suits fic: the exit velocity arc (2246 words)

Title: the Exit Velocity arc
Author: matchsticks_p
Summary: Louis can't have nice things. An exploration in three parts.
Pairings: past Harvey/Louis, unrequited Louis/Mike, the usual vague background implied Harvey/Mike, and some Trevor thrown in there to make Louis's life even harder.
Rating: R, more for language than actions
Disclaimers: Not mine, not affiliated, not true, not paid, no harm meant.
Notes: The original "exit velocity," part one, was a standalone fill for this kink meme prompt asking for Louis being jealous that Mike is Harvey's favourite, but then I expanded it into a three-parter following this prompt asking for Louis to start falling for Mike because he's just so damned nice but knowing there's no chance, and this personal request from the same prompter asking for Trevor/Louis interaction. …I've made this very difficult for myself to explain when attempting to post to comms. They're all linked prose-poetic vignettes set in the same universe, in linear time, okay.



I: exit velocity.

It isn't that Louis sees Mike, really. It's that Harvey does.

Harvey's eyes pass through Louis like he's the glass around his office, useful but replaceable and completely transparent. Harvey's eyes stop when he looks at Mike though, like Mike matters. Like Mike matters to him.

Mike has never sucked Harvey off in Jessica's guest bathroom at a Christmas party just because he was drunk and Harvey asked, but Harvey still looks at Mike the way Harvey never looks at Louis.

So Louis sends Mike out on errands he can't possibly fulfill. He gives Mike pro bono cases that were written off as inevitable losses before they even made it all the way into their neat little cream-coloured folders. And when Mike squirms and sweats and cracks under the strain, Louis watches Harvey watching Mike fail and thinks, do you even remember that it was my mouth on your dick that night? Or does it even matter?

But Mike—Mike finds a way to finish every single one of Louis's assignments just a step above the impossible level Louis demanded. He flips finished reports casually onto Louis's desk, a desk worth more than the entire payout of Mike's life insurance should he die of unfortunate circumstances right fucking now, and he smirks when he says goodnight.

Mike used to take a nervous step back when Louis lunged forward. These days, he lunges in return and when Louis stumbles back in confusion he notices that he has to look up to keep talking because when they're close it's obvious Mike is taller than him.

Sometimes, when Harvey humiliates him in front of his own clients, Louis gets the feeling that maybe Harvey isn't even trying to humiliate him. He gets the feeling that maybe he ranks so low in the bulleted list of priorities in Harvey's head that maybe Harvey isn't even aware that he can feel humiliation. Maybe Harvey's just getting the job done without noticing that Louis happens to be in the room. But Mike notices. Mike is on Harvey's heels out the door, but he turns around to smirk that smirk he learned from Harvey at Louis and he notices.

He notices that Louis isn't riled up, isn't digging his heels in, isn't fighting back, isn't stopping his client from walking out. He notices that Louis is numb, like the glass around Harvey's office that doesn't feel and doesn't register in Harvey's field of vision. He notices Louis.

And he steps back inside, breaking out of Harvey's gravitational pull to touch Louis lightly on the elbow.

Louis has to look up to see Mike's face.

"Louis, we—I didn't mean to—" Mike breaks off into a nervous laugh, not so much a laugh as an embarrassed huff.

Halfway down the hall, Harvey notices that Mike is no longer in his orbit. He turns.

Louis doesn't see Harvey turn to stare, because he's still looking at Mike.


II: predetermined trajectory.

The problem isn't the cupcake on his desk.

The problem is the post-it note next to the cupcake, which says "don't worry, it's vegan" in Mike's surprisingly readable handwriting.

It's Louis's birthday, and Mike has left a red velvet cupcake topped with a soft white cloud of fluffy icing on Louis's desk. And Mike remembered that Louis is lactose intolerant. Mike somehow even knows that Louis is lactose intolerant.

It tastes really good. It tastes like Louis's inevitable, impending humiliation.

Life used to be a lot less stressful back when he only obsessed over Mike to get Harvey's attention. Now, he obsesses over Mike to get Mike's attention, and he still wishes Harvey would see him.

Ever since Mike started noticing Louis, he's gone out of his way to be nice to Louis. He's gone out of Harvey's way to be nice to Louis, which vexes Harvey almost as much as it vexes Louis. Mike is all kind words and soft smiles and thoughtful favours when Louis is least expecting it, which is always, because Louis never expects anything generous from anyone on Harvey's side, not Mike nor Donna nor even Jessica.

Louis doesn't expect to develop an infatuation with Mike, either, but he does, so maybe he's just bad at setting expectations.

He tries to deal with it by assigning Mike even more impossible tasks with impossible deadlines, by being aggressively peevish and rude, even more so than he naturally is. But Mike just looks at him the way he's seen his nieces look at drenched kittens, and finishes all of Louis's assignments early. And then Louis overhears Mike talking to his terrifyingly competent paralegal friend, about how Louis has been "lashing out a lot lately," likely due to some sort of emotional pain. And even though Louis has found, through experience, that he can endure a lot of embarrassment, he's not sure he can endure quite this much.

So he switches to plan B, which is simply to act as he naturally wants to around Mike. He's self-aware enough to know that people find him creepy. He figures his creepy crush will creepily make itself known and creep out Mike sooner or later, and then Mike can go back to avoiding him and he can go back to disliking Mike.

Louis knows he stands too close to Mike when they talk. He stands too close even by Louis's own standards. But Mike doesn't back up, doesn't blink, doesn't even dart his eyes quickly to the side to check for an exit. His eyes remain clear, focussed on Louis's eyes, not on his buck teeth or weird ears or a spot on the wall next to his head—on Louis's eyes, and he nods at all the right times like it matters to him that Louis sees he understands.

Mike accepts Louis's invitations to the ballet. He makes faces at Louis behind Harvey's back. He even admonishes Donna to be nicer to Louis when she refuses to do him a favour, although of course that just gets the wrath of Donna turned onto him and they both end up buying her flowers in an attempt to placate her.

Mike isn't put off by any of Louis's annoying quirks, the ones that make Harvey roll his eyes extra hard and mutter something to Jessica that Louis can't quite hear.

It's slowly driving Louis mad.

The breaking point is when Mike strolls into his office one afternoon and asks if he wants to eat lunch together. Louis can't handle it anymore. He throws down what he's holding (which is a cognac glass, but unfortunately it just rolls harmlessly on the plush carpeted floor rather than smashing melodramatically) and demands to know why Mike is so nice.

Mike sits in the chair across from Louis's desk, uninvited, and starts pulling out various lunch foods from his shoulder bag. "I'll be honest," he says, setting an apple down on Louis's desk, "it was pity at first. Harvey rides you even harder than he rides me, and I have no idea why, although I can guess there's some kind of history between you two that no one else knows about."

Louis flushes to the root of his receding hairline.

"But I don't even care anymore," Mike continues, unhurried. "You have great taste in classical music and you like Shakespeare and you're really funny. I honestly just like hanging out with you. And the fact that it makes that vein in Harvey's forehead stand out is just a side bonus. So." Mike finally looks up from setting up is lunch. "Friends?"

He reaches out a closed fist in some absurd expectation that Louis will bump it.

Louis stares at Mike's knuckles and isn't sure he can deal. Mike's friendship isn't quite what he wants. But maybe it can be.


III: free fall.

Pearson Hardman hires a new kid to work in the mailroom. Under normal circumstances, it's the kind of fact that's beneath Louis's notice. Under normal circumstances, the concept of the mailroom itself is beneath Louis's notice. But these aren't normal circumstances, because the new hire isn't a normal kid.

His name is Trevor, and everyone knows it.

His name is Trevor, he works in the mailroom, he isn't the son of anyone important and even Jessica knows his name.

People hate Mike because Mike is Harvey's favourite. But no one hates Mike as much as they hate Trevor, because Trevor is Mike's favourite and even Harvey knows his name.

He doesn't step aside to give senior partners more room when they walk by. The senior partners don't give a shit, but all the junior staff step aside for them and they notice that Trevor doesn't. It's offensive, the way he acts like he isn't aware that he's so low on the ladder he can't even be considered a rung.

Trevor is the floor, he's just dirt, and Harvey knows his name.

When it comes to interacting with Louis, Trevor follows Harvey's lead, which is to say he barely acknowledges Louis's existence. Few things burn more than feeling snubbed by the mailroom guy. It's better to be off Trevor's radar than on it, though, because he takes no time to figure out the limits of Pearson Hardman's disciplinary system and just how much he can get away with fucking with people's mail. Anyone he doesn't like, anyone who laughs at him or looks at him wrong or gets in Mike's way, they get important mail requiring urgent replies at the last possible second. Sensitive correspondence gets accidentally rerouted to someone who shouldn't have seen the return address.

Insecure people are scared of him because Trevor isn't insecure, and Louis is terrified of him.

"Your friend is a real douche," Louis says to Mike one afternoon. He's aware that's rich, coming from him.

"Trevor is…complicated," Mike says, unwrapping his sandwich.

"Really? He seems pretty simple to me." It's another pity lunch in Louis's office, but Louis isn't too proud to take it.

Mike laughs, shakes his head. "It's hard to explain. We've had each other's backs since we were ten years old, you know?"

Louis doesn't know. Louis doesn't have the slightest idea. He hadn't been good at making friends at that age, and never became any better at it.

The only thing that soothes the burn of Trevor's presence is how much it seems to annoy Harvey as well. Harvey rolls his eyes a lot more these days, even more than before if such a thing can be imagined. He changes the subject quickly if anyone tries to bring up Trevor, which they usually do as a form of complaint. Louis saves his own comment on Trevor for a special occasion, after Harvey has openly denigrated him in front of a client and then refused to let him borrow Mike to do some legitimate research that would benefit a very important case for the firm.

"Get Gregory to do it. I need Mike to do something for me. He's basically useless for multitasking today, because he's hungover after a night out with" (insert eye-roll) "Trevor."

"You're jealous of Trevor," Louis accuses. "He takes up Mike's attention, and you're jealous." Substitute Trevor with Mike and Mike with Harvey, and Louis would know the exact same jealousy.

Harvey rolls his eyes again. The thought is too preposterous to merit a verbal response.

And later, watching Mike and Trevor make plans to go to a bar and inviting Harvey to join them, watching Harvey laugh at them derisively and refuse, Louis realises the truth is even crazier.

"You like Trevor," Louis accuses.

"I could sue you for slander," Harvey says lightly.

The universe is entirely too unfair. Louis has heard the half-murmured rumours of drug cartels and backroom deals and bodily harm, rumours that Mike once shipped Trevor off to god-knows-where on Harvey's command, something about a baseball bat. Louis knows Harvey thinks Trevor is a fool not worth even his disdain. And yet, despite himself, Harvey likes him. Harvey can like Trevor, but he can't like Louis.

Louis is so peeved that he forgets to be intimated by Trevor the next time he pushes the mail cart around, sees Louis's empty mail tray and asks something completely inane like "Nothing to send out?"

"Obviously not, genius. If there's nothing in the outgoing tray, then there's nothing outgoing. Now why don't you fuck off back to your cave, you basement-dwelling troll?"

Louis isn't sure what reaction he should have expected, but he knows he wasn't expecting Trevor to bray a laugh and attempt to high five him.

He looks at Trevor's upraised hand. "…What. No."

"No, dude, that one deserves a high five. Mike said you're funny."

And then he's walking toward Louis's desk. No one calls Louis 'dude.' He's walking toward Louis's desk, and then he's reaching across to grab Louis's hand and making him slap his palm in a forced high five. Who the hell even does that?

"Hey, do you have plans tonight? You should come out to the club with us. Harvey is too cool or something" (and he rolls his eyes when he says Harvey's name, an exact replica of Harvey's expression, and Mike has a type, or maybe Louis does) "but it'll be fun. Have you ever seen Mike drunk? It's hilarious."

"I don't—"

"We'll see you at seven," Trevor says, and then he's back out the door and whistling as he pushes his cart down the corridor.

Well fuck.

-end.

Endnote with spoilers for the finale, if you still haven't seen it for some reason: When Trevor said in 1x12 that he got a job in a law firm mailroom, I immediately thought he meant at Pearson Hardman. I'm not convinced that the cliffhanger ending really means he'll tell Jessica that Mike is a fake lawyer, so my mind has imagined a hilarious near-future in which Trevor just hangs around the office all day annoying everyone. Gregory hates Trevor, because how can he be so chummy with the partners' favourite associate and how can The Harvey Specter know his name, he works in the mailroom. And all the associates are kind of intimidated by him, because they can pretend to be cutthroat and ruthless all they want, but Trevor has no qualms actually taking a baseball bat to someone. And Trevor's Trevor, so it doesn't take him long to figure out how to use his position to find out things and blackmail people, sometimes for Harvey and sometimes against him. Ugh, my fantasy will get jossed next season but I don't even care right now. Trevor really amuses me.