.

But in the end, Mike didn't have to make any sort of life-altering decision that night. Someone else made it for him.

Just as he stopped throwing the bag and instead grasped it in his thin hands in order to truly make some sort of decision, God's fiery fist of justice slammed him directly in the face.

Except it wasn't God. It was Harvey.

Upon waking up, Mike could practically hear the blood pumping loud and furiously into his nose, which currectly hurt in a way that could only be destribed as "like a bitch." Without even opening his eyes to glance around, he immediately tried to sit only to his instant regret. His entire skull screamed no as gravity forced blood through the veins, causing a headache that was (completely un-exaggeratedly) approximately a billion times worse than the one the poor kid had woken up with the previous morning. He put his head back down with a low moan of "God." His head hit the floor - why was he on the floor? - too hard for his liking, only further elevating the pain in the back of his head. At least it distracted him from his nose.

"What the hell were you doing?"

Mike stirred quickly, causing a spike of pain to shoot through his entire head. Turning quickly, he saw Harvey sitting casually on his couch drinking some coffee. The events of last night washed over him. After some slight sputtering, his only response to the question was a soft, mumbled, "But how'd you get in my apartment?"

Harvey held up the plastic bag. "What were you doing?" he repeated harshly.

Mike only continued to look confused and just the slightest bit drunk. "M-my apartment. But it's deadbolted..." He turned around to look at the door absentmindedly, which remained entirely intact.

"Drugs? Really, Mike?" Harvey questioned, leaning closer now to get his attention. It hardly seemed fair to interrogate such a hurt, sleepy suspect.

"How'd you get into my apartment?" Mike asked, louder and more directly.

Harvey finally decided to reward his stubbornness with some sort of answer. "I have my contacts, okay? Your apartment isn't exactly high class break-in material, all right?" He crossed his arms and continued, despite Mike's sputtered further questions. "Why'd you have this?" he asked, waving the bag as though he didn't even want to acknowledge the contents' existence.

"How'd you find out?" Mike asked as his vision finally began to clear up after the sleepy blur that had stayed. His head as well started to clear up.

Harvey, who by now was very sick of Mike's questions and very much wanted to punch him in the face again, frustratedly responded, "I just have contacts, okay?"

Mike rubbed his eyes and stared at Harvey. "Contacts? What kind of contacts? You're a lawyer, dude -" "What did I tell you about calling me 'dude?'" "-not a mafia boss! If you want to live a double life, an attorney's always like a superhero. You can't just be a Soprano!"

To which Harvey replied with a firm whack on the head, which hurt Mike a hell of a lot more than it should have because of his headache. The kid even whimpered a little. "Get serious," he scolded.

Mike looked up at him very much like a kicked puppy, pulling at even the hardened lawyer's heartstrings, but he couldn't forget that, in this case, Mike was definitely in the wrong. "Nothing that happened should have encouraged you to go to drugs again, Mike. Don't be stupid. Is it the whole deal with the mock trial?" The last sentence was said with more compassion, putting the love in tough love. Except for the Harvey didn't even care for Mike. At all.

"No," Mike said, his head raised a little higher. Upon seeing Harvey's questioning face, he further elaborated. "It was the whole deal with you. I don't regret what I did that day because I'm never going to regret being a good person."

"So- what, then? You regret me?" Harvey asked. "You regret the job?" He said it with as much disdain as possible.

"Who said I regretted anything? I just... wanted to get my head clear." He didn't bother trying to explain that when debating what to do, he had already decided not to use them.

"Oh yeah," Harvey scoffed, "because this really clears up your head."

"Like you said," Mike said, his head lowering in shame, "it was stupid." He took on that kicked puppy look again, and Harvey wondered how someone old enough to be a Harvard drop-out managed to look like a little kid when needed.

"Don't do it again," Harvey warned and then stood up with the plastic bag in hand and walked into the bathroom. After hearing a flush, Harvey returned with no bag.

"Hey," Mike said after a long moment when no words were exchanged and only the rain pouring down onto the roof could be heard, "you want to know why you came here tonight?"

Harvey leaned back on the couch with arms crossed in an "oh I want to hear this" kind of position. He didn't even bother correcting Mike that it wasn't night time any more. The red, blinking digital clock in his kitchen read 3:46. Harvey had been at his apartment for nearly five hours.

"Because you," he pointed to Harvey to enunciate it in an almost drunken fashion, "care about me," he finished smugly.

Harvey should have seen that one coming.

So the two faded into their natural, comfortable banter as the night - or morning, rather - drew on. Their voices grew louder in an argument as the worries of the night before were lost, and they both felt reassured that nothing would change because of some stupid mock trial. The surrounding apartments were all dark and silent for once as the only noise filling the room was their two voices and the steady backbeat of rain. A strong crash of thunder filled the sky, drawing both of their attention to the window for only about two seconds before they turned back to each other and contined to fight - in a friendly manner, of course.

The next morning, when Harvey and Mike came to work together (on time, obviously, because whether or not he could show up whenever he wanted to, there is no way in hell Harvey is letting his assocaite get the satisfying pleasure of sleeping in) looking sleep deprived and slightly deshevelled, no one in the office commented except for Donna, who snuck a quick, suggestive wink at Harvey as he walked past her desk with Mike at his side.

AND THEN EVERYONE WAS HAPPY YAY!

Please review if you enjoyed it (or hated it) and if it's not too much trouble.