Work Text
Antagonist
Louis does not cower in the library– he would never cower. He does however make a strategic retreat to the back shelves on the third floor, where the fifth-graders won’t find him, where he can peruse the English language’s finest masterpieces in peace.He turns time and again to Shakespeare, reveling in the drama and the soliloquies.He finds himself sympathizing with the antagonists.Foils
Louis has always been fascinated by foils—characters written to match one another. Sometimes foils are utter opposites, but sometimes they’re nearly identical, and only the subtlest difference in character or position sets them forever at one another’s throats.Louis sees a kindred spirit in Harvey from the day they meet. They’re both sharp and hungry, young and dangerous. They both hurl barbs and taunts indiscriminately. Louis suspects they are both hiding something decent, something sorrowful, down in their core.They are so like each other– they love to win. And when Louis and Harvey join forces, they inevitably raze their competition.Meter
Shakespeare is known for writing in iambic pentameter, but in truth he only bestowed that honor on his noblest characters—the rest spoke in free verse, without any rhythm to drive their speech.Harvey does not constrain himself to iambic pentameter, would laugh at the idea. But there is undoubtedly a rhythm to his speech, giving each statement acoustic punch. His sentences are short and forceful and to-the-point, and in them Louis hears music of their own.Play on, he finds himself thinking. Play on.Asyndeton
Sometimes a speaker will omit a conjunction for the sake of flow or emphasis. Such an omission is termed “asyndeton.”Aloud, Louis only ever speaks of “Pearson Specter Litt,” yet he dares more in his fantasies. He dreams of “Specter Litt,” or perhaps “Specter-Litt,” or even “Litt Specter.” Never “Specter and Litt,” thank you very much. Their names will be as close as two names can be.Foreshadowing
“Don’t bother me, Louis.”“But I need a new perspective on this contract, or else I’m going to have to go back to my client and tell them that I failed.”“I’m sorry, did I give you the impression that I care?”Protagonist
Though Louis makes partner first, he knows it’s only because Harvey took the high road. He knows Jessica was rooting for Harvey. He knows partnership was Harvey’s to lose.Because Harvey is loved, Harvey is golden, Harvey rolls in dirt and comes up clean. And though Louis wins just as often, though he lies and schemes and lashes out only a little more often, he is left out in the cold, because Harvey is the chosen one, the hero of this story.Subtext
Louis has long since mastered Shakespearean obscenities. He knows everything about nothing, being possessed of a magnificent wit and a more than passing understanding of country matters. He is a cunning linguist, a prince of more than one sort of cat.He has not so thoroughly mastered the vulgar terms of his own day, and so he throws them into conversations entirely on accident, not noticing the sexual connotations until long afterwards. Those terms frequently take on a decidedly homoerotic slant. He chooses not to interpret those too carefully.Where Harvey uses innuendo– always on purpose, and often homoerotic– Louis invariably notices.Rising Action
Daniel and Jessica constantly pit Harvey and Louis against each other, and the similarities that make them brilliant allies spark the bitterest of rivalries. They swagger around the office in increasingly expensive suits, circling each other, spying on one another, playing each other with the moves and the cruelty they once reserved for opposing counsel.Reversal
They each strive to surpass the other, overturning the balance of power between them on a daily basis, occasionally overturning peace in the firm at large.Louis finds his previous affection for Harvey fading, hardening into a superiority complex, even as his therapist reminds him that superiority complexes are often joined to the reverse.Allusion
They weren’t always at war, Louis remembers. Surely they were friends once.Time and time again, Louis tries to cross the no-man’s land and meet Harvey on his own ground. He knows that, the same way he breathes ballet and Shakespeare, Harvey breathes sports and action flicks and slightly old music, and so Louis learns about those and throws in allusions and tries to speak the Harvey Specter language.Harvey’s appreciation inevitably sours to mocking.Cycle
Louis screws up. Harvey lashes out. Louis lashes out harder.On rare occasions, Harvey makes the first mistake, or lashes out in more dramatic fashion than Louis. On even rarer occasions, one or both of them will apologize or pretend to change.Then the story starts all over again.Soliloquy?
Louis monologues to his Dictaphone, alone in his office, yet he can’t help feeling Harvey’s presence like– well. Like a specter.It’s no doubt a trick of Louis’ active imagination, but he feels Harvey everywhere, sees his scowl, hears his judgements, always caustic or, worse, disappointed.The only other person who matters is Harvey. Louis only wins when he gets more than Harvey– more billable hours, more new clients, more praise from Jessica. Because he hates Harvey, he declaims for hours on his smug smile, his perfect hair, his infuriatingly wrinkle-free face. Because he hates Harvey, Louis defines his own life entirely in relation to him.Chekov’s Gun
When Harvey hurls him into the coffee table, Louis is half-shocked at the violence and half-shocked it took this long.Maybe Harvey didn’t really mean to set Louis off when he slept with Esther. On some level, Louis didn’t really mean to goad Harvey so far in response. But they’re drawing on years of study, years of memorizing all each other’s tells and fears, and so they each know where childhood insecurities have left cracks in the other’s otherwise formidable ego. They draw on all their knowledge and press where it hurts.Of course the explosion nearly destroys them.Polysyndeton
Where “asyndeton” means “unconnected,” “polysyndeton” means “having many connections.”They have the same anxiety and panic attacks, and they put on the same shows of heartlessness, and they hold the same fierce love for and loyalty to what’s theirs, and they both blunder through romances without finding anyone who will stay, and they both accomplish their professional dreams and go home to lonely apartments and wait for something more.Dream Sequence
Louis has never cared for dream sequences– they’re too blatant, and he’d rather learn of a character’s deep subconscious desires through their waking actions than through a convenient nighttime tell-all.Then the mudmare hits.“We’re the only name partners now, Louis. And I meant it when I said it– I want us to share things like this.”“I can’t tell you how happy this makes me.”He’s naked. In a room with Harvey. Also naked. And while Louis focuses on the part where they’re already in their separate tubs when he describes the scene to his therapist, his dream includes several visuals from earlier in the process.“You’re not going to do the other thing you told me you did in the mud, are you?” Harvey’s voice is soft, richer than the mud surrounding them, worth bathing in in its own right.“Harvey, I told you, that was a one-time thing. And believe me, you’re no Missy Dietler.”It’s true– Harvey is not Missy Dietler. Louis would never thus profane Harvey’s presence. Not without enthusiastic consent.Then Alex strolls in and exiles Louis, because only he can mud with Harvey, and Louis protests because Harvey’s always argued mudding was “weird for male friends.” Clearly, Louis should be Harvey’s first.“So Alex says, ‘But Harvey and I are more than just friends,’” Louis reports. “We’re best friends.”He’s edited that last line in the version he gives his therapist, but the truth is blatantly obvious regardless.Perhaps his waking actions have been screaming that truth for years.Recognition
He can’t possibly ignore it, not after he snaps at his therapist and blasts him with misaimed rage, rage that he truly feels at Harvey.Rage that turns to sobbing, because Harvey will never, ever see.Falling Action
Louis sees too clearly, now. And though he has approached every previous love with a blend of paranoia and hope and hyperactivity, he can’t summon anything but heartbreak for Harvey.He demands more of Harvey, demands to be treated as a friend and ally and an equal, yet he knows he’s never going to have what he desires.And even as Harvey does better, actually listening to his advice, and spending hours in his company without being held at gunpoint by Jessica, and laughing with him instead of at him for the first time in years, Louis’ heart falls.Irony
Louis doesn’t see until the bachelor party.He’s the only one remotely sober by the end– Mike’s enjoying his special night to the fullest, and Harvey’s drinking at a rate that’s surprisingly fast, even for him– and so he notices how Harvey’s smile keeps slipping whenever Mike looks away.“Hey–” he sits down beside Harvey at the end of the night– “Harvey, you okay?”“You have no goddamn idea,” he slurs, “what it’s like.”“What what’s like?”“Being in love with someone you can’t have.”“Ah.”“I mean– nobody else thinks like us. Nobody else wins like us.”“You and Mike are a formidable pair.”“We’re a pair, we . . . We match. Nobody else fits him like I fit him. And I hate all this caring and feeling, but I put up with it for him. I feel so goddamn much. For him.” He downs the rest of his shot and shakes his head, muttering, “You wouldn’t get it.”They’ve always been too alike for their own good.Resolution
Louis loves stories for their endings– in a Shakespearean comedy, the bad guys end up humiliated or imprisoned or dead, and the good guys end up happily married. It’s terribly predictable, and he appreciates the neatness.Real life offers no such resolution.Oxymoron
A Greek term for a contradictory phrase, literally meaning, “clever foolishness.”