Hi! If anybody's still reading this, I wanna let you know that I'll probably post some more chapters in a few days. I need to clarify a few things: Mike did NOT sleep with Jessica. The line that confused you in the last chapter was Jessica thinking about what Mike had told her when he had HID in her hotel room (he didn't want to fight with Paige so he hid there all day and worked with her). That being said, in this chapter I can tell you Jessica and Zelanski will no longer be a problem for these two. Lastly, I'll probably end this story somewhere next week, but I have bits I've cut off here and there and I was thinking about posting them as a series of drabbles. However, that's still just some crazy idea of mine, I'm not sure I'll actually do that lol
I apologize for the length, but as I've said before I'm summoning up chapters to shorten the story.
I hope you like it, enjoy!
- xo
Wayne didn't want to lose Paige. While he was there at her bedside, all he could think about was that he didn't want to lose her, even if she had never been his.
It was selfish of him, but it was the truth.
Paige was loyal, sincere, a force of nature: they were qualities that she put in everything she did. Seeing her wounded and falling under the blows of those monsters - seeing her blood flowing on the ground, hearing her scream in pain, grunting behind the oxygen mask on their way to the hospital… it had all been like a stab straight to the heart.
His crush on her had little to do with the way he felt: seeing such a strong person like Paige so helpless and vulnerable, with gauze bandages wrapped tightly around her shoulder where the bullet had mangled her flesh, stained with blood, made his body fill up with anger and pain.
As he ran his eyes over her figure one more time, he took in her blond hair and the uncombed, bloodstained tips that brushed her skin, when suddenly her eyes started fluttering open and he mechanically yelled out to the doctors, pressing the nurse button.
"She's waking up!"
Shocked by how quickly she'd woken up after the surgery, Wayne took a step forward and tentatively held his hand out to touch her face.
"Mh.."
"What?"
"Mh… Mike…"
"He's not he-"
He wanted to hug her and let her know he had been there all along. That even if the others hadn't, no one was ready to lose her, when suddenly the door opened.
Out of nowhere, Mike burst through the door, leaving behind the doctor he had been talking vehemently to. He slung on the bed, leaning on one elbow on the side of the mattress, and stretched to shove Zelanski out of the way. The DEA agent took a step back and leaned on the wall, watching the scene with resignation, as Johnny, Paul and Charlie stalled in the doorway with the doctor.
"I'm here, baby. I'm here." Putting all his weight on his arm, Mike leaned over and pressed his lips firmly, yet softly, against Paige's slightly purple ones.
The contact was short, but sweet. Necessary.
"Hi…" His warm hand molded to her pale cheek and he did his best to give her a small, tender smile. However, no matter how miserably he had failed in doing so, her half closed and foggy eyes didn't catch a glimpse of the moisture in his own, as she bubbled nonsense and incoherent words.
"Mh.."
He rested his forehead on hers, murmuring quietly on her lips and stroking her silky hair affectionately. "Sh, it's okay, it's okay. No talking, just rest."
As Paige swayed back into her slumber, Mike breathed in sharply. His fingers trembled as they brushed down the side of her face and he pushed himself off the bed trying to steady himself and fighting back the urge of punching a hole into the wall: he wasn't allowed to do that; it wasn't the right time to show his weakness.
It was time to fight for Paige.
That hospital room, dark and narrow, had nothing to do with her: she shouldn't have been there. Her skin shouldn't have been so dull and unnaturally white. Her arm shouldn't have been hooked to the drip from which droplets descended neutrally from time to time. Her body shouldn't have been lying helpless in that messy, insipid bed, but in his arms. Safe.
Mike bitterly fixed his eyes on her blonde and ruffled locks, sprawled all over the pillow and on her parted lips trembling under the strain of labored breaths.
'She's just sleeping', he kept repeating to himself like a mantra, 'she's fine, she's out of danger'. But, strangely, that patience that he had always had in him was now lacking like it had never before.
He wanted her to open her eyes, to give him that wry and winking look that had driven him crazy so many times before. He wanted her to talk to him, to yell at him, to hit him. Anything but to see her laying there, motionless and silent.
The line of worry on his forehead was marked and deep, severe, and he kept torturing his lips nervously. His eyes were swollen and red, rimmed with fatigue and worry: all day long, he had kept his eyes wide and stared stubbornly at that normally soft and strong figure that now seemed more and more petite, swallowed up between anonymous sheets.
He hadn't cried, he could never do that in such a fragile situation, he had to be strong both for him and for Paige. That was why, despite the shameful dark circles around his eyes, he hadn't gotten her out of his sight, not even for an instant.
Not after what had happened. Not after he had almost lost her forever.
...
It all happened so fast.
As he dragged Sulla out, he caught sight of somebody lying on the ground in a small pool of blood, next to his abandoned car.
"Take him down to Headquarters and check for evidence we might've left behin-"
All it took was one moment for him to recognize Paige's slender body being loaded and strapped onto a stretcher, surrounded by Torres and a few other guys from the TAC team. His heart literally fell to the ground and his breathing stopped. He turned as white as a sheet.
"…Paige,"
An agent took Sulla into custody, but he barely noticed, even when his hand loosened his grip on the man and fell to his side.
Nothing seemed to move around him - it was like he'd lost every sort of connection to reality, as his eyes tried to focus on a possible rhythmic movement of her chest.
The blood started to flow back into his veins when he finally saw it: it was mild and barely noticeable from afar, but it was there.
In big, wide strides, he lunged toward her, but Zelanski's mighty hand suddenly stopped him from reaching the blonde agent.
"Woah, Mike!"
The two looked intently at each other for a few seconds, before the fire in Mike's eyes escalated to the point that he pushed the beefier guy with all the strength he had and shook him off of him with a fierce shove.
"What the fuck, Z?! I swear I'll shoot you if you don't let me go now!" He growled at him. "Paige!"
The chattering and the looks of surprise increased when the man began to stomp hastily toward the unconscious, bleeding woman, ignoring the DEA agent's reasonings.
"You can't go. 5 people are dead, you need to-"
Again, he got stopped by a clean and firm hold: whipping his head around, ready to hit whoever had dared to halt him, he came face to face with Charlie.
All he could do was roll his eyes. When had they all gotten there?
The brown haired agent, on the other hand, didn't let his icy and furious stare intimidate her: she watched his distorted face flooding with fear and terror and followed the way drops of sweat dripped down from his temples. It was clear he was about to explode.
"Mike - hey, look at me, Mikey, c'mon." She tried to get his attention, even though his eyes were fixed on their roommate's motionless body. "You need to calm down."
"Don't tell me to calm down!" He boomed out, still not taking his eyes away from the scene, and gritted his teeth.
Charlie pushed on his chest when he tried to move past her again and this time, she dug her fingers deeply into his flesh as she thought about the only possible way to make him reason in such a destructive moment for him: as bad and hypocritical as it sounded, she needed to use Paige to save him and consequently, his career.
She hadn't been able to take herself out of that damn situation with Paul, but she could at least do something about what was happening and help Mike, now.
"She'll kick your ass if you don't go take care of everything, you know she will!" The FBI agent changed her voice to a demanding tone. "Wayne will stay with her until you're done."
Charlie shared a knowing look with Zelanski and felt relief rushing through her body once her words started having the desired effect.
Mike remained planted in his place, motionless, as if pondering his options. His muscles were tense, but his eyes, albeit still firmly glued to Paige, became moist and watery with concern for the girl. Turning his attention to the man that had previously tried to stop him, he froze him with an icy cold stare and pointed a finger at him.
"Don't leave her side - not even for a minute, or I'll make sure you never see daylight again."
Before they knew it, Paige was being loaded up in the ambulance, with Wayne riding right next to her and Mike watching from afar as the sirens went off. Charlie rubbed slow circles on his back despite the guilt poking through her limbs.
For the first time since she'd met him, Mike seemed lost and terrified. His eyes glided silently all over the place and realized everybody's faces were dark and troubled with emotions.
Following Jessica, he moved towards their ride, but suddenly made a detour to lean against the wall. He felt like throwing up - he wanted to scream, smash everything, but he couldn't.
So, he just sat down on the ground and tried to monitor the pulse of his crazy heart - he breathed hard, as a sweaty, panicked feeling gripped his chest in a killing vice.
"I'm sorry. I- just give me a minute."
Jessica looked sadly at him, shocked to actually see him in such a pathetic state, as his head hung low and his breaths echoed in trembling sounds.
"Mike…" She lowered her hand on his shoulder and squeezed, waiting until he could find the energy and right composure to return to Headquarters and fulfill their duty.
"It's okay, she'll be fine."
...
He had tried to give the best he had, but in the end Jessica had had to do all the work, because Mike couldn't think with Paige far away, risking her life. He couldn't concentrate and even put simple words in line to talk to Clarke when he had no clue of what was happening to her. Therefore, he had just stood at AD Foster's side and let his mind wander to the image of Paige's warm and solar smile, her funny and contagious laugh, that stiff and sullen face she made during their fights. Her annoying provocations and unreasonable assumptions.
That was all he'd thought about until he got to the hospital and never once left her side.
That hospital bed - that was not her place.
His arms, outstretched and rigid, were abandoned on the sides of the chair, his hand gripper placed in the palm of his right hand to keep himself from going nuts, jaw clenched tight: she wasn't supposed to be there.
Mike'd been watching her since they had put her back to sleep and was now longing way too ardently to see her smiling and gleaming eyes again. It'd been hours.
He kept replaying in his mind the expression veiled from sleep with which she looked at him in the morning - sullen and sweet at the same time: that expression that often made him shudder when he woke up beside her, with her curvy body still tight in his arms and her hair in his mouth.
It was amazing how something so simple, ordinary and rather annoying was the only thing he could think of after having almost lost her.
Lost her.
God, what would he have done, had he really lost Paige? If Sulla had centered the target? If she hadn't been such a clean cut shooter?
He couldn't imagine a world without her, not even if he tried. Not anymore, at least. She'd become too important to him, despite the many misunderstandings that had torn them apart.
He couldn't think of not hearing her voice again - of surviving without her laughter ringing childishly after one of their absurd and random talks; he couldn't picture himself no longer being cornered by her and her eyes sensually eyeing him with that predatory look that said everything about her, before she jumped on him.
He couldn't wrap his head around the fact that there had been a possibility that they would have never made love again.
The very thought made him feel sick and dizzy.
It was obvious that a world without her smile couldn't even exist - it was inconceivable to him that she could leave him like that, without having fixed things between them. Without having Paige hear those three words that had been burning incessantly in the depths of his heart for some time now.
Mike had never told her, not even once. He'd thought about it - of course he had. But he'd never considered doing it anytime soon: the way she was, she would've run away screaming.
But now that he'd almost burned every chance of ever telling her how much she meant to him, how important she really was... now, all he wanted to do was to shout to the world how big his feelings for her were.
He closed his eyes for a moment, blinking back burning tears. Finally, he directed them back to the blonde woman, the pain and weakness suddenly and strangely invisible on his face, as anger took over.
Fists became tense and the hand squeezer almost shattered in pieces under the iron grip of his hand.
"I'm gonna make'em pay for this too, Paige."
"Hey… how is she, man?"
Mike didn't even have to turn his stare to the door to recognize whom that voice belonged to. After what had happened at Headquarters, that same voice screaming loudly in his ears was stuck in his mind: during the interrogation, he'd stood at the door, arms crossed, while he watched Jessica interrogate Sulla. He had tried with every scrap of will in his body to restrain himself from charging at the man - he'd let him have his fun by turning AD Foster's words around, have his little fun, but then he'd started making crude jokes about the 'foolish bitch that had saved his ass' and implied he'd have 'liked her to be one of his slaves' and he'd lost it. He'd hurled himself at Sulla in one swift and unexpected motion and his fury had taken over. It had taken three agents and Briggs loudly scolding him as he pulled him back, to stop him.
Staggering on the doorstep, Paul looked uncertain, hesitant, as if afraid that somehow Paige had been able to tell Mike what he had done before she'd gotten shot. But when Charlie stretched a hand on his shoulder and lovingly approached him, stroking his messy hair with her other hand, he breathed a sigh of relief: Mike didn't move, but continued to tighten rhythmically that hand gripper thing and kept his eyes fixed on Paige.
Charlie felt her stomach churn when she took in her friend's porcelain skin, so different from its usual tanned color.
"They've put her down to sleep for a few days. The bullet went right through - it shattered her clavicle." The young agent didn't even blink when he started explaining mechanically what the doctors had told him, but the hard squeeze he used on the hand gripper signaled that thinking about what had happened to the DEA agent was making his blood boil once again. "They rebuilt the bone with a titanium plate to speed up the healing process. She'll be in pain, but she should be fine in a couple of weeks."
"Thank God." Charlie murmured, eyeing her sleeping friend, before she turned her attention back to Mike's stiff body. "D'you need a ride?"
"I'm staying with her."
"You sure? Maybe you should come home and sleep it off. It's been hard for you too."
"I'm not leaving her, Charlie." For what felt like the first time in years, Mike took his eyes off of Paige to bore them into Charlie's own.
His voice came out strong enough to leave no doubt: in no case he was going to go home without Paige. He would stay there with her, at her bedside, watching over her until she finally woke up.
Graceland would have to wait because he wasn't going back without her.
"Okay, then. See ya in the morning, Mikey."
Giving up, Charlie brushed his hair back and dropped a soft kiss to his forehead. On her way out, she patted Paul on the stomach and nodded towards his ex trainee, obviously making her point: 'you've screwed up with his career long enough, now be a fuckin' friend and go comfort him'.
No matter how mad she was at Paul for what he had done, she knew that the only one who could talk some sense into the kid was him.
Mike wasn't going to listen to anybody but him, now that Paige was 'out of service'.
However, before Briggs could even take two steps to get closer, the young agent had already addressed him with a sour tone.
"You should've let me finish him. He shot her, Paul."
As the words left his lips, Mike squeezed his hand gripper so tight it almost broke in half. In that moment, all he wanted to do was to put a bullet in Sulla's head for hurting the most precious thing in his life.
"She's strong." His ex mentor reminded him and stood at his side, eyes closed: the sight of Paige, the emblem of life, restrained in a bed, made him sick.
"That doesn't change the fact that she's in that bed because of me. I should've protected her, Briggs. She shouldn't have been there."
"Paige is a smart agent. She can take care of herself, Mike."
"Still!" His head whipped around in a quick motion and he snapped at the older agent. For a few seconds all he did was watching his former mentor in the eye and holding his breath, while the image of Paige lying still on the ground, with her torso soaked in her own blood whaled in his mind. "Is this how you felt? When Lisa was murdered… so miserable and useless?"
He felt his throat getting dry and held back a retch - the uncontrollable nerves were torturing his stomach.
"That was different." Paul snorted.
Turning around, he slowly made his way to walk out the door. Lisa's death was still a painful subject to talk about and he wasn't going to bring it out of that small box he had shoved it into just because Mike needed some… example to take inspiration from. Something to make him feel better and luckier.
"How so?"
Before he could close the door behind himself, however, Mike's voice stopped him.
Briggs cleared his throat and shot him an icy look. He wasn't jealous, he had Charlie. But if he could, he'd have traded place with Mike in a second to have Lisa still alive in a hospital bed.
"Your girl's alive, Mikey."
The room was small and slightly dark, the faint neon lights of the hall being the only source of light seeping through the crack of the door as she kept it open. The steady beating of Paige's heart and blood pressure coming from the monitors rang mechanically in her ears.
AD Foster's footsteps were slow and full of regret, as she entered the room and neared the bed: what she had always considered a blonde, brainless and inconsiderate bimbo lay in the bed, all wrapped up and with those annoying oxygen tubes shadowing her face.
Because of her.
If she hadn't been so weak and surrendered to her conscience, she would have never set Lawrence free and given him a chance to tell the Solano's, Sulla and whoever else was involved, who Mike really was and that they were going to be there.
Jessica's eyes ran all over the girl's weak and fading form and finally fixed on her young and loose hand, resting on her flat stomach and clasped tight by another, much bigger one. A hint of bitterness pervaded her mind at the sight of those fingers loosely tied together. She clearly remembered how much security one simple hand firmly enclosed around yours could transmit in a time of need, when weak and defenseless. A feeling that she hadn't experienced in a long time now.
The feeling of someone taking care of you, putting you first before themselves just because they really care about you; something she envied so much of the DEA bimbo: Mike was slumped on the plastic chair by her side, his head low and lips parted. The scarlet graze on his cheek clashed with the whiteness of his skin. He had abandoned himself to an ephemeral sleep in an almost inhuman position, stiff and uncomfortable. Which obviously didn't matter to him: his back was surely going to haunt him and his muscles were going to be numb and sore for days, but what was important to him was being there. At her side.
Jessica smiled ruefully and touched her fingertips to his forehead, marked by the concerns of those past hours. She stroked his unusually messy strands of hair back, tracing her thumb softly over one of his eyebrows.
The young man began to stir under her touch and, promptly withdrawing her hand, she watched him blink a few times before fully waking up. His eyes scanned his surroundings and finally landed on her.
"Hey…" Mike croaked out, his voice hoarse from sleep. Pulling himself up, he sat down and rubbed a hand over his face. "How long have you been here?"
Jessica shrugged and took a step back, watching as he cracked his back and stretched out before her eyes. "Not long - how's Paige?"
The FBI agent's attention soon went back to the sleeping woman and his thumb rubbed possessively over her knuckles, before he let go of her hand. He looked tenderly at her pale face that was slowly regaining his rosy color.
"She's gonna be sleeping for a while. But she's out of the danger zone: she's tough." He smiled weakly.
Tough was the perfect word for Paige. Paige was a warrior.
"Hell of a lot tougher than I am."
"Not tougher than all of us." He corrected her, finally fully releasing his lover's hand and standing up.
Jessica got a good look at his tired face and sighed. Licking her lips, she walked away from the bed and back towards the door, not to disturb the girl's sleep. Mike followed her close behind with his hands in his pockets.
"What about DC now?" She asked.
He shrugged and and casted a look behind his back. "I'm staying here. Yeah."
"If you don't come back, you and me…"
"I know."
Obviously, that wouldn't stop him from staying. Jessica had known from the very first time she had heard him on the phone when he'd gone to Graceland that he wouldn't come back.
There was something about that place that kept him tied to its foundations and as much as she wanted to pretend it was just his foolish attraction to the DEA bimbo, it wasn't. Mike was going to stay there because he wanted to.
"You know, it's funny. When I first met you I thought the director's chair would be all you'd ever want."
Mike shrugged.
"So did I."
"Mhm." Jessica nodded thoughtfully and turned on her heels to walk out the door, when the words on her tongue decided to roll off and ring out in the air without her permission. "I never really stood a chance against her, did I?"
"Jess…"
Perhaps, it was for the best: she shook her head and encouraged him to reply.
"C'mon, Mike. We're both grown ups - she's got the guy, let me at least have the truth."
Mike sighed in response.
"Had things been different, with us still in DC and me never coming out here…"
"… you'd still be hers." She concluded for him with a sad smile. "It wouldn't have worked anyway, she'd still be the one owning you. Your 'choice'. Even with miles and miles keeping you guys apart and high chances of never seeing each other again - it's that sort of sugary crap I could never deal with. She's got you wrapped around her finger."
"I'm sorry."
It was all he could come up with in that the moment. If he had rehearsed this conversation, he would have found better and sweeter words to end things between them, but this was unexpected - Jess showing up at Paige's bedside had been unexpected.
"Don't be - I don't need pity. I get it, really: she's all those things I'm not - hot, tanned, beautiful, exciting… younger."
"C'mon, you know it's not that…"
"When we were in DC. Did you think of her while with me? Answer honestly."
That was unexpected. Mike gaped at her for a few seconds before he regained his composure and fixed his eyes into hers, deeply. When he didn't say a thing and kept silent, Jessica chuckled sarcastically and headed out of the room again. Before she could turn around, his voice, hard and resolute, stopped her.
"No."
"I said honestly." She rolled her eyes at him, but Mike took a step closer to prove his point.
"I'm being honest - no. Because what we had was different from what I have with her."
"Ouch. I really was a quick fix. What every woman dreams to be."
"I-"
"It's okay, Mike. Sick joke." Smiling smugly at him, she slapped the stock of folders on his chest. Her eyes stared up at his in farewell, until his hand covered hers to hold the folders in place. "Your work ups. All of them."
"Thanks-" He began, but was cut off by her mouth engulfing his in a long, powerful kiss. Out of nowhere, her lips had pressed firmly on his and her tongue had found his - she tasted sweet, like honey. Using her hand on his chest as leverage, she cupped the back of his neck with the other, threading her fingers through his hair.
Everything felt so foreign and different from the way it felt with Paige, but Mike responded to the kiss with equal force and wrapped his arm around her back. Finally putting an end to whatever they had established before - putting and end to his life back in DC.
Jessica slid her hand from his neck to caress his cheek and then down his chest, before finally pulling away and whispering on his lips.
"Goodbye, agent Warren."
And just like that, Jess was gone. Out of his life. Mike felt a tender smile pull at his lips. No matter how little their affair had been, she'd played an important role in his life, both professionally and personally.
His relationship with her had messed things up with Paige, but it had also strengthen his feelings for her and made it all even more clear to him: what he felt for Paige was so much stronger and powerful than the mere attraction he had felt for Jess.
Paradoxically, without Jess he wouldn't have gotten Paige.
"Bye Jess."
One of the few good things about hospitals was the silence - probably the only good thing that could come from such a painful place. In those white, sterilized halls you could almost hear yourself thinking.
"You know what's funny? You haven't even been there for her."
So, when Wayne's voice echoed in the darkened room, Mike had to keep himself from jumping in his seat at Paige's bedside. Instead, he took his eyes off the papers he was working on and stared back at the DEA agent at the other side of the bed. He was so focused on those work ups, he hadn't even heard him entering.
"Not by my choice." He muttered, lowering his eyes again to shuffle his papers around.
"You've treated her like she was nothing for the past two weeks." Ignoring his distressed sigh, Zelanski continued. "You've hurt her like hell - believe me I know, I was there. Just like I was there when she got shot or when she was in surgery-"
"What are you trying to say?" Mike cut him off, his eyes flipping back to the man in front of him in frustration. The stress and the anger of the past 48 hours where taking a toll on him and if Wayne didn't calibrate his words, he was going to be the victim of the rage that he had been accumulating in his body. "That I gotta step back 'cause you can treat her better? That ain't gonna happen. I'm not stupid - I can see the way you look at her. I know you want her, but I'm not walking away. Not now, not ever."
The last word escaped his lips in a nasty hiss, as his fingers gripped tightly the pen in his hand - his stare strong and hard. He breathed through his nose, reminding himself how this was slowly getting out of control: he was jealous and Paige had never liked that about him.
Something in his head kept reminding him of those annoying emotions he had felt when he had thought there was something going on between the two. Of course, he knew now that there was no interest whatsoever from Paige's part. But when Zelanski kept coming at him this way, slapping in his face how much her cared and longed for his woman - no matter how strained things were between them, Paige was still his woman until she put an end to their thing - he felt his self control slip away.
Especially in such a difficult and horrible situation like that one.
However, the beefy agent acted unimpressed and blinked a few times, shaking his head with nonchalance.
"No - that's not it. I might look like a dunce, but I'm no fuckwit."
"Then where you gettin' at?"
"You weren't there for her - you chose your OP over her. You weren't even there when she woke up. I was. But she asked for you, instead. For some weird reason, she asked for you. No matter all the shit you've put her through. I don't know about you, but when that happens, it can only mean one thing."
There was something in the guy's tone that made Mike's voice shake with hesitance as he fired back in what he had meant to be a challenging way.
"What's that?"
"I think you know. Better than I do." Wayne replied, casting a look at Paige and affectionately brushing a strand of hair out of her face, as he addressed him. "She took a bullet for you, man. What the hell are you waitin' for?"
The words left Mike speechless and he fell back with slumped shoulders, following the agent with his eyes as he walked out of the room, his mouth slightly open. He had expected him to say something about how he was going to do the best he could to steal her away now that she had seen how much harm Mike could cause her, or something around the line of that.
But never he would've thought Zelanski would have implied what he thought he had.
"Z." The FBI called out for him before he turned the corner and disappeared from view. When he turned around, Mike held his head high and acknowledged him with a serious nod of his head. "Thank you - for taking care of her."
Wayne shook his head with a sad smile and eyed in defeat the woman whose hand was tightly intertwined with Mike's now.
"Paige's beyond wonderful, Mike. You don't deserve her, but she deserves to be happy. Don't mess it up again, a'right?"
