Chapter Text
Harvey forgets the agreement with Jessica the very next day. “What is this?” he demands, double tapping the Finance Department mock-up, devoid of digital illustrations. Right now, it like a compiled set of articles rather than a newsletter-slash-magazine.
Louis, contrary to his own belief, is a slave driver. What he deems are menial work is, in reality, the workload of three junior interns in a real publishing house. It helps that he’s a natural grammar Nazi. However, it doesn’t help that he’s completely inadequately skilled for pacing a newsletter properly. So instead of a cohesive, naturally flowing mini-zine, the draft reads like a poorly made high-school student’s coursework.
Mike’s going through one of the latter articles, highlighter in his mouth and pen in hand, as he skims the document. He takes a second before he answers Harvey. “Drafts for the department newsletter. You know, the thing that Louis is making me do.” He gibbered over the high lighter and a small trace of drool passed the corner of his lips.
“And why are you doing work for Louis again?” Harvey asks, giving Mike an incredulous look.
Mike stops, grabbing the highlighter on the dry side, and returns Harvey’s look. “Because you lent me to him, remember?” He says, digging up his phone from the mountain of papers and scanning the message. “Here, look,” He says, filling the device and showing it to Harvey.
Harvey rolls his eyes, defeated. “Okay, new question.” He amends, lazily shifting over the papers. “How long until you’re done?”
“Why?” Mike asks, finishing up on the document.
“I need you for something,”
“Okaaaay…?” He is two articles away from finishing the thirty-article set. Then, he needs to recreate and inset Louis’ chicken scratch graphs on the final document. “Does that mean that you’re not lending me out to Louis then? Because you need to tell me now. His drawings,” he leans in like a whisper, “are really, really bad.”
Harvey snorts, “No, but nice try. Unfortunately, I remember promising Jessica to lend you out but you’re still my TA and I still have the last say about what work you will be doing.” He glances at his watch and thumbs over something on his phone, cursing. When he turns to Mike, he’s back to seriousness, “Finish that by eleven, and then meet me at Dino’s at lunchtime.”
“Whooptie-doo,” Mike whoops with a sarcastic imaginary flag, “Free lunch.”
It’s Harvey’s turn for an eye roll. “Twelve o’clock, rookie.” He tells Mike, tapping on his watch as if to emphasize his point, “Don’t make me wait.”
***
At exactly half-past to twelve, Mike boots-down the PC and tidies up his desk. It does all that in five minutes and zigzags out of the bullpen at record speed. He merely give Rachel an apologetic looks when she calls out to him and mimes I’ll text you as he passes by. Then, just when he thought the coast is clear.
“Mike,” Louis appears out of nowhere with a large toothy grin, “Perfect, I caught you! I need you to add these to the articles before we hand them over to the layout team.” He says, handing Mike a new stack of badly drawn graphs.
“Uh, r—right,” Mike stammers, shoving them all in his bag, “I’m going out to lunch first. Is that okay, Louis? I have until tomorrow to finish everything right?”
Louis nods, “Take all the time you need, Mike-y, as long as it gets done tomorrow.”
“Sure thing, Louis,” Mike makes a hasty nod and sprints for the door without looking. He immediately slams into the person entering the building through the same door. “Ompf!” he cries out as he falls flat on his ass. “What the--?”
“Mike? Mike, is that you?” A familiar voice greets him.
Disoriented, Mike groggily looks at the person he bumped into, eyes growing wide when he recognizes her. “Jenny!” He exclaims in both delight and surprise. It’s been a whole semester since he last saw her. A week before he took the test for Trevor. “What are you in the business building? Aren’t you in lit or something?”
“It’s Literature and Advanced English, Mike, don’t tell me your forgot already!” She corrects him, her sweet grin still the same he remembers. “I’m actually looking for one of my gen profs for FINTROD. I couldn’t take a test last week ‘cause I caught the flu. She’s a faculty here. How about you? Switch majors already?”
“How could I forget? Jenny the future writer,” Mike replies with a grin. He shakes his head as he offers to help her stand up, “No, I haven’t switched still in Economics,” he tells her, “But I’m working as a TA for one of the professors in the Finance Department.”
“Oh great!” She beams, clapping a hand over his arm. “Then you can take me to Jessica Pearson’s office. I think she’s the current department chair!”
Mike checks his watch. He still had fifteen minutes. “Okay, sure,” he reluctantly agrees because there a small guilty part of him that feels bad for disappearing on her completely. Jenny, Trevor, and he were kind of a trio together with Jenny always settling the things between them.
He takes Jenny up to see Jessica but gets Jessica’s secretary Diane instead.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Pearson is away for lunch. You’ll have to send her an email for an appointment next time, miss.” Diane, a mature looking woman, tells Jenny. “Or I can set one for you if you’d like.”
“That will be great,” Jenny agrees with a smile.
Mike checks his watch again. He only has five minutes left. He’s really going to be late and piss-off Harvey. “Hey,” he gets her attention by tapping her shoulder, “I’m supposed to meet my boss at twelve. I’m sorry, but I have to run.”
“Aww, Mike,” Jenny pouts, giving him a hug, “I miss you so much! Trevor says you moved out but didn’t tell me why. You need to come over soon, okay? I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever!”
Mike grimaces at the thought of Trevor. “Y—yeah,” he chortles uneasily, “I missed you too, Jenny, and I’ll try. I really need to go now.”
“Okay, take care, Mike,” Jenny says with a nod, leaning in to drop a kiss on her cheek.
“Diane!” Donna comes walking into the office without knocking, “Are you ready for—oh!” she gasps in surprise, eyeing Mike and Jenny. She carefully schools her face, hands folding over her chest, openly judging them. “I didn’t know Jessica had a show going on in her office. Shame on you, Diane, for not telling me. I would have brought popcorn.”
“Donna!” Mike exclaims, jumping like a kid-caught away from Jenny, “This isn’t… this isn’t what it looks like.” He stammers, and his blush doesn’t help his case at all. It only makes her cat-like grin even wider.
“Sure, it’s not, Mike,” She says sarcastically, “and you weren’t here, right?” She winks exaggeratedly on the last word. Then she makes a go on face, “Well?”
“I’ve got to go,” Mike sputters, then turns quickly to beeline for the door. He manages a quick, “See you around, Jenny” before he’s out the door. Running, to make it on time despite knowing that he won’t succeed.
***
Mike doesn’t expect a smiling, laughing Harvey when he enters the diner. It’s another one of the hole-in-the-wall paces that Mike’s been too much of a Grinch tor try-out. But, after gabbing breakfast there for his temperamental professor, he realized that it’s an a-okay place to eat with good food at a reasonable price. That doesn’t mean he eats here often though.
“Mike!” Harvey calls out, from where he’s seated across another guy in a booth. “Get over here. I’d like to introduce you to someone.” He raises his hand in a blatant come here motion, just like he would a dog, palms up and four fingers folding.
Mike has to pat down his sweaty palms against his pants before walking. There are two seats available. He can either take the one beside Harvey or beside the new guy. He really, really, doesn’t feel comfortable sitting beside Harvey. All that clothes to clothes contact makes him remember the encounter in the kitchen.
Harvey makes the choice for him by scooting over to the window and Mike slides right in. The booth feels a little cramped for two completely (well, one) grown man. Harvey’s hips, thighs, and knees are pressed against Mike’s underneath the table while their elbow keep rubbing together.
“Mike, this is Wyatt, a research buddy of mine.” Harvey introduces, “Wyatt, this my TA who is incapable of being on-time, Mike.” He says in a voice that sounds almost fond.
The men exchanges their hellos.
“Wyatt is in town for a congress down at Kennedy. I thought that you should meet since you’ll be helping with my next book. It’s easier to build trust when you’ve already meat each other in person.” Harvey explains, as their server serves their food.
“That’s it?” Mike questions, still slightly out of breath, “I get dragged here for some important business and it’s to just meet someone? I mean, no offense intended, sir—”
“Wyatt,” Wyatt correct.
“Wyatt,” Mike amends, “and to what eat?”
Harvey looks at him as if he’s grown two heads. When, in reality, it should be him looking Harvey as if the older man had grown two heads. “Is there anything wrong with that, rookie? This is a diner, you know, where people come to eat?”
“Yeah, but,” Mike tries to protest but Harvey gives him a warning look.
“Don’t bother with the menu. We’ve already ordered. I got something for you too.”
“Uhm, well, okay,” Mike can do nothing but nod, “Thanks, Harvey. I can’t believe you ordered for me.”
“Well, if you weren’t so late then you could have ordered yourself,” Harvey chastises but it doesn’t have the usual tone that it had in the office. “And you are not to go back to the office until your plate is clean, are we clear?”
Mike barely stops the yes, mom from passing his lips.
This was a causal lunch. A casual working lunch which doesn’t seem to involve any work at all. And Harvey’s feeding him again. Mike’s given a plate of buttermilk pancakes, sausages, beans, and eggs—the big brunch option on the menu.
“He can eat all that?” Wyatt asks, glancing doubtfully at the pile of food, “But he’s so … skinny.” He looks mournfully over his salad and side of potatoes.
“He can,” Harvey confirms with a nod, “then he’ll ask for pie. Mike’s stomach is like a bottomless pit.”
“Hey!” Mike protests, “I happen to be a growing boy, you know!” He feels like this whole thing was a repeat of the Zoe-brunch a few weeks ago. Except, there wasn’t any unwanted sexual innuendos coming from Wyatt. He’s thanking the gods for that. Because since the night in the kitchen, he’s been thinking about Harvey differently.
“And pie is a vital nutritional need for growing children, isn’t it Mike?” Harvey quips with an eye roll, picking up his roast beef sandwich, grease and a bit of dressing dribble down his arm. “It’s your fault for not eating breakfast, you know. If I didn’t feed you, you’ll fall flat on your face before your last class ends.”
“Well, who decided to hog the shower this morning?” Mike shot back around a mouthful of pancake.
“Who decided to sleep-in on a school day?” Harvey doesn’t miss a heartbeat, perfectly times just after swallowing, because he does not talk with his mouthful. “That’s what you get for cramming your coursework. Don’t do it again, or you’ll get kicked out of the program.”
“Yeah, yeah, article twenty, page four, I know.” Mikes waves it off. It was just a stupid 1-page, double-spaced essay, on the IS-LM curve. He could have done it easily if he wasn’t so tired from half a day of correcting articles. At least he can say that, grammatically, his essay is flawless.
“Wait, what?” Wyatt cuts in, catching the last part of the conversation, “How did you…? Did you remember that?” He asks, now looking at Mike as if here were a lab specimen under the high-powered microscope. “How did you remember that?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Harvey boasted, preening, “Kid’s got eidetic memory. It’s crazy convenient.”
“That’s…” Wyatt seems at a loss for words. He stops for a good minutes before continuing, “That’s amazing. Wow. That’ll make it so much easier to spot inconsistencies with the data this time! Harvey, we might actually get it to Zoe on time!”
“I know,” Harvey laughs with a nod, “I know. Isn’t he great?”
Even if Harvey was talking about his mind, somehow Mike cannot help but preen a little at the compliment. He hides his smile in his mug of coffee. He feels a lot like the master show piece that Harvey keeps trotting around the floor to show everyone.
He’s pleased by the thought.
A warm flood of butterflies flutter in his stomach.