Author's Notes: These are just little PIKE outtake scenes of what could have happened in between filmed scenes during the episode of Home. Which was one of my favorite episodes of season 2, because we actually had the roommates interacting with each other a little instead of everyone off on their own talking to new characters I don't care about. (Though the whole dream stuff was, eh).
I liked how in the episode even when Mike and Paige are fighting, they're always sitting next to each other. Also in this one the fighting felt a bit like foreplay.
Rated T for now, probably will bump up to M later. It is meant to be read as filler between scenes, so I will usually skip writing the scenes that are actually in the show.
Mike sighs in frustration, rubbing the shampoo into his hair in the shower of Graceland. The hot water feels good, but it can't work out the knots in his body. He slaps both sides of his freshly shaved jaw, trying to focus on what needs to be done next and not dwell of the weeks of backbreaking undercover work that are being washed down the drain. He needs to stay focused. In control. On guards at all times especially now that he's back in the house with her.
He wonders how much of his self imposed exile to Sulla's was undercover work and how much of it was running away from the guilt of what happened to her. Atonement for letting her down. For not being able to shut the place down right away. For not slaughtering those men who hurt her. Now he wouldn't even have the fantasy of revenge. Those men who hurt her were dead, and it had happened without Mike's hands around their throats.
The only blood he had on his hands was Lina's. He scrubs even harder at the memory, as if he's still trying to wash himself clean. The one girl Paige needed to save. The promise he couldn't keep. And then he'd made everything worse by lying about it. He had dug himself this grave, and he couldn't get out of it. He had to keep up the lie. Which would be even harder now that he was back at Graceland. Back sleeping with her just a wall away.
Paige has a way of making him confused. Making him let his guard down around her and cloud his judgment. He had to stay vigilant if he-
"Don't you have your own private bathroom to shower in? Why are you hogging ours?" Mike jumps a foot in the air, as he's snapped out of the the thoughts in his head by the blonde who is leaning casually against the side of the shower staring openly at him.
"Enjoying the show?" Mike asks, trying not to back down from her reproachful gaze and not rush to cover himself.
She's seen him naked before, but now that they've ended things he didn't think she'd have the nerve just to stand there staring at him. Trying to act like he's not at all affected by standing naked in front of her, he tilts his head back up to the stream of water and continues washing, making a conscious effort to angle his body away from her in case his body forgets they ended things. He tries to continue idle chit chat, and tries to figure out how he feels about her staring at his ass.
"The hot water's busted and the security in this place requires over a weeks clearance to cut through the red tape and get a plumber in here." He explains.
"I would have thought you'd be used to cold showers now that Jessica left." Paige sneers loudly over the sound of the shower, walking over to the sink to floss. Mike winces. It's the first time since he'd rescued her that she'd mentioned Jess.
"Well with the withering stares you've been giving me lately, I don't need them, Ice Queen." Mike yells rudely back at her.
He doesn't need this shit from her. Five people are dead including the only person he could have used to link Sid and Solano. He has given up the past few weeks of his life camping out in a sex dungeon with the worst people he's ever met, and it didn't even accomplish anything. He feels more out of control than ever. The bureau thinks he's nuts, and he doesn't have a clue what he's going to say to them.
In truth he's mostly pissed because this last undercover was the hardest work he's ever done. He has been killing himself for this job, for this woman, and it has resulted in nothing but tragedy. His leads are gone, he's powerless, and he's broken his promise. He swore he would get Lina out of there, and he couldn't. If he had been… better. And he'd dug himself in so deep that now he had no choice but to keep lying to Paige. Because he couldn't admit it. Not to her. He thought the scales would all balance, but he's done such terrible things, and for what?
Meanwhile in just few hours Paige and Briggs had managed to make more headway than he had during his weeks undercover, and they'd done it without Mike. Everything Mike touches turns to shit. Maybe he's not cut out for this after all, but he refuses to admit defeat. It's easier to be angry, to push himself to be better, than to face his failures.
Mike turns off the shower angrily, nearly breaking the nozzle on this one as well in his firm grip. Without the hot water, the bathroom seems eerily silent.
"You still out there?" Mike calls out to her. Somehow he knows she is. He can just sense when she's around.
He hears her spit toothpaste into the sink and yells back, "Yes."
"Will you throw me my clothes?" Mike asks.
There's another moment of silence, and then his clothes come hurtling at his face from around the corner. He manages to catch them before they land on the wet floor and slips into his gray sweat pants, annoyed at her immaturity.
"I've seen it before you know." She reminds him, rolling her eyes at his modesty as he emerges from the shower wearing his sweat pants.
"Well yes, but then we were actually on speaking terms." Mike says cooley, as he puts his shirt over his head.
"Believe me Mike anytime you want to talk, I am more than happy to listen." Paige challenges, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at him. He knows what she wants to hear. She doesn't believe him for a second. Sometimes Mike wishes Paige were just… but then again, she wouldn't be Paige.
"It's hard to talk to you when you're always snarling at me." He glares right back.
"Well maybe if you told me the truth-" Paige begins to scold him again but he cuts her off.
"The truth? The truth is, Paige, I think you have your mind made up to hate me no matter what I say. Or did." Mike points out to her.
How many times can he apologize? He doesn't even think he was wrong. In all honesty he doesn't think she truly thinks he was wrong either. For some reason she needs to hate him, and she has since he rescued her from that hell hole. Possibly even before that when she found out about Jess.
"You lied to me, Mike! You're a liar!" Paige scowls at him, walking past him into the shower and setting down her shower caddy. "I thought you were different. I thought you of all people-"
"Everybody lies here Paige! You lie all the time! It's our job. Our lies are our life!" Mike defends himself against her hypocrisy.
"I've never lied to you Mike. I told you from the beginning I was going to get my girls out." She looks him straight in the eyes, refusing to so much as blink. It was true. She'd made it perfectly clear on several occassions that the tinkerbells were her number one priority. Mike wasn't even sure if he had made the top ten on her list.
"Well you told me you forgave me, and that was a load of crap." Mike says snarkily back to her, crossing his arms and staring at her challengingly wanting to strangle her.
"Do you really want me to forgive you?" Paige asks him, and Mike is taken aback by this because the answer should be obvious. "Because you looked pretty miserable when you thought I had."
"I-" Mike doesn't have an answer for that as he realizes she's right.
Even though it had been all he'd been fighting for these past few weeks, the actual moment Paige told him she forgave him, had been one of the worst of his life. Which he didn't understand. To make things more confusing, when he had discovered that her forgiveness was a lie, a trick to keep him away so she could rescue her girls, his heart had soared. He also didn't know what that meant. Didn't know what they meant. This relationship, or whatever it was they had, was so dysfunctional it made Mike's head spin.
She had lied to him. She lied to him earlier, gone behind his back to close down the operation, and yet despite his anger, he still found it sexy as hell. Maybe she was right. Maybe he did need a cold shower. What the fuck was wrong with him?
As his mind starts to try to solve that puzzle, the silence fills up the bathroom like the steam from his shower.
Once she realizes he has no answer, she begins to undress angrily for the shower. Unlike their first night together, it is not an invitation. If anything it is a sign that he should immediately fuck off.
Mike's eyes can't help but drift downwards as she drops her sweatpants to her long legs that are revealed. His breath catches when he sees the ugly purple bruise on her leg from where she'd been hit with a baseball bat. He quickly turns away before she can reveal any other injuries she sustained as a result of Mike's incompetence.
He needs to end this. He needs to find a way to wrap this whole case up. He needs to do something so he's not just worthlessly sitting around drowning in the mess he's made of his personal life.
Storming into the hallway, he sees Briggs coming up the stairs and charges over in his direction, still drying his hair. He needs to focus on work. He needs to focus on work so he can forget the naked hurt woman he left in the bathroom.
"Did you get the call or what?" Mike demands, storming across the hall to where Briggs is coming up the stares looking at his phone.