00.
The first time DEA Special Agent Paige Arkin meets FBI Supervisory Special Agent Mike Warren, she punches him in the face and breaks his nose. When he looks up at her from his uncomfortable position on the Los Angeles FBI Field Office floor, she's grinning like a maniac, crying her mascara down her pretty face. Another agent escorts her out, but not before she throws out what can only be insult.
"горіти в пеклі, ублюдок."
Mike asks his Russian agent what it means and Niko laughs when he translates it.
"Ukrainian for 'burn in hell, motherfucker.'"
He decides that he likes her fire.
02.
She's supposed to be benched for the next six weeks without pay for her inappropriate actions at the FBI Field Office, but it turns out Mike Warren called her supervisor and asked for her assistance, specifically her, on some undercover operation that he's working on. Two weeks of sitting on her couch flipping through Tinder matches is more than enough time for her to cool down.
She reports for duty at the address she was given, and she can't say she's surprised to see a two-story open floor beach house. She's seen too much shit on this job to be surprised by much anymore.
"This is Graceland," he says and gestures at the house. "Wanna live here with me?"
Now that surprises her.
He unlocks the front door and holds it open for her. It's a beautiful house, obviously something fit for at least five or six people to live comfortably in. It looked like it could be a promising frat house for some rich UCLA kids.
"I've been tasked with hand-picking a team of undercover agents across three agencies to live and work out of here. I'm offering you a job, Agent Arkin."
Paige looks at Mike, really looks at him, his eyes both still lined with bruises in various stages of healing, tape across his broken nose, smug grin on his face. He knows her answer before she does.
06.
She still isn't sure why she took this assignment, but Paige manages to make it an entire month without interacting with Mike beyond formalities and professional engagements.
Charlie DeMarco ruins that, what with her encouragement that the house should be more than just a few undercover agents who happen to live together. Charlie organizes what she calls Sauce Night, claiming it to be the closest to a religious experience any of them need. She's is FBI like Mike, most of the house is FBI: Mike, Charlie, Johnny. Then there's Jakes, ICE, and her, DEA.
Their Sauce Night is a surprisingly light event, even Jakes' smile appearing for a few minutes. It culminates around a campfire on the beach outside Graceland, beers in hand and tequila bottle passed around.
"Okay, Mikey," Johnny slurs and he's probably the only one in the house that can get away with calling their boss a childish nickname. "You gotta tell us how you got that broken nose when we all moved in here."
Mike glances in Paige's direction long enough for them to lock eyes and she shrugs her shoulders. She couldn't care less if the team knows about their first encounter; she doesn't give much beyond a passable attempt at hiding her disdain from him anyway. She really doesn't know why she took this job.
She doesn't understand his reasoning, but he doesn't give her away.
"Well, Johnny, let me tell you about the time a suspect punched me in the face over a truckload of knockoff Levi jeans."
10.
When Mike aims to take the shot, Paige keeps her eyes open, trained on the barrel of Mike's gun lined up with her head 5 yards away.
Well, not her head. The head of the arms dealing terrorist behind her, one huge arm around her torso and the other holding a gun to her right temple. Mike takes his eyes away from his sights for a second, long enough for him to tilt his head to the left, Paige's right. Paige waits until Mike has his eyes focused down his gun before throwing her head to the right before their terrorist can react.
He takes the headshot and the bullet whisks past Paige's ear so fast that the noise hurts. Blood and brains splatter around Paige and she's tackled to the ground by the weight of the body behind her. She unloads the gun still in the grasp of their dead terrorist and doesn't take Mike's hand when he offers to help her up.
She doesn't say anything until they reach the kitchen in Graceland hours later and he starts fiddling with the coffee pot.
"You refused to shut down the human trafficking house in Sylmar," Paige states in a bone dry deadpan. She doesn't know why she's bringing it up now, 10 weeks after she first met him and nearly knocked him out for it. "You got a undercover DEA agent killed. You helped them dispose of her body."
"All of those things are true," Mike replies, infuriatingly calm in his demeanor. He doesn't turn around, doesn't change breathing patterns, doesn't break in his motions of making them a pot of coffee as if they were old pals.
Paige knows all about him; she may have technically broken a few rules and regulations to gain access to his file. Graduated top of his class at Quantico, rose through the ranks at break-neck speed, most recently in charge of a predominantly undercover team in the LA field office before starting Graceland. He's the best undercover agent the FBI has to offer, and everyone she's talked to repeats that as fact. She thinks she hates him.
"Do you even know her name?" Paige asks, mimicking Mike's indifference. Inside her, there's nothing even remotely indifferent. There's nothing but rage and sorrow even months later.
Mike waits a beat before taking a deep breath. "No."
The word comes out as a sigh, sounding almost ashamed. She read his report on the event, memorized it, blazed it into her mind, as if knowing each and every word would somehow reverse time. It didn't.
"Lina. Her name was Lina Allochka Veselov. She was a DEA Special Agent sent undercover to–"
"I know what her mission was, but the Solano Cartel was our top priority," Mike defends with a warning edge to the glance he sends her. She doesn't care.
"You didn't even know her name when you threw her bloody corpse into a fucking incinerator to keep your own cover."
11.
On her worst drunken nights, she often wonders if Lina would have liked Graceland. Lina was one hell of an undercover agent, able to play any role seamlessly. Her Eastern European background gave her fluent mastery of four languages. Could shoot the Jaguar off the hood of a moving car on the freeway from 30 yards.
Lina was the one that deserved this life. Not her.
She knows why she took this assignment.
Because Lina can't.
14.
It's three months into this indefinite length assignment to Graceland that their operations finally cross paths more than their previous tangential encounters. Mike's boss and Paige's boss's boss decide that they are to go under as a couple.
It's a simple enough mission to get close to a smuggling ring inside a mafia family, but it requires them to live together with no outside communication. The first few days are tense at best, but when they have their first meeting with the lower level mob boss and Mike makes a joke about disposing of bodies, he can sense Paige's demeanor change for the worse. She slams the door in his face and he sleeps on the chaise lounge on the back patio that night.
"Paige, I'm sorry," Mike blurts out the next morning when he sees her standing in the kitchen of their undercover home with a cup of coffee in one hand and a case file in another. She looks up with a blank expression, but he knows better than to underestimate her ability to keep her emotions off her face. He also knows better than to bring up anything she doesn't want to talk about, but that doesn't stop him from pressing on. They're in this undercover operation for the long haul, and they need to clear the air.
"For?"
"I burned Lina's body," he starts and she lets out a biting laugh, caustic as acid.
"Oh, Mike, I am very, very well aware of that."
Mike strides towards her and grabs both the coffee cup and file out of her hands against her indignant gasp, and presses on her shoulders until she's planted on the nearest chair. He takes a seat across from her and notices her fingers itch towards the waistband of her jeans where her gun usually sits.
"I am sorry that your friend died. I am sorry that she was there in the first place. And I am sorry that I had any involvement in her death," Mike continues briskly, voice strained but still commanding.
"You would do anything for the mission, wouldn't you?" Paige rolls her eyes. "Just how deep down that hole have you fallen, Mike, to keep your cover? Murder can't be the worst thing you've ever done."
He wishes he could tell her everything he's done in the name of the greater good. He wishes he could tell anyone what he's had to do for this job. But he can't and he doesn't bother disputing her accusations.
"You're supposed to be the best in the business. Everyone I've talked to say you weren't a man, you were a myth, like the fucking Greek Gods. The only thing you have in common with them is the chaos you rain down on anyone and everyone who ever dares to cross your path. Sorry doesn't mean shit," Paige spits out.
"I'm still sorry. And what I am most sorry about, Paige, is that you were supposed to be sent in instead of her. I am so fucking sorry that you have to live with this kind of survivor's guilt because you made it out of that operation unscathed and Lina didn't even make it out of that building," Mike raises his hand when she opens her mouth.
"I read the file, Paige. I got my contact at the DEA to give me the full fucking story, because for the life of me I couldn't figure out why you hated me so much. I helped cover Lina's death at the time, but I laid it bare in my report. You need a scapegoat. You need someone to hate more than you hate yourself. And I can't blame you for that."
She stares at him, jaw loose and eyes wide, for what feels like an eternity before lunging at him.
When they think back on it, neither knows if her original intention was for fighting or fucking.
Author's Note: Title is from Young God by Halsey.