#shortstop

Its windows are so tinted they look blacked out with something opaque. Mike’s eyes fixate on it, straining for the outline of a head in the backseat. He moves forward, and an orange pill bottle rolled in prescription paperwork rattles in his pocket. He emerges from the shade of the building, and the sun—which he’s only seen at a particularly shitty angle for the last two years—beams down at him from overhead.

Mike kind of wishes, in the back of his mind, that it was raining. Then everything wouldn’t be cast so harshly, then he wouldn’t have to glance up and see Harvey standing just out of sight, not in the car at all. Then Harvey wouldn’t have to see how ragged he must look, draped into a suit that grew too large for him, with bruises on his knuckles and under his eyes.

Harvey grins like nothing’s wrong, and Mike shields his eyes against the burning sun and tries to smile back. The scar that cuts through his lips makes the tug of his smile feel odd, so it falters. His heart hammers in his chest. It wouldn’t be too unjustified to shield his eyes from Harvey instead, whose attention feels brighter than the sun.

They don’t say anything. Words won’t come. Instead, Harvey collects Mike into a tight hug, palm pressing against the small of his back like he’s holding Mike’s insides together, keeping him upright. Tears prickle at the edges of Mike’s eyes, and he rubs at them inconspicuously as Harvey pulls away and opens the door to the car.

Mike slips inside and tries to breathe as he’s shut inside the dark interior. Ray says hello, and he musters a reply somehow, a warm greeting. Like he hasn’t been gone, like he’s just getting in after a long day at the firm, ready for a client dinner by Harvey’s side. While Harvey circles around to the other side, Mike shuts his eyes and drops the back of his head to the headrest. The leather of the seats has trapped the faint scent of cigars—but not the shitty, rolled up contraband that he’s used to, passed between paint-chipped bars. This scent is from the smoke of real, strong stuff, and it makes Mike think of Harvey’s obscenely expensive whiskey habit, and his obscenely expensive everything.

He suddenly feels too dirty for the polished leather. He crosses his arms and exhales slowly out his mouth.

Harvey clambers in on the other side with a heavy sigh and something murmured to Ray. The world turns into a blind blur, Mike so exhausted that the world outside turns into streaks of light. His eyes fall shut and he feels rude, but Harvey never tries to engage him in conversation.

Mike knows the streets of Manhattan by heart, but not the route from prison, so it’s not until he opens his eyes as they park that he realizes that they’re somewhere entirely different than he expected. He doesn’t see the tall glass lobby of Harvey’s high rise, just a vine-adorned brick condo complex that seems much more humble—though it’s still upscale enough to earn a doorman and a valet.

“You’ll see,” Harvey says vaguely, when Mike asks, and then climbs out of the car without offering any clarification. Mike shuts his eyes for a long moment and doesn’t move until Harvey opens his door.

Harvey actually crouches next to the open backseat, making creases in his bespoke fabric just to stare up at Mike with wide, brown eyes.

“Take all the time you need,” he says seriously, which happens to be just what Mike needs to immediately heave himself out of the car.

Mike follows Harvey inside the front arched doors, sees him greet the front desk attendant like they’re familiar. The complex’s lobby is tall and expansive with a penny-filled fountain in the center. There’s an old brownstone-inspired feel to the whole structure, which feels expensive without being gaudy. Mike knows without needing to be told explicitly that Harvey has been living here for some time. He misses the old high-rise for a second, misses nothing but its familiarity. This new place exists nowhere in his memories. The only thing around him he knows is Harvey, so he clings to him with his eyes and ignores the encroaching pressure of the new environment.

Harvey swipes a key card to get them into the elevator, presses the fourth floor button with his knuckle, and as the doors slide shut a freshly-cleaned mirrored wall displays themselves.

Mike swallows and watches his thin throat move with the action. Yikes. It’s not that the prisoners weren’t fed enough—the food wasn’t good, by any means, but they were fed whatever calorie amount humanitarian activists thought they deserved. They even got dessert on Fridays—but he lost his appetite the longer his stay got, and after he nearly died his gut revolted at the idea of doing any kind of work at all.

The dark pink line that tears down from his cheek bone to cross his lips is half as big and ugly as the day Gallo gave it to him, knitted over and closed. It makes speaking a chore. He averts his eyes from it.

The other scar is under his button-up, somewhere, but he hasn’t seen it fully in a mirror since he was released from the hospital, when it was still puffy and raw. That one has healed incredibly well. It looks like Gallo barely grazed him; it only left a faint pink scar. It doesn’t look like he’s ever been intubated. It doesn’t look like his heart stopped in an ambulance, or again on an operating table. It doesn’t look like his spleen is gone. It’s just an old cut.

He looks to the side and catches Harvey’s piercing eyes staring at him through the reflection. Mike shrugs one shoulder weakly, and Harvey glances away. He looks exhausted, but better. Better than he’s looked the last year, better than he’d looked when Mike was in Bellevue hospital’s prison ward. He’d been half-manic after the stabbing, balancing the trial and work and still somehow sitting by Mike’s bedside every single night without fail.