Author's Note: Hello! I did not realize how much time had passed since I updated until the 'are you dead' emails started arriving. No, I am not dead. My doctor gave me the 'ok' to return to life and I'm going back with a vengeance. I shall not bore you all with personal 'nongraceland' related details, but suffice it to say I'm super busy and loving every second of it.
I have about 20 chapters of this story half written, so really it's just about finishing them right now, but I swear I'm working on it in my spare time. I rushed to finish this chapter before bed, so I can guarantee there will be tons of mistakes.
Big thanks to katydid13 for the idea to write this chapter.
Just so you know, this is a real article I'm referencing if you care to google it.
Paige wakes up to find Mike missing from her bed. She's not sure what time it is. The sun is out, but as she wanders through the empty house she figures everyone else is probably at work. Mike's around here somewhere though. She knows it.
She finds him in the computer room. All it feels like they do anymore is sleep, and yet Mike still looks tired. No, not tired. Weary. He is rubbing his temple as he stares intently at the screen in front of him. He's concentrating so hard he doesn't even realize Paige has entered the room.
"Hey! What are you doing?" Paige asks perkily, happy to see him again. She leans in over his shoulder to see what Mike's focusing so hard on. Mike jumps about a foot in the air in surprise when he feels her hands touch his shoulders.
"Hey! I thought you were napping!" Mike clears the screen quickly, and turns in the chair to face her.
"I've been napping for days." Paige says dismissively, reaching for the mouse. "What were you looking at?"
When Mike doesn't answer her and swats her hand away, Paige grins.
"Porn?" She teases him, leaning in so her breasts brush up against his back while she glances down at his pants to see if they're still on.
"No! Just stuff… FBI stuff. It's nothing." Mike pulls away from her and stands up, heading for the door motioning for her to follow her. "You must be hungry. Come on, I'll fix you lunch."
"You look really guilty." Paige's eyes evaluate him suspiciously. "Besides, you're suspended right now. You shouldn't have work."
"You know me. Workaholic. I have to stay sharp. Come on let's go." Mike says impatiently.
Paige's bullshit detector is screaming in her head. She quickly reaches over and opens the internet tab to the last site visited before he can stop her. What appears on the screen is the last thing she was expecting to see. Her blood boils when she realizes what he was trying to hide from her.
"A Man's Guide to Helping a Woman Who Has Been Raped." Paige reads in a dangerous voice before turning to glare at Mike. "Really Mike? You're trying to handle me?!"
"I'm not trying to handle you. I just want to know what I need to do in this situation." Mike knows he's in trouble. He has to try to calm Paige down before she takes this the wrong way. As he crosses the room back towards her he can tell from her body language he's too late. He knows this is the start of another fight.
"You think you need to read a book to understand me now? Like this has changed me into some psycho you need to research?!" She screams, backing away from his advances angrily. She is aware that her overreaction may be proving his point that she is crazy now, but she doesn't care. She is so mad at him.
"This has nothing to do with you!" Mike has to yell back just to be heard over her. He's so glad no one else is home right now to hear them screaming at each other.
"Of course it does! Don't tell me this is required reading for some book club you joined. I'm not stupid, Mike." Paige doesn't know if she has ever been this furious with Mike. He would believe all this psycho babble over her? He had to research her like she had contracted some fatal disease and he had to protect himself from catching it? She was fine! Why couldn't he see that?
"I don't know about this, ok? I don't want to make any mistakes with you!" Mike defends himself. "This isn't about you, I promise. I don't know what to do Paige. I need to learn all the information out there! It's how I deal with things."
"Ok. Other than the utter stupidity of researching this, what mistakes could you possibly make?" Paige demands. There was a guidebook for shit like this? Like it was some game where if you did all the right things you were magically cured and the past was erased? Paige is so angry she wants to throw the computer out the window.
"Well according to this I've already made tons!" Mike yells right back at her. Even as he's doing it, Mike knows that yelling at her is probably a mistake too.
"Like what?" Paige challenges.
"Ok, listen to this, Men often have an instinct to seek revenge, but this is a poor option that can further traumatize the victim, rather than helping her. This is a time when calmness is needed, and violent revenge would be the wrong way to help her." Mike reads aloud. "Well I certainly fucked that up!"
Slamming his fists on the table in frustration, he quickly moves himself away from her as he tries to calm himself back down. He would never hurt her, but he just wants to punch something. He doesn't feel in control of his temper just thinking about it, and he would never forgive himself if he even accidentally hurt her.
"Mike, you didn't seek revenge. You rescued me."
Paige can't believe that Mike is using this stupid internet article to put more blame on himself. He had such a martyr complex. Briggs nearly destroyed the house, Mike thinks it's because he's not good enough. Mike saves her after her abduction and blames himself for not somehow preemptively protecting her from every deranged criminal on the street. Now he's blaming himself for saving her the wrong way?
"We both know I could have done that without slaughtering those animals." Mike says, his voice cold and stinging with anger even as he mentions Paige's attackers.
"No, we don't." Paige says simply. "Mike, you haven't done anything wrong. None of this is your fault."
"See? That there!" Mike declares crossing back to the computer to scroll down the page.
"What now?" Paige growls, as Mike consults that damn article again.
"The victim may find herself having to comfort the helper." Mike reads aloud. "It's not about me Paige! My problems shouldn't be your burden right now. It's about you."
"It shouldn't be all about me and not you! It should be about us! Why am I not allowed to care about you anymore? I'm still me! I am not a victim!" Paige insists. She doesn't know why Mike is treating her like this delicate flower. Ever since the hospital he's been so damn careful with her. She's still the same person! Nothing has changed.
"No. No you're right." Mike can't believe he's messed up again. "You're not a victim. You're a survivor."
"I hate you so much right now." Paige seethes.
Paige grips the back of the chair so hard she can feel her nails cutting through the cloth. Each of her broken fingers send pain shooting up her arm from the stress, but she relishes it. It's the only thing keeping her from throwing the damn chair at Mike's head.
"I'm sorry! I'm trying Paige. I don't know how to do this!" Mike apologizes again.
"I'm the same person I was before." Paige can barely get the words out through her gritted teeth. "Nothing has changed."
"Paige, what happened to you was traumatic. It's ok to grieve. You don't have to pretend everything's-"
"I'm not pretending." Paige snaps.
"I don't understand what you're going through, but I care about you deeply. If you want to talk to me about this, I will listen. I want to be someone you can trust to be helpful to you, whenever you are ready." Mike recites.
Paige glares at him.
Mike waits patiently for her response.
"That's a direct quote from the article isn't it?"
"Ok, yes. Yes it is, but I mean it Paige! I want to be there for you. I know I'm fucking it all up, but I want to help."
"Dammit Mike!" Paige sends the chair flying across the room. It clatters against the wall with a loud crash. She instantly regrets the sudden action and grips her broken hand in pain, letting out an anguished yell both from the injury and pure frustration. Mike rushes forward to help her, but the look she gives him stops him dead in his tracks.
Paige stands there breathing deeply, trying to center herself and remove the blinding cloud of pain and rage. Finally she says in a low steady voice, "Fine. While you train yourself to be the 'rape guru' I'm going to go take care of actual problems by changing my bandages and taking my pills."
Mike wants to help, to fix things, but he knows better than to follow her right now. From the look on her face she may shoot him.
"Tell me if there's anything in that article that says how to magically heal broken bones!" Paige yells at him as she turns and storms out of the room. She's too angry to even look at Mike anymore.
Once she's gone, Mike groans and collapses back in a chair dragging it over to the computer. He feels like everything he does is wrong recently. He just wants to help her, and all he seems to do is piss her off. The article warned that rape victims have a tendency to have emotional outbursts and take it out on the person trying to help them. The article said it was a way of them testing to see who they could really depend on. Mike knows that somehow he has to show her that she can depend on him. That no matter how much she pushes him away, he's going to be there for her.
Mike decides the best thing he can do right now is just let Paige cool off and then try again. He turns back to the article and continues to read where he left off, hoping that somewhere on these pages there's a solution.
He's not even sure this article is meant for him. It seems to be geared towards fathers, husbands, and boyfriends, but it's the most on point piece he's found on what he as a man, or as a secondary survivor as the article says, can do. So far, however, it has mostly just been confirming that he's fucking the whole thing up. He sighs as he reads the next words on the page.
Tell her you love her. Tell her you love her. Tell her again that you love her. Got that yet?
Tell her you love her.