For once, the day had actually started out nicely. That should have been Mike's first clue that everything would come crashing down, but for now he was happily preparing to head into work.
He had gone to sleep at 10:30, which he hadn't done since college, practically, and he'd woken up without the need of his alarm at 6:00.
He cooked himself a breakfast sandwich, filling the thing with cheese, and still had time to spare. So he made sure he looked respectable, tie straight, hair decent, and for once, no bags under his eyes. No one would be able to say he didn't look like a proper Pearson Hardman lawyer today.
He rode his bike over, taking the time to steer safely through the concrete jungle of New York's early rush, and made it to the office in record time.
The security guard who checked his badge even gave him a friendly smile.
As Mike walked through the office towards his cubicle, he spotted Louis, and as another wonder on this day of miracles, Louis didn't stop him or even glare at him. Instead he just looked through Mike as though he didn't exist, which was how Mike preferred to be seen when it came to Louis.
Mike sat down at his desk and leafed through the various files and briefs. They were all things he'd already finished with, either for Louis or Harvey. Somehow, he'd managed to get a head start on all his work, and he sat dazed at his desk for a few minutes as he realized that he actually had nothing to do.
So he organized his desk, which he hadn't done since he'd been assigned one, and threw out any used highlighters or pens. He even dusted off his computer screen and organized the filing cabinet he had. After the ten to fifteen minutes it had taken for him to do this, he decided that having nothing to do was even worse than having too much to do, so he decided to go beg Harvey for work.
And Mike was absolutely certain that Harvey would be in a good mood today. After the Clifford Danner case, Harvey had become unstoppable, which is to say, back to his usual self. He had taken on several tough cases that Jessica had personally given to him, and he'd even wrestled some pretty big clients from Louis' grasp. He'd been exceptionally forgiving the past few days, and had even taken time to show Mike how to fill out a form.
Mike was also proud to say that he'd been doing well these past few days too. He had settled two pro bono cases, won one in court, and been assigned to help Rachel research something for one of Jessica's big cases. Jessica had even complimented him.
So it was with eagerness that Mike set off for Harvey's office.
He approached Donna's desk, where the so-much-more-than secretary was busy typing up a storm.
Mike crossed his arms on her desk and rested his chin on his wrists. She didn't even look up as she asked, "What is it Mike? Get another paper cut?"
"Just didn't want to interrupt. Why? Are you trying to get rid of those Hello Kitty band-aids?"
"Twilight ones, actually," she said.
Mike raised his eyebrow at her in mock surprise.
"What?" she said dramatically. "Louis gave them to me."
"Mmhm," Mike said, retreating hastily. Now that he'd bantered with Donna, he could proceed safely to Harvey's office. They had a system.
Mike poked his head through Harvey's glass door. The man himself was sitting on his couch, legs crossed, sans jacket, and arguing suavely with a client.
"Take the offer," Harvey said, gesturing for Mike to sit down.
There was a loud retort from the other end of the phone. Harvey rolled his eyes as he and Mike shared a grin.
"No, Charlie. Listen to me. Take the deal. You're not going to get a better offer." There was another pause and Mike could hear the client's whining from where he was sitting three feet away. "Charlie, you never were going to get that much. That's the point of starting high. If you hadn't cheated on your wife, then none of this would have happened."
When Harvey had finally finished his call, he turned his attention to Mike.
Mike shrugged nervously under Harvey's gaze. "What?" he said intelligently.
"You tell me," Harvey replied.
Mike hesitated. He wanted to be useful, but did he really want to ask Harvey for work? He was still feeling lucky though, so he decided to go with his instinct.
"Um. Have anything you need me to do?" he asked, feigning boredom.
Harvey quirked an eyebrow. "Are you actually asking for something to do? Hasn't Louis started a new filing room in your cubicle?"
Mike chuckled. "He tried!"
Harvey's eyebrow rose even higher. Mike hadn't thought such a feat was possible, but then this was Harvey Specter.
Mike wanted to act hurt, but since he had already committed to acting cool, he instead crossed his arms and smirked dramatically.
Harvey opened his mouth to retort when the intercom on his desk tsked. Mike looked out at Donna's desk, but the secretary looked completely normal and inconspicuous. Which meant that Mike hadn't imagined that noise that stopped whatever it was Harvey had been about to say.
"Anyway, need any help?" Mike tried again.
"I'm Harvey Specter. Of course I don't need help."
"Any grunt work then?" Mike rolled his eyes.
Harvey looked pensive for a minute and then said, "Well, I do need something from the file room. You know, the one where Louis' mother keeps her lair? I suppose you might be able to survive long enough to handle file retrieval."
"How generous of you, Harvey."
"Mmhmm," Harvey grinned, handing Mike a paper with instructions.
"You so care," Mike managed as he slipped out of Harvey's office.
Mike practically flew down the hall to his cubicle, he was just so happy to finally have something to do. He was so caught up in his reverie that he ran right smack into Kyle—whose arms were piled high with a fresh stack of briefs—scattering papers everywhere.
"Nice going, Ross," Kyle said, bending down to gather the loose papers.
Mike hurriedly started grabbing any papers within his reach and shoved them back as he muttered an insincere "sorry" at the evil that was Kyle.
Kyle was glaring at Mike, preparing a particularly clever response, when Mike suddenly bolted. He was so stunned that he barely managed to spit out a retort about Mike running from Kyle's greatness. Mike didn't know how fortunate he was to have not heard a single bit of it.
...
Kyle was having a strange day. He'd been given an enormous stack of briefs by Louis, except that when he sat down to do them, he discovered they'd already been proofed. Begrudgingly, Kyle silently thanked Mike.
He'd managed to avoid getting any more work to do by appearing extremely bogged down whenever Louis strolled past his desk. Kyle had a hunch that this had more to do with the fact that Louis was more focused on searching the crowd of cubicles for the ever late Michael Ross.
With an unusual amount of free time on his hands, Kyle decided to make the most of things. Pestering the pretty paralegal that Mike was so enamored of was the first thing he decided to do. He figured she'd come to her senses soon and choose him over Ross. It wasn't that Kyle particularly liked Rachel, it was more that he wanted her because that way Mike couldn't have her. And that was in no way petty. Definitely not.
He'd actually gotten a smile out of her by the time Louis found him. The junior partner had yelled at him about chasing the lesser beings, and thrown a heavy stack of files into Kyle's arms.
Still, everything was going great until he was run over by Mike Ross. In front of everyone in the entire associate's area, no less. Papers went flying everywhere and Kyle let out a reflexive, "Nice going, Ross," as he'd bent down to gather them back. Surprisingly, he was met with a quiet mumble of an apology from his enemy, who started gathering up all the loose papers.
Kyle glared back at the man, forming a rather clever retort about how Mike was totally inferior to Kyle for some reason or other. He didn't get the chance to perfect this insult however, as Ross flew past him towards the elevators.
Whatever, Kyle thought as he checked for any more loose papers. There was something over by the cubicle to his left and when he picked it up he saw that it was Ross' wallet.
He couldn't help the evil chuckle that escaped his lips when he found it. He made a mental note to check the inside later for any cash, not that he was going to steal it, but he wasn't beyond hiding the money and seeing Ross freak out about it. Now that would be entertaining.
As Kyle settled down at his desk he began leafing through the new stack of briefs that Louis had shoved at him, trying to put all the almost-escaped papers back in their correct places. That's when he noticed that the briefs had already been highlighted and notated. The handwriting matched that of the first stack of briefs'. Mike Ross. Kyle allowed another silent 'thank you' to the associate. Stupid Ross was even screwing up Kyle's ability to hate him.
"Hey, Kyle. Want a muffin?"
"What?" Kyle snapped as he looked up, startled, from the briefs. Harold was looking back at him, hurt written openly on his face. "Oh. No. Where did you get muffins from, anyway?"
"Oh, Norma was handing them out. She's so nice, you know?"
Kyle blanched. Norma was most definitely not nice. The woman was almost scarier than Harvey's secretary, though in a completely different fashion. She'd probably be super nice to Ross, he thought angrily.
"Are you feeling okay, Kyle?" Harold looked concerned now.
Kyle glared at the other associate.
"Anyway, I should really get back to work. See you!"
Kyle looked around at the rest of the associates curiously. Work? Was he the only one who had nothing to do? Free time just wasn't the same when it was caused by his enemy.
He tried to work for the next hour on whatever it was that Ross hadn't already done. This took him about five whole minutes, which were mostly spent leafing through each page to double check they'd already been dealt with. Kyle was now very bored and he was starting to wish he had accepted that muffin from Harold, when he remembered that he had Ross' wallet.
Snickering to himself, he pulled it from his coat pocket and opened the simple black leather billfold.
It was mostly empty. Kyle was now very disappointed. There was only one five dollar bill in the thing, and the only other items it held were Ross' ID and his Pearson Hardman badge. At least he could restrict Ross' entry to and from the building with the badge. He tossed the thing down angrily.
Maybe he should just return it. But that would have been kind, and Kyle wasn't about to settle. He would win this battle, or whatever it was. Mike Ross would definitely not be getting his wallet back anytime soon. And Kyle was hungry. Grinning, he took the five dollar bill out of the pocket and headed for the vending machines.
…
Rachel was not having a good day. Kyle had been bothering her from the moment she'd sat down in her office, and she was extremely busy with something for one of the senior partners. Not only was she wholly uninterested in pursuing anything with Kyle, she was in a bad mood because Mike hadn't stopped by to deliver so much as a wave at her.
After their double date fiasco, Rachel had decided she'd lost any potential interest in the thing named Kyle, and gained even more interest in the problem named Mike.
But none of this, including the glares she was sending Kyle, was enough to stop him from constantly bothering her. Currently, he was standing next to her desk and delivering some sort of speech about how great he was.
She risked a glance up at him, hoping he'd get the hint and shove off, but instead he seemed to take this as a sign that he had her undivided attention.
She rolled her eyes when he wasn't looking, and tried to find anyone passing by her office in the hopes of instigating a rescue.
"So that's how I annihilated Tracy Spates at the mock trial in pre-law in '07. You should have seen her face. Not that she was as pretty as you, Rachel, but now that I think of it, she did bear a startling resemblance to Ross. Their expressions of defeat are uncannily similar. Weird…" Rachel risked a glance at him after he trailed off, to find him staring out her window with glazed eyes. He was probably trying to picture what Mike Ross would look like bowing down to His Majesty, Kyle.
Rachel glared at her computer screen and gritted her teeth. She refused to get fired for killing Kyle, but she had to admit that the three hole punch made of heavy steel and thick padded rubber she'd gotten from Norma last year was starting to look rather enticing. She tried to satisfy her urge by picturing what it would look like buried in Kyle's skull.
"Rachel?"
She snapped her attention back to Kyle. Living Kyle, she reminded herself. "What?" she answered tersely.
"I asked if you wanted to have drinks with me and the guys tonight. Well, actually, just me," he said smugly, as if he expected her to beg him for the opportunity.
She allowed her hand to glide slowly towards the hole punch.
Sadly, Kyle was rescued by the unlikeliest of sources. Rachel had never been happy to see Louis, but she did let out a glowingly relieved smile when he headed towards her office. Her eyes flicked back to Kyle, hoping he hadn't seen his impending doom behind him.
Kyle paused just a moment to ignorantly return Rachel's smile for all the wrong reasons, when Louis shoved his way into her office.
"Mike, I need you to—" Louis stopped himself, realizing too late his mistake. He'd clearly assumed that Kyle had been Mike. Rachel allowed herself to not be offended in this particular case, since her restraint would result in the removal of her pest problem. Though she did allow herself to wish that it had been Mike who'd been pestering her.
"Louis," Kyle choked. "I was working on those files you gave me and—"
"Whatever, just get these done too," Louis said as he shoved a rather large stack of file folders into Kyle's arms. "And stop wasting time. The paralegals have things to do." Louis risked a glance at Rachel at that, and looked surprised and not a little creeped out, to find Rachel smiling at him.
She silently snickered at her good fortune as the two men practically ran from her office.
It was probably for the best. That three hole punch would have been a bitch to clean.
...
Harvey pressed the button on his desk that turned Donna's one-way radio into a temporary two-way one.
"No, I have not seen Mike," Donna said.
Harvey glared at her through the glass of his door. He opened his mouth to reply with a clever retort.
"No, you won't get away with it." She raised an eyebrow at him.
Harvey grimaced. He had to learn how she did that.
"I'm not his keeper, Harvey."
Harvey set the intercom back to normal. Mike shouldn't have been more than thirty minutes. Louis must have stopped him or maybe that paralegal Mike was always chasing. Or not chasing, now that he was with Jenny. God, Harvey knew way too much about this kid's life.
Oh well, he thought. The files could wait.
