And as far as possible for sickness or fatigue, constrain yourself to eat in the hall before your people, for this shall bring honour to you. Robert Grosseteste

.***.

The thing with Harvey is that he was unpredictable. He was annoyed with Mike when he took on a second job because he wouldn't ask Harvey for money, and then he was flippant when Mike poured out his soul into his life story. After that embarrassing experience, Mike decided to just keep himself to himself.

November rolled around and he was still, miraculously, at the firm. But only because he worked really damn hard to be there.

"Did you go home at all?" Rachel hissed at him when he came out of the bathroom at seven o'clock in the morning. Mike grunted and moved past her towards the coffee, thanking the good Lord for caffeine as he tossed it down his itchy, raw throat. No, he hadn't gone home, but he couldn't really afford to, not while he was working on the Lawler case, the same one he'd been trying to crack for the past two weeks. He knew there was a loophole somewhere in the 3,687 pages he had scattered across his desk and Harvey's office, but for the life of him he just couldn't concentrate on the words that had started to swim in front of his eyes somewhere around two in the morning. By that time, he thought it would be more dangerous to ride home, drunk on exhaustion, then to sneak into Harvey's office and fall asleep on his ridiculously expensive couch.

"You look awful."

"Thanks, you're a peach." Mike closed his eyes and poured another cup of coffee, wishing for a hot, steamy shower and a down blanket.

"Mike!" Harvey called from across the bullpen of interns, and Mike jumped so much at the sound that the hot coffee spilled over on his hand. He dropped the cup onto the table and stuffed his burnt hand into his pocket.

"You look awful." Harvey said when he trotted over to him, now wishing for a bandage and some asprin.

"I've been getting that a lot lately."

"Well, stop. We have a meeting in an hour and a half and appearance is everything." Harvey's temper flared when he saw Mike roll his eyes and mouth the last three words with him. "Hey!" He barked, and the kid jumped, which was actually kind of cool. "A good suit can make or break a deal. As can good evidence. Go over to the post office, they just got another part of that brief in the mail."

"Isn't this what Fed Ex is for? Or a fax machine? Or email? Seriously, this is the twenty-first century." Mike shifted his weight as he remembered a) he did not have anything heavier than his suit to wear and b) the forecast had been calling for ridiculously low temperatures, like thirty degrees, twenty-five…

"I like to be more personal. Plus, Fed Ex can get it here in sixty-five minutes. If you hurry, you'll be able to get it in fifty. And you need to find that loophole before the meeting." He left the or else implied and saw Mike's eyes harden at the insinuation. But Harvey stood firm on this – he'd been sent on more than one pointless package run as an associate, and maybe the bike ride would get Mike's blood moving so he didn't look like a walking zombie.

He didn't expect Mike to be jumping for joy at this revelation, but the kid looked like he'd just told him Harvey had run over his puppy. With a tank. And then backed up on it again for good measure. But he steeled himself, as Harvey knew he would, and thrust out a determined chin.

"I'll do it in forty."

Of course, before Mike could even make it down the stairs he made a quick detour for the men's room and threw up the paltry dinner he'd had the night before. He definitely wasn't feeling so good, and the prospect of going out into the chilly streets made him cringe, but what could he do? He needed this job, and Harvey wasn't giving anything away. Mike had to act as if he spent every day at the firm on probation.

He wiped his mouth with a paper towel and made a mental note to buy a bag of mints during this excursion, and then, without further pondering or putting off, he made his way down the elevator and out the doors into the frigid Manhattan streets.

Nothing, nothing could have prepared him for this. He started coughing right away, as the thin air hit his lungs and made it impossible to breathe. He looked around blearily for his bike, noting that the world seemed to be spinning slowly in one direction, then the other. He had the presence of mind to strap on his helmet and make sure it was secure before setting off – in his condition, he was sure that a crash would not be an if but a when.

The when happened just as the post office came into view, when he turned too sharply and collided into a traffic light, bounced off, hit a taxi, and vaguely remembered flipping off the driver who'd flipped him off first. God, he hurt everywhere. His bones were sore. His soul was sore.

He caught this bug every year. Some kind of mutant hybrid of the stomach flu and influenza, Mike was usually laid up in bed for four or five days, vomiting on the hour and sleeping fitfully through feverish nightmares about car accidents and the sting of a belt on his back.

But now he didn't have time to be sick, and when he threw up in a trash can outside the post office he tried to compose himself. He couldn't afford to take any time off, not with Harvey being so unpredictable, not when his job might be given away the second he turned his back.

But god, did he hurt…

He picked up the package, another hundred and ten pages to add the tome that was leeching its way across his desk. How would he be able to concentrate on this, try to find that magic wording? He had no idea.

He knew that he was feverish but he was cold, so, so cold, and his bike rocked back and forth in his hands. He hit another pole, then a pedestrian, and somehow it was Mike on the ground, palms bleeding, and he looked at his hands and remembered that one of them had been burnt…somehow…earlier in the morning.

Reality ceased to exist. All there was was a world of pain and sickness, and Mike contemplated just blowing off the job, blowing off Harvey if he meant he'd get to rest. He was just so tired, so, so tired.

Somehow, he made it back up to his cubical, shaking from the cold or the fever or both, trying to soothe his coughs and rolling stomach with peppermints that did little to alleviate the ache deep in his body.

"Mike," Harvey stretched out his hands, snapped his fingers. "You got that loophole?"

"What?" Mike looked down at the papers in front of him. There was a portion that was highlighted as if by magic, and it was this paper that he handed to Harvey, not even bothering to look at his boss for a reaction but staring fixedly at a point above his head, willing himself not to vomit, not now. Only seven hours, and he could go home and die.

"Perfect," Harvey started to walk away, and then looked over his shoulder. The kid really did look awful, but Harvey remembered more than one late night when he was so focused on the project sleep just wasn't an option. And the kid deserved this… "You're coming. In case you didn't get that."

Usually Mike was a ball of energy, trying to get in on every meeting he could, jumping at the chance to see a deal brought to fruition. Now though…was that a sigh? Did Mike groan when he got to his feet? Was it Harvey's imagination, or did he stick his hands in his pockets right away, as if hiding something? He shrugged it off and promised himself to let the kid have an actual hour for lunch today. Mike looked like he needed a good meal. Or a really good drink.

Harvey paused with his hand on the door to his office, turning to block Mike from view. He opened his mouth, about to ask if something was wrong, because he could see Mike's whole body shaking through his too-big suit and his face…pained, and dumb with exhaustion. But he was Harvey Specter, and so when he said, "Don't screw this up," It came out more abrasive than he wanted but damn he just wanted the kid to stop shaking.

What Mike had found broke the case wide open, and Harvey smoothly negotiated a settlement with the irate lawyers on the other side. The whole time he was shooting Mike sideways glances, because usually the associate would be squirming with pleasure at the fact that he had been the one to bring the loophole to Harvey's attention. Today Mike's hands were gripping the arms of his seat, hard. When everyone stood up to shake all around, Harvey glanced at Mike again and felt something in him turn to ice when he saw the tiny blood splatters left behind on the chair.

"What the hell are you thinking?" Harvey snarled, turning on Mike the minute the others were out of sight.

Mike, for his part, managed to get that gleam of fire back in his eyes and he fixed Harvey with a don't-fuck-with-me glare that was so Mike Harvey felt himself relax. What was he doing? Was he actually caring about Mike's well-being?

"What are you talking about?" Mike asked, his voice coming out raspy and raw but at least he snapped back. "I broke the case for you. I didn't do anything wrong."

"You dripped blood all over my seat." He pointed to the chair Mike had just vacated and watched the kid blanch at the sight of the small scarlet dots. "And you're shaking."

"Am not."

"When was the last time you ate?"

"When was the last time you gave a damn?" Mike snapped, breathing hard. "I'm doing the best I can, Harvey." Mike choked on his last words, trying to catch his breath, and without further ado pushed his way past Harvey and out of the office.

Harvey gave it five seconds, ten, then strolled after him, trying not to look like he wanted to appease the feelings of his associate. He saw Mike fly into the bathroom and exhaled slowly, counting to ten in his head the way they'd done it as children, with Mississippis in between. Then he pushed open the door and saw Mike getting off his knees, wiping a hand across his chin.

"What?" Mike asked roughly, "I'm sorry for the chair, okay? I didn't know I was still bleeding."

Harvey just shook his head, and Mike realized that his boss looked pale, as if he'd been the one puking his guts out. He was putting out a hand, too, and Mike flinched because too many people had put out their hands like that to him, palm out and raised. He was so, so tired though, and he felt dizzy and cold and hot and couldn't believe he was actually standing up right. He could never defend himself, not against Harvey who was bigger than him…

But Harvey touched his face, near his mouth, and Mike was surprised to see his hand coming away with blood. Had he touched his face with his bleeding hands? But no, the blood flow had stopped and good ol' clotting was setting in. So what…?

"Harvey…" He mumbled, an instant before he crumpled to the bathroom floor.

.***.

"Just cancel everything for the rest of the day, Donna." Harvey said, eyes snapping around the waiting room as he paced back and forth and back and…no one was telling him a damn thing, and as soon as he got everything at work taken care of he was going to change that.

"I don't know anything. He was just vomiting blood." His voice was low, tense, worried beyond belief because he'd never seen a sight like Mike in that bathroom, sweaty and shaking and pale and scared that he was going to lose his job because he was so sick blood leaked from his mouth, stained his teeth. "Did anyone see us?"

He should have called 9-1-1, he knows he should have, but he kept thinking about the other associates and Louis and how Mike's business didn't need to be flaunted in front of the whole staff, so instead he'd wrapped his coat around Mike's shoulders and bustled him into his car.

"Well, Louis is always suspicious, if thinks we just caught a case I can live with that. Yeah, Donna, I'll call you when I know something. He'll be alright." He hung up before he could contemplate whether that last sentence was for Donna's benefit or his own.

Peter Kettering was there again, and had looked in on Mike's case as a favor to Harvey. He motioned to Harvey from the other side of the waiting room. "You just keep sending me business, huh?" Kettering said, starting off down one hallways, turning down another. "Poor kid. He worships the ground you walk on, you know? First thing out of his mouth both times he's been here is always Harvey. I tried to tell him you were a bastard."

"He knows I am. So what's wrong with him, Peter?"

"Besides the fact that he's sick as a dog, not much. If you hadn't brought him in when you did it would have been another story. Had a temperature of a 103.2. I don't have to tell you that that's dangerous, and we're still trying to bring it down. He's in and out of lucidity, but he seemed anxious to see you." They both paused at the door to Mike's room, where the kid looked small and vulnerable, as pale as the sheets that surrounded him. "Play nice, huh? The nurses like this kid, and they're a pain in the ass to work with if someone shoots Bambi in front of them."

Harvey grunted, shifting his weight as the doctor left him. What was he supposed to do, sit here and hold Mike's hand until his fever broke?

"What were you thinking?" He said out loud, his voice thick with something like emotion. Harvey Specter doesn't do emotion. "You were just going to walk out of my office and make me believe everything was fine, weren't you? You were going to ride that death trap of yours back to that shitty apartment that probably doesn't have decent heating and you were going to freeze and die when your fever didn't break. Goddamnit!" He hurled himself into the seat next to the bed as Mike blinked at him through a film of pain.

"I didn't want to drag you into this." Mike said, his voice painfully quiet. "It's not your problem."

"Goddamnit!" Harvey cursed again, resisting the urge to pick up Mike's scraped and burnt hand from the bedspread. "You are my problem! You're a big problem! No one else in my entire life has been as much of a problem to me as you!"

Mike winced and turned away, gritting his teeth as his body was wracked with a tremor. He shook violently, glad that he could write off the liquid dripping from his eyes as a reaction from the fever, or from the pain, or from the fact that his body was eating itself from the inside.

Because to Mike's illness-beaten body, he equated problem with burden, and knew in his heart that Harvey had never signed up for an associate who got himself shot and had a back story worthy of a daytime soap opera.

He didn't know, couldn't guess, not in this state, that Harvey was taking responsibility for Mike, that he hadn't thought of anybody as his "problem" since he used to tell the other jocks to lay off his little brother back in high school. Harvey was trying to tell Mike that he cared. He just couldn't find the words.

But Mike didn't know that, and so he spent the rest of that day and the next and the next suffering alone.

.***.

please review.