Brother from another mother

Samantha Ronson [Part-3]

Mike sat on the floor of Harvey's office propped up against the couch with six months worth of email correspondence and texts spread out around him. It was long since dark out and the only light on their floor came from Harvey's office. His shirt was wrinkled and he'd rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, his tie and jacket discarded in the corner of the couch.

Harvey sat at his desk, wincing at the twinge in his back from being hunched over for hours on end, looking just as exhausted as Mike with one discarded coffee cup in his trash to go with each empty can of red bull beside the associate.

"Oh my God," Mike groaned loudly, stretching his arms up over his head and then scrubbing his face rigorously. He blinked and looked at Harvey who also leaned away from his desk to stretch.

"I'm not even sure these are in English anymore," Mike said with a tired smile.

Harvey hmm'd in response, too tired to respond to the associate's idle chit chat and stood to walk over to the boxes of pizza sitting on the table by the door. It had been cold for hours by now, but his body was demanding something to replace the energy it wasn't getting from proper sleep. Still, Harvey would think twice before allowing Mike to decide where they ordered take out from again.

"So tell me something," Harvey said turning around, pretending he didn't notice when Mike's head snapped up, mid nod-off.

"What's that?" He asked around a large yawn.

"Where's the last name Ronson come from? Is she your half sister?"

Mike shook his head, shifting papers off his lap to stand, an excuse to answer without looking at the older man.

"It was my mother's maiden name." Mike sighed, pushing his hands in his pockets as he stared at the darkened buildings and the street lights glowing several floors below. "She legally changed it when she turned eighteen and went to college," he said, his voice sounding far away. "Like she said, she didn't want anything to do with her screw up brother."

Harvey tilted his head and crossed the room, torn between apathy and curiosity. But Mike didn't open up like this often and Harvey made it his business to know as much about his associate as possible, if for no other reason than to protect himself (and by extension, the kid) from whatever craziness might pop up from his past (like a sister no one knew about, for example). So he did what an old law professor taught him to do when he wasn't quite sure what to say.

He listened.

"I'm a year older than Samantha, fifteen when our parents died but...I wasn't there for her the way I should have been. She was just a kid, missing her parents, needing her brother," Mike shook his head at the memory, "and all I could think about was the next time Trevor and I could get high." Mike sighed and leaned his forehead forward until it was pressed against the cool glass.

"I knew she hated it. I knew Gram hated it but...it was the only way I knew to not feel like the world was out of control...Sam couldn't wait to get out of there and away from all of it. She was never happy on the third floor," he met Harvey's eyes with a rueful smile, "she's always been penthouse material."

Harvey could tell he was trying to be brave, smiling sheepishly and looking him in the eye. But the message in his eyes was clear as day. Please don't make fun of me for this, and Harvey felt an unpleasant turn in his gut that the kid would even think he would do something like that.

"Shouldn't be so hard on yourself Mike," he said quietly, turning back to look out the window, "she might have been just a kid, but so were you."

Mike smiled at the uncharacteristically kind comment and felt that surge of warmth he sometimes got when Harvey approved of something he did or played along with some of his childish schemes.