[fic] Suits: sting like a bee 1/?
Title: Sting Like a Bee
Author: happysquid08
Fandom: Suits
Pairing: Mike/Harvey
Rated: T for now, will go up later
Disclaimer: oh, the legality. If I claimed this as my own, Harvey would track me down and sue me himself, I'm sure.
Summary: Boxer AU. Harvey is doing his road work when he comes across some weedy guy getting mugged.
WIP: 1/?
---
Harvey is hitting the sandbag again.
He's been hitting it for a while now.
He slams a hook into the side with his entire body behind it, wrenching the entire 270 pounds into the air. He feels the twist of the hit flow from his shoulders down his spine all the way to his hips. Then he pounds through with his right straight, forcing the sandbag to hit the wall.
Harvey retracts his thrown fist immediately, his body smoothly locking into position for another shot. His eyes follow the ascent of the bag as if it was in slow motion, his gaze penetrating and intense.
As the sandbag swings back towards him, he slips off to the side and throws in some sharp jabs that jerk it away. He watches the reverberations of his jabs sink in, and he thinks of all the men who've jerked back their heads just like that. Flinching, caving in their chests, falling back while their rigid feet and locked knees stick out. Then Harvey steps in and delivers the killing stroke with his uppercut and -
His punch cuts through into crumbling sand.
The bag collapses.
Harvey looks down at the sand spilling out onto the immaculate gym floor.
"Damn," he said under his breath. "Jessica's going to kill me."
"Ooh, someone's in trouble," says a snarky, familiar voice right behind him. Harvey knows exactly who it is - Donna always knows exactly what to say to make him feel better.
Harvey turns to give her an unfazed look. He throws in a touch of bored and a pinch of arrogance just to add some flavor. "Gonna tell mommy?"
She rolls her eyes and jabs a thumb at the front exit. "Go do your road work. I'll take care of this."
"Why, Donna, I don't know what I would ever do without you." Harvey pulls off his gloves one by one.
"Collapse into a sea of uncertainty and namelessly perish in your own confusion." Donna crouches down and starts brushing the sand together into a pile.
Harvey glances over, smirking. Donna is completely straight-faced.
"Glad you're in my corner."
Harvey throws his gloves onto the nearest bench and jogs out the door.
---
Mike is happily smoking pot in the alleyway next to the drugstore. It happens every once in a while that everything gets to be too much. The endless, listless days of sitting on Trevor's couch and flipping through the pages of celebrity magazines and scientific journals and television channels and law textbooks. It starts to drill an agonizing hole in
Mike's head, so agonizing that at the end of the month, he crumbles every single time and takes the goddamn plastic bag.
Every single time, Trevor just smirks and gives him a lighter to go along with it.
Mike doesn't ever stray far from their shared apartment, and tonight is no different. He's just down the street and over a block, right off the clock from his job behind the convenience store's counter.
You know, sell some orange juice and some dollar movies, take a lunch break, smoke some pot in the adjacent alleyway. Regular end-of-the-shift type thing.
He's conducting the singing bricks across from him with his finger when hears this odd clanging sound. He's a little irked because it's not on time; it's too slow to keep up with the melody. Muttering irately about french horns, he turns and sternly boxes out the beat in four so it can catch up.
But then the irregular beat stops, and Mike sees that the french horn is not actually a french horn. It's something like a lumpy mountain, and the hand that grabs at Mike's t-shirt collar is sort of like a fishing hook, the way it catches Mike and yanks him around.
Mike wobbles on unstable legs as he's pulled forward. He tries to protest against it, because he was still in the middle of a performance with the brick symphony and he's not done here yet for some reason. His hand is holding something, that's why he isn't done. Maybe a note? He knows it's on fire from the way a burning heat dully cuts into his finger. Shit, he thinks, the note reminding me is on fire. Maybe I should douse it with like my mouth or something.
Mike does after swatting the fishing line away, and he's surprised to find the familiar taste of weed curling up through his nostrils and down his throat.
"Haa," he breathes out. He likes it. A lot.
Then he's seeing stars in the corners of his eyes, and Mike is suddenly looking at a very nice pair of shoes. They're smiling at him. The smiles aren't so nice after Mike really looks at them and starts asking them questions. Mike is suddenly sad; they always get annoyed at him when he asks questions. Maybe Mike should stop asking questions.
Then Mike is clutching at his stomach; when did the fireworks go off and why did the mayor decide that Mike's stomach was the place to do it?
Mike stifles a sob.
He wishes he could see the pretty lights, but his eyes are squeezed shut. He can hear them explode one after another, feel them on his shoulder, his forehead, his knee.
The fireworks won't stop.
---
Harvey is on his usual route, but he comes up to a corner where they're doing construction and he has to turn left instead of right. Harvey looks to the right, where he sees tall, shiny buildings. Corporate. Then he looks to the left, where he sees short, dirty buildings. Ghetto. Harvey shrugs and runs off to the left and down the sidewalk. It's not like he didn't grow up in a bad neighborhood; he can deal with it.
He's running past the 7 Eleven when he hears a very familiar sound.
It's the sound of a deep hit thudding into someone's chest.
The very sound initiates an adrenaline high. Harvey's body automatically springs into defensive mode, his shoulders loosening, his arms coming up, and his knees bending into stance. His mind is a frozen blank filled with a thousand running thoughts, his searching eyes meandering around him for the attacker.
More sounds, thud after thud after thud, slowly draw Harvey's eyes to the dimly lit alleyway. He can see the silhouette of a man with his head inclined, kicking. Harvey looks down to see the body of some poor guy convulsing in pain.
There's not really a question of what's going to happen next.
Harvey steps forward silently, his feet ghosting over the blacktop. He's just in range when the attacker spots him.
It's more than enough. Nobody has ever beat Harvey Specter in a barefisted street fight, and Harvey doesn't think that this is the time for anomalies. Harvey catches him with a hook on the jaw and he's down. The guy takes one more look at Harvey and one more shaky breath before he's hastily getting to his feet and shoddily scurrying down the alleyway.
Which leaves Harvey alone with the guy on the ground.
Harvey eyes him apprehensively. Hipster clothes, weed in hand, and bleeding all over the ground. A real winner.
What the hell is Harvey going to to with him?
---
Mike winces and feels at his head, which currently hurts like a mofo. He winces again at the pain in his arm. He opens his eyes to a bright overhead light - a bad call on his part - and tries to sit up. The pain is sort of amazing, the way that it manages to be everywhere and affect everything. He flops back down, and even that is painful. He can taste copper in his mouth.
From what he's seen, Mike is in a small room with no windows and one closed door. And he's lying on an uncomfortable bed with a mass of aches and pains. He has no idea where he is, and only a vague idea of how he got hurt.
Some indistinct, foggy memories flash to mind - bricks, familiar bricks from the alleyway, a pair of brown shoes, the feeling of fireworks. Mike frowns minutely. He pieces that together pretty quickly. He was smoking pot again, some guy came up to him, maybe after he fell down, and started kicking the shit out of him. Mike gets that. Some guys are just douches.
But what Mike doesn't get is how he got from lying in an alley to here on this bed.
He mulls over every piece of data he has stored in his brain, but nothing else comes to him. He can't remember; he was probably blacked out by the time someone moved him.
But who would that someone be?
Mike's thoughts are interrupted by the abrupt sound of the door swinging open on its creaky hinges.
Confident footsteps walk through.
"You awake yet, kid?" a voice asks. Well, Mike thinks, it wasn't really asking. It was demanding.
He cracks an eye open to see his caretaker. There, standing across the tiny room, is a man. Mike's eyes scan him, taking in every detail. Almost disgustingly good-looking, slicked back hair, arrogant look, two moles, mid to late twenties, burgundy t-shirt with a sweat-stain dripping past the collar, a white towel hanging around his neck, navy sweatpants, running shoes, and tape wrapping around his hands and fingers.
Mike didn't have to be a genius to place this guy as a boxer.
He comes closer to the side of the bed. "Hey, you awake?"
Mike blinks. After a moment of working his sore mouth, he grunts out, "Mwuh."
"I'll take that as a yes." Now there's a hand on Mike's shoulder, another on his chest, and they both conspire to force him to sit upright.
Mike swerves from one side to the other, but the hands are steady and keep him from falling over. Mike's vision clears as his eyes focus on the hand on his chest. Five firm fingers are splayed out on his chest, and every one of them is strong and callused. He swallows; it feels awful.
"My name is Harvey. You're in my boxing gym, because I dragged your beaten ass over here after finding you in some dark alleyway for some rudimentary medical attention." Harvey pauses. Mike uses the time to focus on Harvey's mouth. "You feeling all right, kid?"
Mike snorts. "Yeah, best I've felt all day." His voice comes out hoarse, and it feels like needles are piercing through his trachea. He shifts uncomfortably as he gets his bearings. Harvey takes the hint and lifts his hands away; Mike stays sitting up on his own.
A stab of pain in his head and Mike drops his face into his hand. "Shit, that hurts." He regrets the outburst while the words are still on their way out, that's how painful it is to talk.
Harvey seems to pick up on this. "Do you want water?"
Mike's head snaps up. He nods furtively.
"And maybe some pain meds to go with that?"
Mike nods again.
"Any allergies I should know about?"
This time Mike shakes his head.
"Good. I'll be back."
The door shuts behind him, leaving Mike to laugh hysterically - with a great deal of agonizing pain as a result - at the terrible Arnold impression he's been left with.
---
End of 1/?
tbc: Part 2
---
~happysquid
A/N: WHY ARE THE FAKE CUTS NOT WORKING RAAAAAAAAR. Hope you liked it; this is sort of short and if it's not well-received I probably won't work that much more on it.
Author: happysquid08
Fandom: Suits
Pairing: Mike/Harvey
Rated: T for now, will go up later
Disclaimer: oh, the legality. If I claimed this as my own, Harvey would track me down and sue me himself, I'm sure.
Summary: Boxer AU. Harvey is doing his road work when he comes across some weedy guy getting mugged.
WIP: 1/?
---
Harvey is hitting the sandbag again.
He's been hitting it for a while now.
He slams a hook into the side with his entire body behind it, wrenching the entire 270 pounds into the air. He feels the twist of the hit flow from his shoulders down his spine all the way to his hips. Then he pounds through with his right straight, forcing the sandbag to hit the wall.
Harvey retracts his thrown fist immediately, his body smoothly locking into position for another shot. His eyes follow the ascent of the bag as if it was in slow motion, his gaze penetrating and intense.
As the sandbag swings back towards him, he slips off to the side and throws in some sharp jabs that jerk it away. He watches the reverberations of his jabs sink in, and he thinks of all the men who've jerked back their heads just like that. Flinching, caving in their chests, falling back while their rigid feet and locked knees stick out. Then Harvey steps in and delivers the killing stroke with his uppercut and -
His punch cuts through into crumbling sand.
The bag collapses.
Harvey looks down at the sand spilling out onto the immaculate gym floor.
"Damn," he said under his breath. "Jessica's going to kill me."
"Ooh, someone's in trouble," says a snarky, familiar voice right behind him. Harvey knows exactly who it is - Donna always knows exactly what to say to make him feel better.
Harvey turns to give her an unfazed look. He throws in a touch of bored and a pinch of arrogance just to add some flavor. "Gonna tell mommy?"
She rolls her eyes and jabs a thumb at the front exit. "Go do your road work. I'll take care of this."
"Why, Donna, I don't know what I would ever do without you." Harvey pulls off his gloves one by one.
"Collapse into a sea of uncertainty and namelessly perish in your own confusion." Donna crouches down and starts brushing the sand together into a pile.
Harvey glances over, smirking. Donna is completely straight-faced.
"Glad you're in my corner."
Harvey throws his gloves onto the nearest bench and jogs out the door.
---
Mike is happily smoking pot in the alleyway next to the drugstore. It happens every once in a while that everything gets to be too much. The endless, listless days of sitting on Trevor's couch and flipping through the pages of celebrity magazines and scientific journals and television channels and law textbooks. It starts to drill an agonizing hole in
Mike's head, so agonizing that at the end of the month, he crumbles every single time and takes the goddamn plastic bag.
Every single time, Trevor just smirks and gives him a lighter to go along with it.
Mike doesn't ever stray far from their shared apartment, and tonight is no different. He's just down the street and over a block, right off the clock from his job behind the convenience store's counter.
You know, sell some orange juice and some dollar movies, take a lunch break, smoke some pot in the adjacent alleyway. Regular end-of-the-shift type thing.
He's conducting the singing bricks across from him with his finger when hears this odd clanging sound. He's a little irked because it's not on time; it's too slow to keep up with the melody. Muttering irately about french horns, he turns and sternly boxes out the beat in four so it can catch up.
But then the irregular beat stops, and Mike sees that the french horn is not actually a french horn. It's something like a lumpy mountain, and the hand that grabs at Mike's t-shirt collar is sort of like a fishing hook, the way it catches Mike and yanks him around.
Mike wobbles on unstable legs as he's pulled forward. He tries to protest against it, because he was still in the middle of a performance with the brick symphony and he's not done here yet for some reason. His hand is holding something, that's why he isn't done. Maybe a note? He knows it's on fire from the way a burning heat dully cuts into his finger. Shit, he thinks, the note reminding me is on fire. Maybe I should douse it with like my mouth or something.
Mike does after swatting the fishing line away, and he's surprised to find the familiar taste of weed curling up through his nostrils and down his throat.
"Haa," he breathes out. He likes it. A lot.
Then he's seeing stars in the corners of his eyes, and Mike is suddenly looking at a very nice pair of shoes. They're smiling at him. The smiles aren't so nice after Mike really looks at them and starts asking them questions. Mike is suddenly sad; they always get annoyed at him when he asks questions. Maybe Mike should stop asking questions.
Then Mike is clutching at his stomach; when did the fireworks go off and why did the mayor decide that Mike's stomach was the place to do it?
Mike stifles a sob.
He wishes he could see the pretty lights, but his eyes are squeezed shut. He can hear them explode one after another, feel them on his shoulder, his forehead, his knee.
The fireworks won't stop.
---
Harvey is on his usual route, but he comes up to a corner where they're doing construction and he has to turn left instead of right. Harvey looks to the right, where he sees tall, shiny buildings. Corporate. Then he looks to the left, where he sees short, dirty buildings. Ghetto. Harvey shrugs and runs off to the left and down the sidewalk. It's not like he didn't grow up in a bad neighborhood; he can deal with it.
He's running past the 7 Eleven when he hears a very familiar sound.
It's the sound of a deep hit thudding into someone's chest.
The very sound initiates an adrenaline high. Harvey's body automatically springs into defensive mode, his shoulders loosening, his arms coming up, and his knees bending into stance. His mind is a frozen blank filled with a thousand running thoughts, his searching eyes meandering around him for the attacker.
More sounds, thud after thud after thud, slowly draw Harvey's eyes to the dimly lit alleyway. He can see the silhouette of a man with his head inclined, kicking. Harvey looks down to see the body of some poor guy convulsing in pain.
There's not really a question of what's going to happen next.
Harvey steps forward silently, his feet ghosting over the blacktop. He's just in range when the attacker spots him.
It's more than enough. Nobody has ever beat Harvey Specter in a barefisted street fight, and Harvey doesn't think that this is the time for anomalies. Harvey catches him with a hook on the jaw and he's down. The guy takes one more look at Harvey and one more shaky breath before he's hastily getting to his feet and shoddily scurrying down the alleyway.
Which leaves Harvey alone with the guy on the ground.
Harvey eyes him apprehensively. Hipster clothes, weed in hand, and bleeding all over the ground. A real winner.
What the hell is Harvey going to to with him?
---
Mike winces and feels at his head, which currently hurts like a mofo. He winces again at the pain in his arm. He opens his eyes to a bright overhead light - a bad call on his part - and tries to sit up. The pain is sort of amazing, the way that it manages to be everywhere and affect everything. He flops back down, and even that is painful. He can taste copper in his mouth.
From what he's seen, Mike is in a small room with no windows and one closed door. And he's lying on an uncomfortable bed with a mass of aches and pains. He has no idea where he is, and only a vague idea of how he got hurt.
Some indistinct, foggy memories flash to mind - bricks, familiar bricks from the alleyway, a pair of brown shoes, the feeling of fireworks. Mike frowns minutely. He pieces that together pretty quickly. He was smoking pot again, some guy came up to him, maybe after he fell down, and started kicking the shit out of him. Mike gets that. Some guys are just douches.
But what Mike doesn't get is how he got from lying in an alley to here on this bed.
He mulls over every piece of data he has stored in his brain, but nothing else comes to him. He can't remember; he was probably blacked out by the time someone moved him.
But who would that someone be?
Mike's thoughts are interrupted by the abrupt sound of the door swinging open on its creaky hinges.
Confident footsteps walk through.
"You awake yet, kid?" a voice asks. Well, Mike thinks, it wasn't really asking. It was demanding.
He cracks an eye open to see his caretaker. There, standing across the tiny room, is a man. Mike's eyes scan him, taking in every detail. Almost disgustingly good-looking, slicked back hair, arrogant look, two moles, mid to late twenties, burgundy t-shirt with a sweat-stain dripping past the collar, a white towel hanging around his neck, navy sweatpants, running shoes, and tape wrapping around his hands and fingers.
Mike didn't have to be a genius to place this guy as a boxer.
He comes closer to the side of the bed. "Hey, you awake?"
Mike blinks. After a moment of working his sore mouth, he grunts out, "Mwuh."
"I'll take that as a yes." Now there's a hand on Mike's shoulder, another on his chest, and they both conspire to force him to sit upright.
Mike swerves from one side to the other, but the hands are steady and keep him from falling over. Mike's vision clears as his eyes focus on the hand on his chest. Five firm fingers are splayed out on his chest, and every one of them is strong and callused. He swallows; it feels awful.
"My name is Harvey. You're in my boxing gym, because I dragged your beaten ass over here after finding you in some dark alleyway for some rudimentary medical attention." Harvey pauses. Mike uses the time to focus on Harvey's mouth. "You feeling all right, kid?"
Mike snorts. "Yeah, best I've felt all day." His voice comes out hoarse, and it feels like needles are piercing through his trachea. He shifts uncomfortably as he gets his bearings. Harvey takes the hint and lifts his hands away; Mike stays sitting up on his own.
A stab of pain in his head and Mike drops his face into his hand. "Shit, that hurts." He regrets the outburst while the words are still on their way out, that's how painful it is to talk.
Harvey seems to pick up on this. "Do you want water?"
Mike's head snaps up. He nods furtively.
"And maybe some pain meds to go with that?"
Mike nods again.
"Any allergies I should know about?"
This time Mike shakes his head.
"Good. I'll be back."
The door shuts behind him, leaving Mike to laugh hysterically - with a great deal of agonizing pain as a result - at the terrible Arnold impression he's been left with.
---
End of 1/?
tbc: Part 2
---
~happysquid
A/N: WHY ARE THE FAKE CUTS NOT WORKING RAAAAAAAAR. Hope you liked it; this is sort of short and if it's not well-received I probably won't work that much more on it.