round two prompt post - CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS
ROUND TWO IS NOW CLOSED TO PROMPTS. ANY PROMPT POSTED POSTED HERE FROM NOW ON WILL BE DELETED
New rounds will open at suits_meme Round Two now has an overflow post, all new fills should be posted there. Incomplete fills can still be posted here.
Round Two is officially closed. Round Three will open on Sunday. Feel free to continue posting fills.
IMPORTANT: ( Read more... )
New rounds will open at suits_meme Round Two now has an overflow post, all new fills should be posted there. Incomplete fills can still be posted here.
Round Two is officially closed. Round Three will open on Sunday. Feel free to continue posting fills.
IMPORTANT: ( Read more... )
A few clicks later his page on the alumni website comes up. A fuzzy feeling bubbles inside Mike. He almost asks Hardison to take a screencap, but that might be a little weird.
Alec hums approvingly. "Seems legit. But..." He resumes typing. The screen is filled with code scrolling faster than Mike can follow. Finally there's a table. The hacker types in Mike's name and clucks his tongue. "Yep, just as I thought. You're in their alumni database, but there's no record of you actually being a student at Harvard. So if someone from the outside tries to look you up, it's all okay. But if the school wanted to verify that..."
Mike sighs. "I'm screwed."
"I wouldn't say that." Alec slaps his back. "We just need to feed them your imaginary course records."
"You can do that?"
Hardison scoffs. "Puh-lease. I can make them think you're the heir of their founder, but that might be an overkill. We need to make you good, but not so good that people would remember you, right? That's a little tricky, so you'll have to tell me what I'm supposed to put in there."
Mike wants to hug him. Then he remembers that, unlike some people, Alec's not opposed to warm fuzzy feelings and displays of affection, so he does exactly that.
Then he looks at his watch. "Shit, I have to go. Harvey's gonna leave me here if I'm late. Same time tomorrow?"
***
They part ways near Pearson Hardman, where Hardison hails a cab and pulls Mike into a goodbye half-hug. Harvey's waiting in front of the office. "You're late," he says in greeting.
"No, I'm not! I'm thirteen minutes early."
Harvey just raises an eyebrow and asks: "Lunch date?"
Mike wishes he didn't feel the need to explain himself. "I wouldn't have to go on lunch dates, but my evenings are full thanks to you."
"As they should be," Harvey says calmly. Then he shakes his head and reaches for Mike's tie, which ended up a little twisted, probably due to all the hugging. "I didn't think you still have to be told to look presentable for clients."
"I know that," he mutters. "But seriously, I wouldn't mind leaving the office before ten once or twice. My old friend's in town and I barely have time to catch up with him."
"Considering your taste in friends, that may be a good thing."
Now that's just unfair. "Alec's not Trevor. He's not the kind to get in trouble. Well, at least not the kind to get me in trouble."
"I hope so. You manage to get in trouble perfectly well on your own. Now, are you finally ready to go?"
Mike nods and gets in the car.
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updates eagerly anticipated! and this is like the perfect timing for me, because i'm just coming off of a leverage binge and therefore craving fic, and your hardison voice is spot-on pitch-perfect beautiful. and, and, omg, hardison has his nana and mike has his gram! they have many points of ~bonding~
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It's so well written and perfectly characterized, thus far. I definitely wouldn't know that you hadn't written in these fandoms, if you hadn't told me yourself, and I CAN'T WAIT FOR MORE!!!!!
♥
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Fridays are not Mike's best days in general, and this one is shaping up to be particularly miserable from the start. The amount of work he has to do before lunch is daunting to say the least. Thankfully nobody bothers him at his cubicle, though that's probably because nobody can actually see him from behind the stacks of briefs he has to proof. He makes the last sweep with a highlighter at 11:52, hurriedly gathers Harvey's files in his hands and makes the trek to Donna's desk.
"Hi, Donna. Can you give these to Harvey?"
"You don't want to go in there by yourself? I think he's in a pretty good mood." Mike casts a glance towards Harvey's office. It doesn't look any more welcoming than it usually does. "Well, at least he's not in a bad mood," she adds.
"I kind of really have to go now," he says with an apologetic smile. "I'm running late."
"Another lunch date?"
He blinks but doesn't ask how she knows. She's Donna. "Yeah. I'm meeting a friend. I'll be back soon, though!"
He thinks he hears Donna mutter "So much for the good mood," but he's halfway down the hall before he thinks about asking what she meant.
***
When he gets to the cafe, Alec is already sitting at a table. Or rather lying on it.
"Sorry, I had a late night. Or morning," he says and flops his hand feebly. "Put some coffee in me and I'll be fine."
Mike brings him an actual coffee, but Hardison ruins it anyway by pouring a ton of sugar into it. At least he's more or less functioning after a few minutes.
"Okay, so. Let me tell you, there are a lot of fields to fill in their records. We have to decide what courses you took, in which groups, what marks you got... Want me to pull up some people so we have examples?"
Mike smiles slowly. "Oh, I can give you some names."
After that their productivity is pretty much shot to hell, because they spend the rest of his lunch break riffling through his co-workers' records. Mike is reluctantly impressed and a little disgusted by the fact that Louis got obnoxiously good grades in pretty much everything. As for Harvey, well. Not so much. Seeing the evidence that even Harvey isn't perfect brightens his day a little.
Rachel's marks are more or less what he expected them to be. Good, but nothing special. Apparently she really doesn't test very well, poor thing. He briefly contemplates causing some chaos in Kyle's records, but it seems like a recipe for disaster (even though Alec's all for it and not judging him in the least. It's such a nice feeling.)
Mike doesn't dare look up Jessica. He has a feeling that she would somehow know and not appreciate it.
He leaves Hardison with instructions to get some sleep and meet him there tomorrow. He walks back into the office in pretty good spirits, but of course that doesn't last very long.
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He's overcome with a sense of 'whyyyyyyy?'. All was going well when he left for lunch. He turns a puppy dog look on Donna, but it's useless. She just shakes her head, says "Should've gone in there." and walks away.
Kyle turns up by the door (which can't be on his way anywhere, unless he's going to jump out the window, in which case don't let Mike delay him) and doesn't even pretend not to enjoy his misery. Mike regrets not making him retroactively fail all his exams.
Well, there's just one thing to do. He rolls up his sleeves and gets to work.
***
When he finally gets out of the office at half past eleven, feeling brain dead and looking probably not much better, there's a man standing near his bike.
"Um," Mike says cleverly. "Can I help you?"
The man seems surprised that he's being talked to. (On second thought, talking to suspicious strangers at night might not be the usual practice.) He smiles amicably. "No, no. Don't worry about me."
Mike's worried rather about the possibility that the guy's waiting until he unlocks his bike to club him over the head and steal it. He looks like he could take Mike in a fight with unsettling ease. On the other hand, he probably could've broken the lock with his bare hands, so that would be a weird plan, and Mike can't even muster enough energy to contemplate his other options. He shrugs a little to himself, gets his bike and rides off into the night. Nobody brains him from behind, so he counts that as a win and forgets about the man.
At least until the next day.
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Love this story and can't wait for more.
P.s: I think you totally outted yourself as a Brit. 'Marks'?
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