Author's Notes: I am clearly going a little stir crazy since I am no longer in a musical every evening after work. Not only am I writing fiction like crazy, I have three different roasts sitting in the fridge, the house is spotless and I've remodeled a bathroom (including retiling and plumbing). My staff at my office is also starting to hate me for my sudden desire to update and improve everything. I either need to audition for another show, or sit down and write an actual book and buy a bigger refrigerator. Until that point, enjoy the daily updates!
The kitchen is spotless by now, but Mike continues scrubbing frantically, trying to scrub out the thoughts from his head. He's just about to finally give up and go change when suddenly in a whirl Paige comes sprinting barefoot down the stairs and into the kitchen.
"Quick! Charlie's out of the shower." Paige squeals at him as she sets a set of his clothes down on the now clean counter.
Mike registers the urgency of what she's saying and looks down to see the proof of the deep red stain on his light grey slacks and light plaid button up shirt. He immediately reaches for the fly of his zipper. There's no time to think about modesty. If Charlie discovers they've spilled a drop of her precious sauce they are done for.
Mike is thrown into such a panic, he immediately begins to unbutton his pants, and doesn't even think twice about Paige reaching forward to work on the buttons of his shirt. He struggles to step out of his pants, and she begins tugging frantically to drag his shirt over his head. He nearly trips over his pants as they both fumble with his clothing, and there is no time for him to think about the fact Paige is undressing him, because there is nothing sexy about an angry Charlie coming down the stairs to find him covered in her great great great grandmother's sauce.
He finally rips off his shirt and jumps out of his pants, but before he can reach for the clean clothing on the counter, the sound of footsteps on the stairs make him dive to the floor out of sight, as Charlie comes down the stairs her hair in a towel.
"What's going on here?" Charlie asks Paige who is leaning against the counter with a false smile plastered across her face. Mike lies flat on the floor crushed up against the counter, looking up at Paige standing over him, suddenly realizing how ridiculous this entire situation is. He's in his underwear lying on the kitchen floor hiding from his roommate. The worst thing about it was this wasn't the first time this had happened. He'd been in similar situations before with Paige, but they almost all included the two of them being interrupted during sex. He tugs on her ankle and tries to get her to hand him his clothes.
"All good." Paige says, keeping a forced smile on her face, and kicking Mike's hand away from her ankle.
"You look guilty." Charlie says suspiciously.
Charlie's eyes drift to the set of male clothing sitting on the counter beside Paige. She leans forward to peak over the counter. Paige sees what she's doing and jumps forward to block her view, not before Charlie sees the tip of Mike's bare calf from where he's lying flat on the floor shoved up against the counter.
"Charlie, I saw Briggs left the grocery list on the counter. You know he's going to forget something if he doesn't have it. When you call to tell him we're out of limes for the Margaritas too?" Paige pulls a piece of paper out of her pocket and hands it to Charlie, blocking Charlie's view of Mike as she does so.
"Why can't you call him?" Charlie asks her knowing this is an excuse to send her away.
"I don't know which are the right brands… Besides this is your dinner. Do you really want me involved in any aspect related to cooking?" Paige smiles sweetly at her.
"Yeah, ok. My phone's upstairs. You make sure no one touches my sauce." Charlie says, taking the list and backing off slowly. Giving Paige a knowing glare she adds, "Oh, and tell Mike to make sure to get dressed for dinner."
"Will do! Is this formal or casual?" Paige asks, trying to act like she's unaware of what Charlie's implying.
"T-shirt and jeans should be fine." Charlie says, looking pointedly at the jeans and red t-shirt sitting on the counter.
When Charlie finally disappears upstairs, Paige relaxes, turning around to lean back against the counter in relief.
"Well that was close." Paige says, her whole body relaxing and letting the fake smile fall from her face now that Charlie's gone.
"She wasn't fooled you know." Mike says, standing up and grabbing the jeans off the counter.
"Oh c'mon! She totally bought it! If Charlie knew that we had spilled her sauce, do you think either of us would be standing right now? We'd be chopping vegetables until our fingers bled." Paige laughs in relief, not completely able to avoid watching Mike getting dressed.
"You know what she's thinking…" Mike says, flustered, "She's gonna think we're sleeping together."
"We are sleeping together." Paige says in an exasperated tone, and Mike sends her a look as he buttons his fly. "I mean, we were… You know what I mean."
"Yes, and we managed to avoid suspicion during that time, so now that we're not, I don't want-" Mike is cut off by Paige's laugh. A sound he hasn't heard in a very long time.
"Oh please, everybody knew." Paige laughs at Mike's naivety.
"No. They didn't!" Mike argues back. They had been so careful for those few weeks. No one could have known.
"Yes they did, they just didn't say anything." Paige's laughter has turned into giggles.
"No! We were sneaky. No one knew. Maybe they suspected but they thought we were hooking up long before we actually were."
"So you think it was just convenient that Johnny moved his Xbox out of his room and downstairs? Or that Jakes bought those new soundproof headphones?"
"What are you saying?" Mike knows exactly what she's implying, and now that he's thinking about it, he's realizing she's right. He thought they were being so stealthy and it turns out everybody knew.
"You're loud." Paige says bluntly.
"I am not loud!" Mike says, indignified of this critique. He quickly realizes his loud declaration of surprise may have hurt his argument and he drops his voice to a whisper. "If anyone's loud it's you, screamer. Compared to you, I'm Chaplin."
"Oh, I remember things differently..." She grins teasingly.
"Well, maybe I need to refresh your memory." The words are out of Mike's mouth before he even processes what he's saying. He didn't mean for that to come out quite as sleazy as it sounded. His guard was down from the deceptive normalcy of their conversation, but now he's afraid he's taken it a step too far and ruined the moment.
There's a long pause as he waits for her to yell at him again.
"Put your shirt on." Mike looks up to try to decipher the tone of her voice. She's staring at his bare chest, with a look of what? Sadness? Longing? Mike can't figure it out, but he slowly puts the red shirt t-shirt she brought him on over his head, keeping his eyes on her face as he does so.
The silence continues as the two stare at each other awkwardly. Finally, Mike looks sheepishly over towards the stove.
"Paige, we still have a problem. Charlie is going to notice half the pot's missing. We're fucked." Mike tries to avoid another fight.
"Fuck." Paige swears, allowing him to change subjects, but now both the agents just stare at the half empty pot, realizing what trouble they're still in.
"We're dead." Mike agrees.
"It's ok… We'll just- We'll just make more!" Paige says dashing towards the refrigerator.
"Make more?!" Mike asks in astonishment. "Paige, it's her secret family recipe. The sauce it's sacred!"
"You don't really believe that crap do you?" Paige asks as she loads her arms with everything she could conceivably put in pasta sauce from the fridge.
"I believe Charlie's going to kill you!" Mike says, exasperated.
"Come on!" Paige says, encouraging Mike to help as she pours half a bottle of wine into the pot. She pauses for a minute, looks at it, and then decides to dump the entire bottle, just in case. "This is the sort of high stakes, seat-of-your-pants dramatic improvisation Quantico prepared you for."
"Oh I'm sorry, I forgot that you're the love child of Julia Child and Doc Brown." Mike says sarcastically running both hands through his hair as he paces around the small kitchen alley. This was not good.
"What are you babbling about?" Paige asks distractedly as she opens a jar to smell if what's inside is cheese or mold.
"Do you have a culinary degree and a time machine I don't know about?" Mike yells at her in a panic, "Paige, even if you could cook, which you can't, it takes three days!"
"We've still got half a pot left, we'll just throw some extra filler in. No one will know." Paige insists, adding half a can of Preggo sauce to the mix.
"This is so not good." Mike groans as he watches her throw what he's pretty sure is an old mashed banana into the pot.
Ten minutes later, the pot is full again, and Mike and Paige just stand there staring at it in apprehension.
"Think anyone's going to notice?" Paige asks, looking guiltily up from the pan.
"We're going to have to get them drunk." Mike runs a hand down his face in disbelief.
"Very drunk." Paige agrees.
