"This is good."
Mike looked up from the papers at Harvey's face. He hadn't been expecting such lavish (by Harvey's standards) praise from the man, after all he had been treated like a wall for the past couple of weeks- leant on (for paperwork) when required and then forgotten about. His meeting with Harvey had lasted long past office hours, and the office was mostly empty save for a few overzealous workers. The sun had set over the island, and the city was abuzz with nightlife, but no more so than the minds of the men in Harvey's office.
"If you're so good at this, should've been a fake PI." Harvey said to Mike, with a light smile gracing his face.
"And we're back to that again are we, do you not ever get tired of suggesting fake professions for me?" Mike questioned with an amused look on his face.
"Nope." Harvey got up from his seat and turned around to face the windows overlooking the streets below.
"I'll get Vanessa to look into this, while I'm impressed with the extent of your investigation, I suspect her research may yield more in depth results." Harvey said while staring out the window, pensive despite the light banter moments ago. Mike got up from his seat to leave the office, taking the last statement as his cue to leave.
"If you think this gets you out of the doghouse, you're wrong." Harvey said with a slight smile. "I know." replied Mike. A look of understanding passed between the two, and the unspoken words reinforced the start of their once more 'normal' relationship.
The past few weeks had been harrowing to say the very least for Rachel. After a brief bout of passion in the file room, Rachel had come to her senses at the last minute pushed Mike away and all but run. The next few days saw both of them ignoring the other with Mike using every single other paralegal the firm had to offer besides Rachel. Somehow, Mike trusted Rachel enough to not be too anxious about her telling his dirty little secret. Luckily for Mike, his tactic of avoiding Rachel was working very well. Without anyone to talk to at the firm, Mike's efficiency had reached new heights with him completing all his paperwork in record time, even though the workload had increased since the merger. Of course this couldn't last. The question was how long could you avoid someone you worked with, and in the case of Rachel and Mike it was 4 weeks, 3 days and 4 hours. Not that any of them were counting. Certainly not that they had been thinking over what they would say to each other if and during a confrontation; which was bound to happen given they worked on the same floor of the same building in the same firm.
Mike was walking down the hallways with an obscenely large stack of files for Harvey along with some permutation of coffee for Donna (in order to beg for forgiveness for being a whole 15 minutes late with the files.) when it happened. Amidst all his worries of reporting late to Harvey with the files, Mike didn't hear the tell tale signs of Rachel's heels clacking against the marble floors. Rachel was looking down at the screen of her Blackberry, ticking off the things she had done on her to-do list when the collided.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, I couldn't see where I was going because of these files and oh my god Donna's going to kill me, I dropped her coffee and I'm late with Harvey.." Mike kept babbling until he realized who he was speaking to. His chin just about fell to the floor; Rachel's expression mirrored his except it was with far more finesse.
"There you are! Harvey's seething and you've dropped my coffee, you are just asking for trouble aren't you, Mike." Donna surveyed the disastrous scenario in front of her, unaware of the elephant in the room. Mike nodded awkwardly and walked off in the direction of Harvey's office.
"What's wrong with you, you look like you've seen a ghost! Do we need to go out for happy hour again?" Donna said teasingly. "Oh no its fine, just a little, uh, flustered. Didn't see him coming and you know.." Rachel flustered. Donna nodded knowingly before heading off towards her cubicle.
Rachel briefly looked towards the direction in which Mike left before shaking her head and leaving for her own office.
