Title: All The 'Best Deceptions' and 'Clever Cover Story'
Author: Secret Agent Girl (SAG)
'Ship: You ask this… why?
Spoilers/Timeline: Pre-Phase One, Post-The Getaway, AU
A/N: Title comes from a Dashboard Confessional song… and I love them so. This was something that just sort of… jumped out at me. So what the hell right?! Time to go back to the days where the UST was at its most heightened level. Ahh gotta love it. As Always, please review!
Ch. 1
He was going insane. Sitting there everyday writing report after report, countermission after countermission was driving him stir crazy. If he didn't do something soon, he knew he'd regret it.
Michael Vaughn liked to consider himself a reasonable person. A man who didn't make immoral mistakes, at least not consciously. He was by all means a good, moral, upstanding man. He talked to his mother at least once a week, saw her once every other at bare minimum, dressed appropriately for his government job, didn't smoke or participate in the consumption of illegal substances, didn't drink heavily. He tried to attend Sunday services whenever he could and visited his father's grave every Sunday, provided he was in the country, to procure that it was being well kept. All and all he found himself to be a person that he liked.
However, there was one thing, one particular thing that he despised about himself. One thing that was slowly driving him over the edge of sanity, and that was the fact that he did not have control over his emotions, at least not anymore.
Once upon a time he had been quite content with his emotions. He had a perfectly nice girlfriend—granted, life could at times, be a bit dull and predictable with her, but there was nothing considerably wrong. They had a perfectly normal relationship and after a courtship of several years, he was seriously considering the possibility of committing to marriage, in part to shut his mother up. However, that all changed with the addition of one person in his life.
She had entered his world, a whirlwind of swollen teeth, bright red hair and a fiery temper and after a few short meetings with her, Michael Vaughn knew that she was going to give him hell. (He often wondered if that was the only reason she had been placed on this earth in the first place.)
He told himself over and over again to breathe during their short conversations, resorting in long hours at the ice rink to vent his frustrations on an unsuspecting hockey puck. After the first few meetings with her, he decided that he hated her. And while he had to constantly remind himself that she had recently been through a lot and was probably experiencing large amounts of depression in her solitude, he still resolved that he hated her.
And then she had called him that night. The night that her father had stood her up for dinner and for the first time Michael Vaughn came to realize that Sydney Bristow was simply a scared, lost little girl who was forced into a life she most certainly did nothing to deserve and he found himself falling in love with her.
At first he tried to fight it. Telling himself that he was being simply ridiculous, he could not possibly be in love with Sydney. He was in love with Alice. But after a while, even Alice began to notice the changes in him.
"Michael." She had stood before him, a serious look across her face and her arms folded neatly across her chest as she stared at him, still in his coat, having just returned from walking out on her in the middle of dinner for the third time in as many days, to answer a page.
"Michael. You're a good man. You're loyal and moral and in the three years that we've been together we've never had any major problems. But now, now you're heart is just not in it."
Had it been a month before, he would have fought against her accusations, would have done everything he could to stop her from taking the suitcase that stood by her feet and walking out his front door, but now, unable to lie to himself anymore, he could only apologize.
"It's ok Michael. I know you didn't set out to betray me. And before you say it," she held up her hand to stop his protests. "I'm not accusing you of anything.
"I know that you would never consciously betray me. But these last few weeks, something has taken you from me. Whether it's just this new part of your job or someone else, you're just not here anymore.
"So I'm going to go, just promise me something Michael. That if it is someone else, don't just sit there and let her pass you by. Whatever it takes, go for it because you'll hate yourself if you never find out if she's the one. So just, don't sit on you ass doing nothing, ok Michael?"
And now he was sitting at his desk, over a year later, having to had just relive almost that exact same conversation (this one with a touch more anger and a few curses thrown in) last night when Alice had ended it for the second time and still he hadn't fulfilled his promise and it was driving him crazy.
"'Countermissions 'R' Us'." Vaughn straightened up from his crouched over position at his desk to see Weiss standing at his door, a clear plastic casing surrounding a crumpled up paper bag in his hands. "Man, do you look like hell."
"Thanks." Vaughn replied as he ran his fingers through his hair for what seemed like the millionth time that day.
"What happened? Girlfriend giving you a hard time?"
"Actually, Alice left last night."
"I wasn't talking about the blond that you've been pretending you're in love with. I was talking about the brunette. You know the one who sends you cryptic messages through the trash disguised in a paper bag." Weiss smirked as he tossed the paper bag on Vaughn's desk.
"Eric…"
"Come on man. You know it, I know it and after France, Sydney knows it too. Why you were even with Alice again was beyond me. And don't use the 'familiarity, I was lonely' excuse with me. We both know after Noah Hicks and Sydney went to Arkhangelsk you sought Alice out at that party."
Vaughn sighed as he leaned back in his chair, pulling the bag out of the plastic cover and flattening it out. "I'm going crazy man."
"So do something about it." Weiss stated as he turned and left Vaughn's office.
He knew Weiss was right, as much as he hated to admit it. What he hated most was that he knew that he had to do something. Staring down at the crumbled paper bag he decided, that once and for all, he was going to rid his conscious of this plague.
He was going to tell her exactly how he felt.
He was going to act on it, really act on it.
And he was going to do so today.
Picking up the phone, he dialed the numbers ingrained into his mind and waited to hear the voice on the other end.
"Hello?"
"Joey's Pizza?"