Slow Dancing In A Burning Room
Summary: Love is easy: unless you love a spy. A short segment about Fiona's struggle with her addiction to Michael.
Inspired, but not based on the song 'Slow dancing in a burning room' by John Mayer.
Rating: M
Pairing: Michael and Fiona (Burn Notice)
Disclaimer: I sadly do not own Burn Notice. Neither do I own the song stated above. I make no profit from this writing. Reviews are always welcome as payment ;)
Red silk soothed down her curves, a cold passionless material that offered her no comfort from the intense eyes staring back at her.
He fit the part it every way; black tux on a crisp white shirt, quick smooth steps to fit a time-old tune, beautiful woman in his arms. He fit Fiona in every way but one; his job would always come first.
Her eyes were locked on his, the magnetic pain between them breaking hearts without any good reason.
She watched him sway the blonde left to right with an effortless ease.
"Fiona?"
She blinked back up to her own partner, she could almost see the counted numbers flow through his mind with each step he made. His bow tie sat crooked to the left and there was no hidden weapon anywhere on his person. He gave her no fight, no anger, no hate. He gave her love. An endless supply of love.
But her eyes couldn't stop searching the room for Michael.
"You alright?" Her eyes touched back soft as a feather to her partner… her lover… her man that could never be Michael. She smiled, offering a minute nod of her head and no words. She couldn't trust her voice feeling as she did.
Michael wasn't even mad when he found out about her man. He didn't yell, he didn't throw his spoon from his yogurt. Not even a tell-tale blink. He smiled.
Damn smiled.
Fiona felt the bridge of her nose burn like it did seconds before her emotions boiled over. Without even being asked, her partner pulled her closer. Their dance shaped into an elegant hug and floated across the floor.
With her head on her partners shoulder, her eyes guiltlessly found Michael. Would they ever not?
He was beautiful.
He moved with the blonde like they were one entity. He stepped and she stepped. She twirled and he guided her. He pulled her back into his arms like it was agony to have her gone.
There was a time Fiona had been convinced she meant that much to Michael.
But she opened her eyes to reality, and like the blonde he was currently spinning across the room, the truth would come crashing down; it was all an act. An act that would drop the minute the mission took priority.
Fiona felt warm breath at her ear, sweet words whispered in a generous gesture.
"We can leave, if you want."
She shook her head, not yet.
She needed to see this through.
Michael's blonde client laughed like an angel for something he said and Fiona's eyes snapped back to them. The blonde had gone running to Michael when her company had received threats, like always he swooped in to play hero. The charity gala where it was all to go down was by invite only and Fiona's man, being a big player in business, had provided her with an invite so she could back Michael up.
"You look beautiful tonight." The words slipped in a caress over her ear. Like any good man, he said whatever he could to try and get the smile back on her painted lips.
Fiona closed her eyes and smiled.
She couldn't ask for a better man.
So, why could she not stop thinking of Michael?
She pulled back from her position against his shoulder, effectively cutting Michael from her vision. If only it could be so easy with her mind.
"You look quite the part yourself." She tried to be what he wanted, to give him the same love he so easily gave her. But the emotion never touched her eyes, never squeezed her heart… it never gripped her like it did with Michael.
"Even dancing as well." he laughed at himself, drawing a sympathetic smile from Fiona.
"And you're doing a marvellous job." she praised, her mind correcting the lie, casting her back to when she'd been in Cuba, held in Michael's arms, pressed tightly to him picking up steps to a fast paced dance as they tried to convince the Police they weren't the couple that had just fled a violent crime scene.
That was her kind of dancing, and it certainly was marvellous. Their hearts had been pounding from adrenaline and risk, he'd spun her without a second thought but for their cover, he'd held her like she was the only warmth in his life, and when the police walked straight past them, they'd shared an exhausted laugh for their trouble.
But the man holding her now had a loose grip on her frame, he barely was able to lead the movements, but he tried ever so hard for her.
Fiona took pity on him, offering him the reprieve she knew he needed but would never ask for.
"Perhaps it's just me, but I need a drink, and to be off my feet." She smiled sweetly to him, almost seeing the weight that ascended from her suggestion.
"I'm on it." He pressed a short kiss to her cheek and made for the bar.
Fiona lifted the silk that tickled across her feet and elegantly made her way back to their table. She didn't need to turn around to know Michael had his gaze locked on her. She could feel the intense burn in the back of her mind.
Finally seated back at the table Fiona lifted her eyes to the grand clock. Anything to guide them from the natural tug to Michael.
10:15pm.
She forced herself to recheck the exits, the security positions, to recall the items of the buffet table, the items of jewellery on the dames and mistresses. Eventually, with nothing else to challenge her, she was drawn back to Michael.
He was whispering to the client, a hard tension tightening the muscles in his back.
She remembered the last time he'd whispered to her, when she'd been in a position to feel those muscles contract.
He'd been dropping kisses up her neck, his hands stripping the bra down from her chest, no time to bother disrobing her of anything that wasn't essential. His lips had finally reached her ear, his words pushing through her haze of needy lust to tell her all of the ways he wanted her, all of the things he wanted to do to her while she was underneath him on the bed.
He had an imaginative mind, a beautiful imaginative mind that could structure tactical assaults just as well as it could melt a woman into a hormone fuelled puddle. His tongue could manipulate a hostile situation into victory just as easily as it could reduce a woman to moans and sighs. His fingers had traded in a gun's trigger for a woman's this once. His digits had slipped between her legs, making the most of the dress and simply nudged the panties aside to reach his goal.
She remembered how that night played out, as she had clawed her nails into his back when he had finally slid into her core, as she had called his name in the deepest throws of passion.
… of how he had rolled over the second they were sated and answered a phone call from the government suits. It hadn't taken more than a few seconds of conversation before he was tugging on clothes and skipping out.
Fiona blinked back, hearing approaching footsteps.
"White wine alright?"
"Perfect." She smiled, accepting the glass and letting the first drink slide down her throat. It tasted sweet and clear, just like the man sitting next to her. He had no hidden surprises. He wouldn't run out at 4am and give her no warning or word of where he was going.
Suddenly her head clicked up, her mind automatically catching the alarm before her eyes would.
Michael had noticed it too.
The man on the stairs with the gym bag. He wasn't dressed for the event, and although he'd come from the service entrance and possibly passed as a waiter, his uniform was all wrong.
Michael didn't waste a second, pointing his client to the bar and safe from danger while he followed the man.
Fiona casually rested her hand against her thigh, unconsciously checking the knife still held in its thigh holster near the slit of her dress.
Michael would assess the risk and either be back in 2 minutes, or would need backup.
There wasn't a doubt in her mind that Michael could handle this. It should be easy.
But then silent alarm bells starts ringing, more 'waiters' with gym bags passed through the hall and through into the corridor Michael had been down.
Uh-oh.
The odds were thrown against his favour, and the numbers unclarified.
"Excuse me. Ladies room." Fiona lied, swiftly taking the heels across the edges of the room, her eye on the back of the last man to enter the corridor. She was just about the turn down and follow them when a gunshot rang out, clear as a bell to the trained ear. The band stopped, the dances frozen and Fiona slid herself into a dark doorway out of sight.
2 seconds later, two more gunshots, followed by a loud explosion from a branch of the corridor.
Security moved quickly, escorting the panicked guests out of the room and to the safety of the parking lot.
Fiona used the pandemonium to speed down the corridor, her heels noisy and alarming.
She ditched them without a second though, her bare feet silent.
When she finally reached the apex, she followed left, the right turn smoke filled and obviously the site of the explosion.
Her hand snaked up the dresses slit and unsheathed the knife as the sprinkler system awoke from dormancy and covered the entire building in a shimmer of water.
The straightened hair she'd made an effort with started to cling as the water fell. The make-up would surely be the next thing to ruin, but she cared very little for either right then. Her heart was in her throat. The rush of activity pounding her heart in a fashion she craved. Michael used to say it was a bad trait, to be excited by the rush of a heart, but he was just as guilty of the sin. Maybe not to the same extreme, but if he didn't get a jolt from it, why else would he rush into action before anyone else?
She knew him as well as he knew her.
Fiona pressed herself to the wall next to the open door, hearing the conversation inside.
"You didn't turn off the damn sprinklers!" one accused another. She held back the rolling of her eyes at the disorganisation of the squad.
"I got this slimy bastard didn't I?!"
"Hey, com'on. There's no need for name calling." Fiona recognised the tease of Michael's voice, eliminating the worry she would never let bloom. Clearly they'd got the advantage over him. But he was awake and breathing, which was always a good sign.
"Shut it."
Fiona tipped her eyeline into the room while the voices argued.
One man was slumped against the wall unconscious. Another was splayed out on the floor, looking like he'd taken a thud to the back of the head. Bullets were in the walls.
Michael had his hands raised, facing the two others remaining, both holding guns trained on him.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, just shoot him. He'll be gone in the explosion anyway." One spoke, having taken a leadership role in the operation.
The follower wordlessly complied, raising the gun.
Fiona's heart sank and silent as the grave she slipped into the room, putting a knife to the leader's throat and pulling him off balance into her. One move and she could slit his throat clean and clear.
"I wouldn't do that." she spoke, the words a threat inside themselves. Everything paused and her eyes flickered to the twitch of Michael's lips daring a smile.
He moved with such precision it was hard to see it all with clarity, but one second he was across the room with hands in the air. The next his leg was kicking out knocking the gun from the leader's hand, spiralling in towards the other man and dropping an elbow to his kidneys before throwing him over his shoulder, locking his arm and taking the gun as his own.
The tables had turned so rapidly, it would make an amateur's head spin.
But Fiona and Michael were no amateurs, they knew the dance far too well.
Michael took control, quizzing the two for any and all information while they were held vulnerable.
The bombs hadn't been planted yet, they were planning on that while the civilians fled from the first explosion and the managers crept back in. Fiona eyed the bag of C4 she would give a new happy home to.
Wordlessly Michael inclined his head and Fiona withdrew the knife from his throat to smash the butt of it against him head and drop him to the floor. Michael chose a cleaner method of incapacitating his own man, but as the job finished, they finally met each other unobstructed.
Pulses were racing, adrenaline flooding the system; a potent aphrodisiac from the old days.
"You look nice Fi." Michael spoke, breaking the moment. The sprinklers were still covering them both in water, her hair was plastered to her face and shoulders, the silk was stuck to her body, but fingers ran under her eyes confirmed she had thankfully remembered waterproof eyeliner today.
She didn't bother to reply for fear of reading too deeply. She lifted the gym bag of bombs onto her shoulder and followed her feet back out onto the corridor. "Fi." she paused where she stood, unmoving for whatever Michael would have to say. "Why did you come with him?"
She whirled so fast the dress whipped out against her leg, the bag sliding off her shoulder and hitting the floor.
"Why did I come with him?" she repeated slowly, like one would for a child. Her temper was gasoline and a match; at any point the whole place could burn at her will.
"You don't love him." he stated, cold and emotionless.
The sting of tear barrelled over her and she prayed she could pass it off as sprinklers. Her hands brushed the wet strands from her face angrily.
"Because you'd know what that looks like, right?" she sneered.
"Fi?"
It wasn't the job… she didn't expect him to be able to analyse and understand anything she said now anyway. Michael didn't speak emotions unless it was life and death mission critical.
"Don't." She turned from him, her fingers reaching for the bag from the floor. She had barely gripped it before his hands tugged her back to face him.
He was truly an exquisite man. That perfect jawline, the strong perfectly aligned nose he'd broken too many times to count, the muscles that rippled in the body formed tux, that killer smile he could pull at any moment. And then there was his heart… Michael lived to help other people. The government, the broken souled, the lowest of the low… even when they would lie to him, repeatedly put him in danger, when his phone rang, he couldn't say no.
It was no wonder her heart craved him so much.
She briefly closed her lids, tears joining the water that ran in rivulets down her face.
But that was also the problem. Michael worked with the broken… the ones that needed help. The only thing Fiona needed was Michael and when she was whole and with him, she was no longer key to his attention.
"Fi." She opened her eyes to his deep blue oceans looking right through all her defences and straight to her wounded heart. Her name fell soft from her lips, worry tainting his perfect features.
"Don't Michael." she warned, her voice cracking over the syllables. "Please." The word was a whisper in the downpour, fighting against the faint alarms and shouts of security officers flooding back into the building.
His finger reached out, ghosting over her cheeks, fading from her skin as they reached her neck.
"You look nice." he complimented, stirring another smile from her. The repeat sealed over her vulnerability like it had never happened. Like they'd beaten the bad guys then turned around and walked on, without a flash of a tear threatening their rocky relationship.
"You should go and find your client and let her know she's safe." Fiona took a deep breath, trying to cure the wobble that threatened her words. "She'll probably want to thank you."
"Fi, I-"
"She's pretty. And she clearly likes you." Fiona carried on, stepping back from Michael, her hand reaching for the bag again and slinging it up onto her shoulder, the voices getting louder as they closed in. Fiona stepped back again, heading down the right hand of the corridor, into the smoky smell of cheap C4. Her name called her back once more.
"I'm sorry." Michael called loudly over the distance and the rain from above.
"What for?" she shouted back.
"I don't know. Whatever it is that I did." His voice found her ears, drawing a mirror of the smile that was on his face. That smile could melt her heart if her guard was down.
Fiona inclined her head, accepting his words and slipping out of the emergency exit and into the parking lot with the bag.
Her date was stood by her car, worried and alert. When he spotted her, he rushed over, his jacket pulled off to wrap around her shoulders.
"I was so worried." His arms pulled the jacket around her then held tight for a hug. He pressed kisses to the top of her head.
He really was perfect. Everything any woman could ever ask for.
But next to Michael… he was just a nameless person in a sea of faces that would pass her by in life.
Fiona wrapped her fingers around her mans, hoping tomorrow, she could wake up and finally love someone who wasn't Michael.
A warm doubt bloomed and she didn't care enough to shake it off.
Reviews are always welcome. Thank you for reading :)
Thank you to DKougar for highlighting my error with eye colour - now corrected (too many fictional men in my mind to keep track of their striking eyes, hehe)
Xx