summary:
________________________________________________________

Mike kept showing up.

It wasn't a grand gesture kind of thing. He didn't show up with flowers or dramatic speeches. No music swelling in the background. He just... appeared. Like gravity. Like inevitability. Steady and certain.

________________________________________________________

Mike kept showing up.

It wasn't a grand gesture kind of thing. He didn't show up with flowers or dramatic speeches. No music swelling in the background. He just... appeared. Like gravity. Like inevitability. Steady and certain.

Every win in court, Mike was there. With that lopsided grin and a joke locked and loaded.

"Victory pizza?" he'd ask. "Or should we go full Specter and break out the thousand-dollar scotch?"

Every loss, Mike was there too. Less cocky, more quiet. He'd hang around even when Harvey didn't want to talk, just sitting in the office while Harvey stared at the skyline and pretended it didn't bother him. Sometimes Mike would hand him a glass, sometimes he'd hand him silence. Somehow, he always knew which one Harvey needed.

He showed up on the anniversary of Gordon Specter's death without asking. No awkward condolences. No sentiment. Just a shared drink and a quiet toast. Harvey didn't say thank you, and Mike didn't expect it. But that night, Harvey didn't sleep alone, and that meant more than either of them admitted out loud.

Mike was there when Harvey had his first screaming match with his mother in years. The kind of fight that left him feeling stripped raw. She'd said something cruel about his father. Harvey had said something crueler. And then he sat in his office, staring at his phone like it had betrayed him, until Mike walked in without knocking and tossed him a pack of peanut M&Ms.

"What, no whiskey?" Harvey muttered.

"You looked like you needed sugar more than scotch," Mike said. "Also, I didn't want you drinking and texting. You're a mean drunk with a data plan."

Harvey rolled his eyes, but didn't throw the candy away.

When Harvey started therapy—quietly, reluctantly, with all the emotional grace of a man being forced into a dentist chair—Mike didn't make a big deal of it. Just smiled that quiet, proud smile and said, "Good. You've needed a place to yell that isn't Louis' face."

Mike was there when Harvey had a string of brief, doomed relationships. All with smart, beautiful people who never quite got past the surface. Harvey dated like a man playing poker—never showing his hand, always looking for the exit. And every time one of those relationships ended (sometimes because of Harvey, sometimes because the other person could feel there was someone else in his orbit), Mike showed up.

Not to gloat. Not to say I told you so. Just... to be there.

And when Mike left the firm—because he needed something different, something less soul-sucking and more meaningful—he still showed up. He opened a legal clinic downtown. Wore jeans more often again. Got soft around the edges in a way that didn't make him any less sharp. Harvey pretended to be annoyed when he dropped in on his office, usually carrying coffee that was too sweet and stories about clients who couldn't afford to lose.

"You realize you're giving Donna a heart attack every time you bypass security, right?" Harvey would say, not looking up from his paperwork.

"She likes me more than she likes you," Mike would reply, settling into the chair across from him like it still belonged to him.

And over the years, Harvey... melted. Slowly. Quietly. Like frost retreating in sunlight, one inch at a time.

The name on his palm stopped being a curse. He stopped covering it up. Some days he even looked at it—just looked—and let the weight of it settle instead of fighting it. He didn't always understand how Mike did it. How he was still there. Still choosing him. Even when Harvey didn't deserve it. Especially then.

And eventually, Harvey started kissing him.

Not all at once. Not in a sweep-you-off-your-feet moment. It started with a drunken half-step in Mike's apartment after a long night. Just a brush of lips and the stunned silence that followed. Then it was a kiss on the cheek after a win. A lingering kiss on the mouth when Mike said something soft, and cheesy, and devastating like, You don't always have to be the strong one.

Then it became habit. A part of the rhythm of their lives. A kiss hello. A kiss goodbye. A kiss when Harvey's hands shook from too much coffee and too little sleep. A kiss when Mike came back from a long day at the clinic with sunburned cheeks and a grin that made Harvey forget how to breathe.

There was no official coming out. No big announcement. Donna knew, obviously. Louis suspected and didn't ask. Jessica—before she left—gave Harvey one long look and said, "Just don't mess this up, Harvey." And that was that.

They started spending weekends together. Not always sleeping over, not always romantic. Sometimes they'd order Chinese and argue about baseball. Sometimes they'd fall asleep on separate couches in front of old movies. Sometimes Harvey would wake up at 3 a.m. and find Mike working at the kitchen table, hair a mess, hoodie slung off one shoulder, and it would take everything in him not to say the word mine.

Harvey had always thought love was supposed to be fire and chaos. But this—this thing with Mike—it was more like gravity. Like a pull he couldn't resist, didn't want to resist anymore.

One night, years after the mark first appeared, Harvey found himself standing in front of his bathroom mirror, brushing his teeth, and he caught sight of the name on his palm again. Michael James Ross. Still clear. Still whole.

Mike came in behind him, wrapped an arm around his waist, and rested his chin on Harvey's shoulder.

"You still think it's a curse?" he murmured.

Harvey met his own eyes in the mirror, then turned to look at Mike directly.

"No," he said. "Not anymore."

Mike grinned, pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth, and said, "Took you long enough."

Harvey rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. That smile stayed, even as they climbed into bed, even as Mike fell asleep curled into his side, even as Harvey stared up at the ceiling and thought, Maybe this was the plan all along.

Maybe fate didn't care about timing or pain or the fact that Harvey Specter had spent most of his life building walls taller than the goddamn Empire State. Maybe it only cared about the fact that one day, someone would keep showing up until the walls didn't matter.

Maybe, in the end, he'd never stood a chance.

________________________________________________________

Word count: 1087