As wonderful and creative as many the "Marvey" Suits fics are...

I like Mike w/Rachel and Harvey with, well, anything in a skirt (except Rachel, that is.)

Set somewhere between EP202/The Choice and EP205/Break Point.

I do not own Suits, nor Simply Irresistible. Also, this is my first fan fic so - be gentle.

Mike never seemed to get out of Pearson Hardman before ten o'clock at night. Tonight, even after double-checking to see if either Harvey or Louis had left anything for him, he had been able to walk out the door at 9:00. It had been strange because the powers-that-be always seemed to load the associates with work on Thursday knowing that their output was likely to fade on Friday.

After the bike ride home he'd settled on the couch with a beer, some left-over Chinese food of indeterminate age and the television to keep him company. He soon realized that there wasn't much of anything on TV Thursday nights if your budgetary choices didn't allow you to have cable and finally came to the extraordinary decision to go to bed. At 11:30. On a week night.

He was worried that he might not be able to fall asleep. Sometimes if he wasn't exhausted (or high) he couldn't turn his brain off and had trouble falling asleep, but tonight wasn't going to be one of those nights. He shut his eyes and was quickly resting in the arms of Morpheus. The bottle of Ambien would stay in the nightstand drawer tonight.

Mike was drifting in the ether. It felt wonderful - a near blissful sense a contentment enveloped him. Harvey faded away. Louis dissolved into nothingness. Time had no relevance. His only awareness was of restful calm. Yet somewhere - over near the edges of infinity - a shift was occurring. Music drifted in, breaching the pleasant, utter stillness. The subtle hum transformed into a driving beat as it came nearer and overtook his awareness, and then Mike was onstage, replacing Robert Palmer, in front of a bevy of beautiful women in their tri-color, barely-there mini-dresses...

"How can it be permissible? She'd compromise my principles." He clutched the microphone then leaned forward and fist-pumped to emphasize, "Yeah, yeah."

"That kind of love is mythical. She's anything but typical." He looked down at himself from above and realized he should thank Harvey for making him upgrade his suits. Man, he looked awesome. Not as good as Harvey, but definitely better than Mr. Palmer. (Well, Bob was dead after all.)

"She's a craze you'd endorse, she's a powerful force. You're obliged to conform when there's no other course. She used to look good to me, but now I find her..." Mike glanced back at the chorus line and finally noticed - all of the women in those skin-tight nylon dresses looked like Her. Like...

"Simply irresistible..."

...Rachel.

Mike came awake with a jerk. His phone was somewhere close blaring the digital sample he'd attached to her phone number.

"...Simply irresistible."

Find it! God, had he overslept again? Harvey was going to kill him! What the hell time was it? Mike rifled through the sheets and ran his hand under the pillows with an urgency that was at odds with his not-quite-awake state of mind.

Find it! He sat straight up and ran a hand through his hair while looking around the bedroom in frustration.

There! On the floor to his right he noticed a glow. He threw his torso over the edge of the bed with enough force that he slid completely off, managing to smack his knee on the nightstand on the way down.

Answer it! Catch it before it goes to voice mail!

Mike sat up with his back against the side of the bed and looked at the phone. (2:56am! What the hell?) He pressed the button to accept the call. Raising the phone to his ear with one hand while rubbing his throbbing knee with the other he answered, "Hello!" with more force than was warranted. "Rachel?" he questioned a little less forcefully.

"Of course it's Rachel, silly. You awake, Mike?" It took just those few words to know that she was drunk. She was closer to tipsy than smashed, but she was drunk nonetheless.

"Yeah. Yeah, sure. What's up?" Mike leaned his head back until it touched the top of the mattress and willed himself to calm down.

"I thought I should call you and give you an update on how well your sales pitch worked," Rachel said in an upbeat tone, but, simmering just below the happy surface he could detect an edge that gave him a distinct sense of unease.

"Well, I finally got the nerve to post it last Saturday night. That was kind of pathetic, huh? Posting your profile to a dating website on Saturday night? How obvious!" Rachel paused, "Well, either the blurb you wrote was good or maybe it was the picture Donna picked..."

Oh God, she was punishing him for breaking off with her.

There had been a few stolen kisses at work before he finally worked the courage up to ask her out a couple of weeks ago. The date had been fantastic, everything he had dreamed of since Rachel had given him his orientation on his first day at the firm. Well, maybe not everything. He had been a perfect gentleman and she was home (alone) by 10pm. But it had all come to nothing when Harvey had told Mike he would have to choose between working at Pearson Hardman and being honest with Rachel. Mike had chosen Pearson Hardman and he had shut Rachel down hard with a "relationships at work don't work" line which she hadn't even pretended to believe. Probably because he hadn't believed it either.

"Your picture was gorgeous." It slipped out before he could stop it. He rolled his eyes and let his head fall back again before raising his free hand to rub his eyes.

"Huh? How do you know..."

"Come on Rachel, have you ever taken a bad picture?" he covered, "You friended me on Facebook, remember?" She didn't need to know that he had also signed up at the match-making website just to see if she would post her profile. It had come as a blow last Sunday afternoon when his very carefully crafted list of interests and "likes" had brought up Rachel's smiling face and profile as a possible match.

"Well, I never posted my middle school class pictures. Braces AND glasses in sixth grade."

"I'm sure you totally rocked it." Oh man, too much. Way too much.

She paused again, "Yeah, whatever." The edge was back, "Good news, though, I had 50 guys 'interested' by Tuesday night. I didn't think that was too bad, huh?"

It wasn't "too bad," it was horrible, but when she paused this time he had the restraint to say nothing. He realized he was just supposed to shut up and take it.

"My only problem was I just didn't know how to choose from so many paragons of manly perfection," she ended with a brittle laugh.

Yep, just shut up and take it. She deserved at least that much from him.

"See, I didn't know what I wanted so I decided to just cut out what I didn't want! Get it? So I blocked ALL the blonds. And the skinny guys? Outta' here! Blue eyes need not apply. And after that, I only had seven to choose from and I narrowed it down to either Steve Benson, an 'entrepreneur' or Jim Drugan, an investment banker over at Goldman Sachs. So I said to myself, 'An entrepreneur? Doesn't that just mean he doesn't have a steady job?' and I decided on Jim. Oh, I mean, James Allan 'You-can-call-me-Jim' Drugan. He's a Yalie, because I'm so sick of Harvard Men, ya' know? Did I mention, Jim was an All-Ivy-League offensive lineman?" She drew a long breath, "Yeah I picked a football player. A stupid football player who's idea of a good time was taking me to a lousy restaurant and then trying to see how much alcohol he could pore down my throat. Dumb jock. Idiot." She paused, "Did you ever play football, Mike? Are you a dumb jock, too?"

"Well, no. I never played foo..."

She cut him off, "Yeah, I didn't really think so. You've probably never been dumb, either, huh?"

Truth be told, he was feeling pretty damn clueless at the this very moment.

"I was Captain of the Chess Team and a Mathlete," he offered. When she didn't respond he continued, "I mean, I didn't play - but I know football. That's how I got Tom Keller to sign with the firm. I was the fifth best Fantasy Football team owner in the nation last year."

"Fantasy football? Fantasy. Football. Do you fantasize about football, Mike? I mean, really, let's think this over: After the scintillating 3 1/2 hours I've just spent in the company of," she dropped her voice to mock her recent escort's baritone, "'James Drugan former Yale University offensive lineman,'" before continuing, "I should be the one fantasizing, shouldn't I?"

Rachel sighed. "I should be, but I'm not. I came home, got undressed, took a shower and in all that time Jim Drugan didn't cross my mind once. Do you know what I've spent the last 45 minutes thinking about - one might even say, 'fantasizing,' about?" Her voice had been dropping in volume and had assumed the most erotic, breathy quality. Mike was mesmerized when she finally whispered, "Can you guess, Mike?"

"Uh-h-h, Rachel, I..."

She had paused, but she wasn't really listening, she verbally charged forward and cut him off again, "I've been, fantasizing..." (there was an unbelievably sexy rush of breath that wrapped around the word and filled it with desire) "...about a long, lean, blue-eyed... mathlete. I was thinking about how, when I kissed him once, his mouth had just the tiniest hint of the taste of Red Bull, but, I had to run my tongue all the way around his lips to actually recognize it." She paused again. There was a tiny catch, in her voice when she continued, "Do you think he thinks about me, Mike? My mathlete? Does he ever think about me?"

"Rachel, he doesn't think of anything else."

Much thanks to my beta, God of Laundry Baskets, for her suggetions and guidance.

Also thanks to my muse PhoenixDivine for turning me on to fan fiction and giving me lots of encouragement.