A/N: This story is the third part of a series of four stories set between 2.11 Hot Spot and 2.15 Sins of Omission (Chapter 10 of "Bed Time Stories" followed by Chapter 10 of "While Fiona Sleeps" for Hot Spot) This can be read as a sequel to those pieces. By request of a couple reviewers, this story is set after the end of 2.12 Seek and Destroy, for everyone who wanted to know what happened next…
A new upcoming chapter of "Bed Time Stories" centered on Sins of Omission will close out this series.
Thank you to everyone that reviewed and recommended those two previous tales and a shout out to all #burners in the Twitterverse and on Facebook for your support. The details of Michael and Fiona's first time together in Miami mentioned herein can be found in Purdy Pal's awesome tale "Firecracker."
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"I'll always—I'll always care about your son, Madeline. You know, I—I just can't be the second—"
"…Most important thing in his life? I can't blame you for that, honey."
She had said it and she had meant. She would always care about Michael. She couldn't not care about him… because God knew she had certainly given it her best effort over the years not to give damn about the dark haired man, who never seemed to stop haunting her dreams, but that never quite worked out.
"What are you saying, Fi?"
"That I'll always care about you... Michael... and I'll still help you with your thing and you'll still help me with mine, but we can't be together."
So, that was what she had tried to do. She hung around with him, she helped him and she reminded him at every turn that she was moving on. Michael McBride had been her lover and her best friend. But apparently, Michael Westen was simply going to be the latter. She'd had a couple of one night stands after that but admittedly the encounters had been more to prove she wasn't going to sit around pining.
"They said this thing…as iron sharpens iron, so man sharpens another man and I realized…Proverbs 27:17 that's you and me… you showed me the way."
And she knew he might have been talking to Lesher, but the words had been meant for her, trying to tell her a truth that was very important to him, so important that he could only say it under a cover ID.
"Don't you see I'm not afraid…? I'm not afraid anymore…. I'm not afraid of death…. I'm not afraid of anything…. I'm free…"
As she'd lain flat on her back and shoulder to shoulder with Michael that night, lightly holding hands and staring into the cavernous dark space above his bed in the loft, oddly enough she had found herself thinking about reading 'Pygmalion' while in college… about what Shaw had been trying to say about the ambiguity and absurdness of happily ever after and she found herself wondering how to take the burned spy's statement, what he'd really been trying to say and what exactly would become of her life…
"Is this what your life's become, Michael, running around like Carla's errand boy?"
"I'm doing this so I can get out from under Carla."
But the man in question wasn't running at the moment; he was sleeping next to her bare body and she was determined to enjoy the opportunity to lie quietly with him for as long as she could make it last.
This despite the fact that former paramilitary had a lot on her own plate in addition to whatever tasks Michael would manage to find for her to accomplish in pursuit of his freedom from the organization that had burned him. Besides, the ex-spy's handler would no longer be a problem for anyone should she have been foolish enough to decide to put in an appearance at the four star hotel where she'd been staying.
Because while she'd enjoyed the rental unit on the Intracoastal where she'd lived since settling more or less in Miami, it had now outlived its purpose and its usefulness. Michael might have been stuck in that musty old loft, but she had better options and it had been time to exercise them and relocate.
It wasn't just the fact that she couldn't get John Campbell out of her head whenever she had lain down in that bed which she had shared with both her ex- boyfriend and the man by her side at the moment. There had also been her increasing irritation with the suits and sunglasses set and their scrutiny. Ever since her relationship with the paramedic had ended, she'd been under additional surveillance.
Her run in with Carla had been the final straw. Even now the fiery Irishwoman clenched her teeth in remembered annoyance at finding the willowy blonde standing there instead of her missing man.
Then she sighed softly and stared at the swirled pattern on the ceiling caused by the early morning light reflecting off the pool two stories below. Concentrating on the deep even sound of his breathing and the light feel of the steady beat of his heart under her finger tips, she willed herself to stay still, allowing herself to enjoy the comfort of their closeness while trying to settle into slumber without much success.
"Whatever blew you up was pretty substantial. If you'd have opened the door any wider, we'd have been picking up itty bitty pieces of you."
She had refused to admit then and even now how much the sight of the charred doorway had upset her when she had gone round to the loft in response to Michael's message. After she'd cleared Carla's goons out of his pathway as he'd fled the marina, she'd spent the rest of that day and that night with her then-boyfriend, using the paramedic's company to keep her from worrying too much about what the former CIA agent was getting into, waiting for a phone call that had never come until the following morning.
"Can you check the chemical traces to see what kind of explosives they used?"
"Sure… Michael, I do admire you. Getting right back to work… but you did almost die yesterday."
"You wanna call the guy? Say sorry about your kid, but I gotta lot going on right now?"
Fiona bit down lightly on her lip in an attempt to quell the sarcastic snort that threatened to erupt and possibly wake up the man resting next to her. How many times had Michael tried to use that very same lame excuse to get out of helping people? He'd said almost the exact same thing when Campbell had asked. It had only been when she'd threatened to talk Henry by herself that he'd gotten onboard.
"Fear is the greatest motivator."
"I don't know about that. Look at why you're doing this."
"What does that mean?"
"Well, you wanted to protect me."
"Well, what are you doing it for?"
"I wanted to make Campbell happy."
The Irishwoman could honestly say that she truly had wanted to make John Campbell happy. He was a good man. He helped people and his job often involved matters of life and death. Fiona had been certain she could ease him into their lifestyle with enough time and encouragement. She wasn't entirely sure why she'd called her beau by his last name, the same way she had done when she'd still thought Michael's name was McBride. But somehow it had helped to convince her that this would all work out
But it hadn't…
"You'll find another boyfriend."
"Not like Campbell. He was sweet and cute. He had other impressive qualities."
"I'm sorry."
"Are you?"
"I want you to be happy."
Waking up warm and nearly naked next to Michael that day had certainly made her happy, particularly since it hadn't been her dark haired former lover sharing her bed in the morning until just recently.
Fiona peered over at the man's slack profile in the dim light, recalling with great clarity the expression on his face when he had come in from the storm. She'd been putting on a brave front herself, unwilling to admit just how close she'd come to not getting out of Derek Poole's house alive, not even to herself.
Yes, she could've died in that fire. But the lost look on his face had perfectly captured how she'd felt when she'd realized how close he'd come to dying from the bomb blast weeks before, just like how she'd felt when she'd seen him staggering out of his hiding place in the alley near Lavery's on the Golden Mile, barely escaping from another bomb that had almost taken his life and then it wasn't about her anymore.
So, when he'd kissed her, pressing his cold wet frame into hers, Fiona couldn't deny him because she didn't want to… Later on, in the early morning hours before the dawn, when the voice of Michael McBride had whispered in her ear and his hands and other parts of his body had caressed hers so tenderly, she'd decided she didn't care if she was dreaming or he was…
The redhead sighed quietly again, fighting back the memory of her disappointment when she'd fully awakened the second time to the sound of the door closing. The burned spy was gone. He'd snuck out on her again, out of his own living space, rather than face her, or so she'd first thought at the time.
She'd tried to give him the benefit of the doubt… Fastening up the rumpled dress shirt and trying not to remember how and when it had been unbuttoned, the lithe woman had padded into the kitchen to find no bottled water or yogurt in the refrigerator. Willing to accept for the moment he'd gone on a grocery run, she'd gone into the bathroom and, finding her other clothes still too wet to wear, Fiona had pulled the first items she could find out of her secret stash of clothes that still remained hidden at the loft.
As she'd finished showering off, she'd hear the door. Michael had seemed to be taking an awfully long time with the mechanism and she had wondered just how full his hands were before hearing the heavy slab close with its characteristic creak. So the petite gunrunner had walked out of the bathroom, her hair wet and uncombed, her other damp garments slung over her arm and had run straight into Carla.
"Oh… Fiona Glenanne, isn't it? Michael didn't mention you were sleeping over these days."
It wasn't like he hadn't told her that the other woman in his life had been letting herself into the loft too, but somehow she had just never contemplated the full extent of the blonde's brazenness. But always a firm believer in playing offense over defense, she'd gathered her keys, clutch and shoes with a spiteful smile, as if she had every right to be there and had caught the other woman out, which in truth she had.
"You aren't much of a spy… Carla, is it…? if he has to tell you everything."
"Yes, well, Michael is such a busy boy sometimes it's hard to keep track of all his little friends too. But don't worry. We'll make sure to keep a better eye on you from now on."
Fiona made a point of putting her Walther into the back of her demin shorts as though she was thinking hard about doing something else with the weapon instead of holstering it within a quick reach.
"Hmm, you might just end up with a bit of turnover issue then… I wonder what your bosses would say."
The former guerilla had moved towards the exit before she could give into the temptation to deck and choke Carla as she had done to Rachel the other day. But Fiona hadn't been able to resist a last remark when Michael's handler made herself at home on one of the stools at the high table in the kitchen area.
"Oh, and Carla, just remember, I'll always be keeping one eye open for you."
She had spotted the blonde's bodyguards secreted in various places as she padded down the rusty metal stairs before stopping at the bottom to slip on her shoes. The urge to shoot the woman or at the very least wound one of her minions was becoming overwhelming even now as she lay by his sleeping form.
Honestly, why did Michael put up with their arrogance? She'd had enough of armed assholes invading her private space in her lifetime. Why was she putting up with it now? There would have been a time that she would have made Carla a corpse without a second thought for what she had done.
"Just say the word, Michael. I have a nice rifle in the trunk of my car."
"Tempting but since she's the only one that knows what's going on, might want to keep her alive."
And that's when she had decided, since Michael would probably be determined not to allow her to resolve the situation with her preferred method of sighting down her sniper scope and putting a well-placed round from her Hectate between the blonde's eyes that it had been time to move on.
In more ways than one…
So, instead of letting herself go down a path that would have reopened all the old wounds, Fiona had thrown herself into finding somewhere else to live instead of replacing her cell. When she finally did get a new mobile, the Irishwoman had been determined to delete all but Michael's most recent messages.
However, curiosity got the better of her once more and once again she'd almost gotten burned for it.
Fi, I'm at the address you gave me. Call me back if you get this.
Fi, Fi, pick up the phone. Call me if you get this. I need to know where you are.
Fi, I'm at the loft. Where are you? Call me when you get this.
Fiona, I need you to call me.
Fi, I'm checking the rally points. Call me.
Fi, please call me as soon as you get this. Or call Sam, I don't care… Just…. Call
Fiona… Pick. Up. The. Phone… Dammit…
The others were variations on frustrated noises and heartbreaking versions of her name. One of the last ones sounded as though he had forgotten to hang up the phone and was standing in the rain. Then it was several straight hang ups from their morning after and lastly a concisely worded request for help.
At the time she'd felt her resolve begin the crumble until she'd forcefully reminded herself that the anxiety, the fear and the crushing realization that somebody important had disappeared out of your life was exactly how she'd felt that April morning and maybe what Michael needed was a reminder of that.
Then the muscular man next to her shifted off of his back and onto his side, pinning her beneath the strong arm thrown over her body as if she were a less than fluffy pillow, and exhaled into her hair.
Fighting off the shiver caused by his warm breath on the cool skin of her neck, Fiona tried to remember all the reasons why she'd decided on distancing herself from him after their night of renewed passion.
"You know, Fi, if, ah…if you want to talk about what happened the other night…"
"Well, there's nothing to talk about… we were just blowing off some steam, right?"
And so had begun that familiar dance between them, except this time, she was letting Michael lead.
She'd lent him money in the past, but not this time, passing along a job that she had passed on with an art dealer instead of giving him the cash and also asking for a commission on the referral.
Days later when he'd mentioned grabbing dinner, she'd made sure she was in the middle of a long soak at a spa followed by a massage when he'd called, texting him back that she was engaged for the evening. Eventually she did drop by when Michael had asked for her help his corporate espionage gig, but only after he'd asked her to meet with him and Sam to go over their plans for dealing with the case.
She had sprawled all over his bed as she would have any other day instead of helping, or maybe she'd made more of show simply because she could… Fiona had to admit she was still pissed about over what had happened with Carla the other day… and she had sighed loudly to gain everyone's attention.
"As stimulating as all this is, I still don't see why you called me over here, Michael."
"It always helps to bounce ideas, Fi."
"Uh, I'm gonna grab another beer and… uh… drink it on the balcony," the ex-SEAL had declared before doing exactly what he'd said he was going to. She had wanted to laugh at Sam's discomfort, but trying to get the truth out of the ex-operative for once was more important in that moment.
"Is this about the other night? Is this about me not staying for breakfast?"
"Is it so strange that I would want your opinion on a job?"
"Look me in the eye and tell that's all this is."
"I have to go see Chandler."
Because as much as she enjoyed Michael pursuing her, two things stuck out clearly in her mind: He could change his mind at any time, as the shock of what had happened faded into the past for one. For another, until he succeeded in his quest to get out from under the people who burned him, they weren't really free to pursue any kind of permanent relationship. Of course, even if he did get free of them, there was no guarantee that he would want to be with her instead of trying to get his old job back again.
"You know, pretending nothing is going on is easier for some people than others."
She was going to make him say it this time. If he wanted her in his life as something more than tactical support, as more than a steady comrade in arms, then it was going to be up to him to say so plainly. Or as plainly as Michael was capable of… which really left a lot of room for things to be left unsaid…And yet somehow… despite her intentions, somehow she had ended up with the man between her thighs again.
After she'd blown up Chandler's car, Fiona had gotten a room at another hotel, leaving behind her previous place. It was good to keep Carla's goons guessing at her latest location. She and Michael had changed into their operational gear after he had left the readily identifiable muscle car in a shopping mall with good security and made his way to her space. They'd slipped out in her Saab to meet Seymour.
Laying her hand lightly over the large paw that had settled over her shoulder, Fiona felt his pulse beat at his wrist and thought about her conversation with the eccentric arms merchant earlier in the day.
"That guy, it's like he sees around corners… So, what's up with you two? Not together anymore?"
It had been a very good question and it cut to the heart … her heart actually…but also to the heart of the matter. Just because they had slept together, did it mean they were together, that they were a 'couple?'
"We're in different spaces, Seymour."
"Different spaces…? Gimme a break… As a practitioner of Tai Chi, lemme tell ya something, missy, go with the flow of the universe, alright? It's destiny, you two… forces bigger than us. Don't argue with destiny. It will kick your ass. Believe me."
"I'll keep that in mind, Seymour."
She had made the mistake of assuming that they were a couple multiple times in their relationship, only to be crushed repeatedly as Michael focused his attention on his responsibilities to his country and the Company and laterused that same laser-like precision to try to get back in with the same bastards that had thrown him out into the cold. Destiny… there had been a time she'd thought he was her destiny…
The Irish Catholic part of her believed in destiny, in things bigger than herself, the practical gunrunner part of her believed that your fate was what you made it with a well-chosen weapon and a block of C-4. The woman's heart that she frequently denied she possessed wanted to believe there was a happy ending for them, but she'd been hurt by him and by life enough times that she was afraid to believe it.
But moving on with other men and moving on from him had not worked well for her thus far…
Destiny had come up again later that night in the form of matching throwing daggers Seymour had thoughtfully had made in honor of their first mission together… of their bond… and she remembered the quietly charged atmosphere as she sat on the hood of her car contemplating the engraving… Destiny…
"That was kind of sweet," she'd remarked after Mr. Talbot had run back towards his mansion so as not to leave the prisoner alone with his jackass body guard too long.
"You know, the morning after we… uh…" he'd begun hesitantly.
"Yeah…?" she had prompted; the normally composed ex-spy's reticence had her urging him on.
"I brought you a Spanish omelet, egg white only. But… you were gone…"
Her gaze now shifted right towards his nearby face as she remembered the look in his blue eyes then, the space between them seemingly evaporating. She had seen hurt and regret, a vulnerability Michael rarely allowed to surface and suddenly all her determination to distance herself had also evaporated.
"My favorite…. Maybe next time I'll have to stay."
The return trip to her accommodations had been quick thanks to her perineal lead foot and quiet given his seeming distraction. At the time, the tiny former terrorist had assumed the man in the bucket seat next to her had gone in full super spy mode again, plotting his next moves once he would be able to turn the account number into a name, fully expecting him to change and disappear. But he'd surprised her.
"So, what's next?" she'd asked as she'd sat on the end of the bed, turning the dagger over in her hand and looking around her new temporary place for a decent target with which to test the weapon.
"Time to bring in Barry, see what kind of magic he can do…"
"That one's all yours. You know how I feel about money launderers. What?" she'd demanded, seeing his disapproving look. "It's a lovely blade… shame not to try it out."
"I wouldn't, Fiona," he'd advised, sitting down in the adjacent chair to unlace his preferred footwear for snatch and grab and or hostage rescue work. "You'll never be able to explain it to housekeeping."
"You're no fun, Michael," she'd mock sighed with a smirk blossoming on her features.
"You have very interesting ideas about what's fun," the ex-spy had countered before standing up and turning towards the bathroom, his street clothes in hand.
"I have interesting ideas about a lot of things," she'd purred, coming to her feet and blocking his way. "You could stay and find out. It's not like the spiky haired little weasel gets up before the crack of noon."
Michael's upper lip had disappeared momentarily as she looked up at him, searching his blue orbs.
"Unless you need to go do something else… maybe take care of something and then go to bed?"
It had seemed to take him a minute, but apparently the words had finally resonated. He'd blown her off after she'd dispatched Sugar's hired thug, pushing her away with an insulting comment and an exceedingly lame excuse, sending her out into the night in search of some other way to assuage the adrenaline flowing through her veins. But then he'd followed her to Benny's and they'd ended up in his seedy hotel room, spending the night doing things…. Things she'd found herself wanting to do more of in that moment. It had just remained to be seen whether he would stay with her or push her away again.
Michael had reached out, tangling his fingers in her long auburn locks as he pulled her in for a long, soft kiss. "The bed looks comfortable enough," he'd offered as their lips parted. "Shame not to try it out."
"The en suite here's even more impressive, full garden tub with a 93.5 adjustable three way showerhead," she'd said, taking his hand. "And I haven't managed to run out of hot water yet."
His grin had lit up his entire face, his blue eyes sparkling with anticipation. "Well, we can't miss that."
And now Fiona smiled at the memory of their time in the luxury hotel bathroom, of how it had ended with them lying snuggled together in what was in fact a very comfortable bed and knowing that whatever else happened tomorrow morning, they also wouldn't miss having breakfast together.