[ficlet] Maybe It's the Force (Suits, Harvey/Mike, PG)

[tiptoe39]

Title: Maybe It's the Force
Author: tiptoe39
Rating: PG
Pairing: Harvey/Mike
Summary: Harvey and Mike are on a rooftop. They talk about Star Wars. Stuff happens and there is fluff.
Notes: Birthday Fic for _mournthewicked, whose writing blows me away and whose friendship is a treasure and who really should know she is loved. Thanks to akadougal for the prompt!


"Every time I see a sunset," Mike says, leaning on the railing, "I always remember that one scene in Star Wars when he's standing on the farm looking out at the two suns." He hums a bit of the background music, but his voice falls off when he notices Harvey looking at him as though he'd just done a full-on Chewbacca roar.

"What?" he says defensively.

"You think you're Luke Skywalker."

"What's wrong with that?"

Harvey chokes on a laugh and has to pound his chest. "You don't even deny it?"

"Why would I want to deny it? Luke Skywalker is awesome. He's the hero who comes from humble beginnings to cultivate his natural abilities and save the world."

His proud smile is pretty early-Luke-worthy, Harvey thinks, insofar as early Luke was a noisy, whiny dreamer. But there is a sense of the young Jedi in Mike's bearing, the way the wind whips across the roof deck to tousle his hair and the way his body gleams almost white in the side-lit rays of the setting sun. He's hitched himself to a devil-may-care playboy with a fast ship and set out into the dark and ugly world of the corporate Empire, after all. Harvey has to smirk.

"You think you're Han Solo."

Mike's staring right at him, and his eyebrows have sunk into a scowl. He's still grinning, though. "You do. You're thinking to yourself right now that if I'm Luke Skywalker, you have to be Han."

"Pff" is Harvey's considered response.

"I'm right."

"You wish. If I'm any character in any space opera, I'm Kirk."

"You can't bring Star Trek into a Star Wars discussion."

"That wasn't a discussion, it was a monologue. And this is my monologue. I'm Captain Kirk, and you're..." He waves his hand. "You're Scotty. Or Chekov."

"I am so Spock."

"Never."

"I am. Come on. The brain. The always-at-your-side thing." He blushes a little at that, and Harvey wants to wonder why, wants to give in to the warm thing pushing at the corner of his heart that says this expression is important. But his walls are too reflexive and too well-constructed, and he deflects it, bounces it off like a racquetball and sends it flying back into obscurity. He shrugs off the moment.

"You're not wise enough to be Spock. You're the onboard computer."

"How can I be the computer if I have more feelings than you?"

"How can you be Spock, then?"

Mike pauses. "Spock had feelings. Didn't you see the remake?"

It's getting cold now that the sun's almost completely down. Harvey shrugs in his coat and starts to head for the staircase.

Mike jumps from the railing and rushes after him. "You know what? You're Spock," he shouts. "You're the one who doesn't want to admit you have feelings. I should be Kirk. I'm the one who keeps everything running."

"You," Harvey says, "aren't even classic Trek. You're Wil Wheaton."

Mike's footstops stop. "Now that's an insult I can't let stand."

Harvey looks over his shoulder, amused. "You're too easy to provoke."

"I am?" Mike waits a beat. "OK, so I am. But you're still not being fair. I have to be worth more to you than that."

"You're worth the salary I pay you. On a good day."

"Harvey." His voice is just tremulous enough that Harvey registers he'd better stop walking and turn around. "Is that all?"

Mike's trembling like a leaf in the sudden gust of cold wind that blows his hair into a scraggly mess. It's dark now, and the only light is the artificial kind, a hundred thousand office windows around them and neon signs and streetlights and headlights. They're no longer on a desert planet at sunset. Now they're in uncharted space, and Harvey isn't quite sure how to navigate through whatever might come next.

"What kind of stupid question are you asking me?" he says. "You want me to start going on about how I couldn't do it without you?"

"It wouldn't hurt." Mike's voice is raised just beyond audible, and the edges of his sentence are raised, like he's asking permission to say the words even as he's saying them. "How about it, Harvey? How about just saying for once in your life that I'm not just some snot-nosed kid you've taken pity on?"

Harvey doesn't know where this has come from, but he does know it can't go on. Once Mike starts getting it in his head that he's owed some sort of periodic appreciation, he's only going to make Harvey's life more and more impossible. He steps over to Mike and grabs his wrist in one hand, intending to pull him toward the door. "Come on. It's cold."

Mike won't budge. "Nobody can hear you out here," he presses. "I won't tell anyone. Say it. I dare you."

"You dare me?" But they are alone and it is dark, as dark as New York City gets -- and Mike is radiating some kind of magnetism at him, something that's keeping Harvey from turning back and marching for the warm security of inside.

"Sure." Mike cracks a smile. "Admit that I'm your Spock."

Harvey lifts the wrist he's got encircled by his hand. His fingers start to filter downward, and when they slide over Mike's palm, Mike shivers and then stiffens, as though overcompensating will mask the movement in retrospect. "Only if you admit I'm Han Solo."

"Fine."

"And you're Leia."

"What?"

Harvey cocks his head. "You're prissy and demand treatment I don't have any reason or inclination give you, and you think you can teach me something when I'm the one who has eons more experience and connections than you. And I keep saving your ass. You're pretty little Princess Leia, and you're lucky I don't leave you out in the cold."

Mike looks down and sees their tangled fingers. He presses his free palm to Harvey's chest, leans on his weight just enough that Harvey feels it. "Which means you're secretly in love with me."

"I think you've got that backwards," Harvey says. He's looking down now at Mike's upturned face, and the magnetism is almost unbearable now, flowing so strongly from Mike's rosy, chill-flushed cheeks that Harvey is starting to wonder if maybe it's the Force. "You're the one who's in love with me."

A moment passes, and when Mike speaks again, his voice is almost foreign in its quietness. "What if that were true?" he says. "How would you feel, Harvey?" He runs his tongue over his lips in a brief, nervous movement. But his eyes don't waver.

Harvey feels the fuzz of unkempt hair against his hand before he realizes he's cupped the back of Mike's head. Wet lips purse, and Harvey's own brush them, first testing and tentative, then firm. His hand slides down out of Mike's hair and to his spine, settling just below his ribcage, and Mike lets Harvey hold up his weight as they kiss. Mike's allowing Harvey the power to drop him or run away if he has to, but letting him know just the same that Mike's trusting he won't. Harvey could no sooner betray that trust than he could cut off his own hand. He holds Mike steady, letting the kiss linger without deepening, a promise for more that will come in time.

Their lips part. The breath that Harvey takes in scrapes harshly against his lungs in an uncomfortable wheeze. "It's cold," he says.

Mike nods and steps back. He's licking his lips again, his arms folded over his chest. "Go. I'll be down in a sec."

"Don't freeze." Harvey points at him briefly, wagging his finger along with the imperative, and then turns to go inside.

He's nearly at the door when Mike calls out, "Harvey, I--"

Harvey looks over his shoulder. "I know," he says, and opens the door, thanking God he cut Mike off before it turned into a full-fledged re-enactment. Empty rooftop or not, that would have been embarrassing.

Somehow or other, the kiss part was the least humiliating part of the whole conversation. That part felt natural.

There's a lesson there, but Harvey figures he'll wait 'til later to learn it. Maybe on the next coffee break.