Author's note: This story just seems to never end, but I'm working on it. I just want to get this finished and then take a break. Still not quite sure how to end it, (my original vision has changed a bit) but it's getting there. Love hearing all your feedback on where it's been and where it should go.

It's been three days and two sleepless nights and Mike and Paige still haven't discussed what happened when he came to her room after their fight.

The morning finds Mike sitting on what he now thinks of as his "problem solving rock" staring out at the ocean. Whenever he needs to count regrets, or think through mistakes, he comes here. He's been here at dawn every morning since that night. Normally, he sits here until Paige finds him wallowing and drags him back up the beach to the land of the living. She found him here after Eddy committed suicide, when he broke up with Abby, and when he almost left Graceland. She just seems to instinctively know when he needs his space to think and always shows up. It also helps that Mike chose the rock near her favorite surfing spot. The past two days she hasn't come.

Today the waves are crashing and it's perfect surfing weather, but Paige is not the surfer who finds him this morning. Instead it's Briggs who comes up to him decked out in his wetsuit.

"Hey Mikey. Where's your better half?" Briggs approaches him, sitting in what is Paige's spot beside him on the rock.

"I'm not sure." Mike doesn't even bother correcting or chastising Briggs. He knows he's asking where Paige is.

"Really? What's going on? We were starting to think someone at the hospital stitched you two together." Briggs jokes.

"Yeah, well, I think that's done." Mike says dejectedly, without looking over at his mentor.

"You two have a fight or something?"

"Yeah. It's not really my place to say." As much as Mike wanted to talk to someone about it, he didn't want to go gossiping about Paige's personal life to the house, and he really didn't want everyone to know how she rejected him.

"This wouldn't happen to be about Phil would it?" Briggs's question takes Mike off guard. Was there anything Briggs didn't know? Was the man truly that omniscience, or had Paige felt the need to tell everyone in the house she had had sex?

"Why would you think that?" Mike asks guardedly. It's a stupid question and both him and Briggs know it.

"Because you're obviously in love with her and she slept with another man." Briggs cuts through the bullshit to the point.

"She told you about that?" Mike asks.

"No, but I saw her leave the bar with him the other night, and now you two aren't talking. It's not a far leap." Briggs shrugs.

"You were there? Why didn't you try to stop her?!" Mike demands. He feels betrayed. By both Briggs and Paige. Briggs had been there the entire time, and he had let her leave with that creep? He hadn't even given Mike a heads up first? Mike had been out of his mind with worry last night when Paige didn't come home.

"Well, I figured she's a grown woman and she can do what she wants. Besides, have you ever tried stopping Paige when she sets her mind on something?" Briggs rolls his eyes, still remaining calm as Mike flips out beside him.

"Well you could have tried!" Mike yelled.

"Did she do something wrong? Are you two exclusive?" Briggs asks point blank. Mike has a feeling Briggs already knows the answers to all these questions.

"We're not…" Mike can't argue with what Briggs has said, so he decides to change course instead, "It's not about that! She clearly is having issues dealing with things, and you put her right in a dangerous situation she wasn't ready for-"

"Woah. First of all, I didn't put her anywhere." Briggs cuts Mike off, "We went out for a drink and she went home with a man who she had a long history of hooking up with before you got here. It wasn't exactly stranger danger. It doesn't get much safer than Phil. The man's harmless."

"It should have-" Mike continues to argue, but Briggs cuts him off.

"What, it should have been you? Are you two dating? You always told me there was nothing going on between you." Briggs reminds Mike.

"Because she wasn't ready for it, not because I didn't want there to be!" Mike snaps. Mike is furious. Briggs screwed up, and he's not even taking responsibility for it.

Briggs gives Mike an appraising look. It's true him and Briggs had never talked about Mike's feelings towards Paige, but Mike knew Briggs knew. Briggs made it a point to know everything that happened in Graceland. No matter what Mike's said in the past, he's certain Briggs knew how Mike felt.

"So what now agent Warren? You're just going to give up?" Briggs asks, "Doesn't sound like you man."

"Yeah, well I don't know what else to do. She's made it pretty clear she doesn't want me." Mike says, "I'm not really interested in becoming a stalker."

"Well you stalked me pretty well when you first got here. You are due for a new target." Briggs shrugs.

"Not quite the same thing." Mike laughs.

"Look buddy, I'm not saying it's easy. That's the price we men pay for liking difficult women. Sure, you could go and date a less complicated girl. You could be a ladies man like Johnny, a ghost like Jakes, or find something simple and safe, like that little Maryland piece you tried to distract yourself with originally, but it's a cop out. Personally, when it comes to love, I never saw the point in settling for ordinary." Briggs says, getting a reminiscing look in his eye as he stares out at the ocean. "If it doesn't set your blood on fire, what's the point?"

"So what are you saying?" Mike asks, cautiously.

"Don't give up. I'm rooting for you two."

"I thought you said 'no love in graceland'?" Mike says dryly.

"Yeah. I said that." Briggs admits, "You know Mike, nothing's ever simple. See those waves out there?"

"Yeah, they look pretty wild today." Mike acknowledges, he's never sure where Briggs's is heading when he goes off on tangents like this.

"You think you have it all under control, but you never do. And sometimes that right wave, or right woman, comes along and knocks you off your ass and by the time you come back up for air the whole world just looks different. And if you find someone like that, all you can do is hold onto them as tight as you can."

"She slept with someone else." Mike runs his hand over his neck. Briggs makes it sound so simple, like Mike just needs to man up and face his feelings. However, Mike did face his feelings, and Paige had rejected him. He didn't know what else he could say when he faced her again. She didn't want him.

"You slept with someone else." Briggs says simply.

"No I haven't!" Mike quickly corrects.

"Then what were you doing with Maryland exactly."

"Her name was Abby, and that was before-"

"Before what? Before you had feelings for Paige? Bullshit."

"Ok, fine. But it was definitely before I knew she was even an option." Mike admitted, embarrassed that his crush had apparently been so obvious to the entire house. So much for being a super spy.

"Maybe that's it. Maybe she doesn't know you're an option." Briggs shrugs.

"I am clearly an option." Mike scoffs. "Look, I made a move, ok? I tried. She rejected me. Is that what you want to hear?"

"Yeah, sorry to say this Mikey, but those forehead kisses of yours don't count."

"It wasn't just that. I- Look, let's just say there was no doubt I was making a move." Mike cuts off Briggs questioning, flustered. "There was literally no possible way to mistake what I was doing as anything but making a move."

"Oh! When was this?"

"About three nights ago."

"Wait… After Phil?!" Briggs asks, aghast. He thought Mike was smart. "You made a move on her only after finding out she'd been with another man hours before?"

"I didn't want her to feel like she needed to go to Phil for that! If I had known I could have done something!"

"Ask you for what? To fuck her as a favor?" Briggs asks.

"Don't be so crass."

"Mike, you knew this was going to happen." Briggs chastises him. Everyone had been telling him from the beginning.

"I know, I just didn't expect it to happen so soon. We were fine. We were getting by and I had just gone back to work, and I just needed a little more time."

"She was not fine." Briggs says firmly.

"Look you don't understand. It's more than that…" Briggs sits patiently while Mike looks for the words to explain his hesitancy to get involved with Paige. His need to keep her safe.

"I have spent my whole life staying away from attachments. Hell, I picked up and moved to Graceland without so much as a phone call home, and here, in California of all places, I develop a connection." Mike rubs his temples, "She is my achilles heel that everyone knows just how to hurt me with. As long as I'm in love with her, then she's not safe. Anyone who wants to hurt me will only have to look so far as to her, and this job." Mike rolls his eyes, "I make enemies everywhere I go and they know everything. Apparently the whole world knew I was in love with her before I even did. I still don't know why they thought Paige was my girlfriend. I was with Abby at the time. It doesn't make sense."

A silence falls between the two men. Mike feels drained from his confession.

The silence only makes Briggs's next words more unexpected.

"I told them." Briggs says simply.

Mike gapes at Briggs. He can't have just meant what he said. There has to be some other meaning to his words. Mike sits, trying to translate the meaning of Brigg's confession, and when the true reality of the situation falls upon him, he feels a rage building up inside him he didn't think he had the energy for.

"YOU TOLD BELLO PAIGE WAS MY GIRLFRIEND?!" Mike screams, jumping off the rock and turning to stare at Briggs in shock.

"Easy Mikey, I didn't tell him anything he didn't know. I was trying to gain his trust. It was after the whole Eddie thing. Bello was suspicious because someone said they saw you out with Bobby Moi's chick. He was ready to put a hit on you and asked me about it!" Briggs explains, "I said yes you were fucking her. If I didn't, he would have given you the same treatment he gave Eddie. Probably worse."

Mike is trying to process all this new information. It's finally all making sense. He never understood why Bello had taken Paige instead of Abby, or how he even knew about her. Now he knew. It was Briggs. It was always Briggs. Every goddamn bad thing that happened around here always led back to Briggs.

"I said you didn't meet her until after the Eddie thing, and you had arranged to meet her so that you could try to figure out if Eddie was betraying Bello to Bobby's gang, but you fell for her. I was saving your ass!" Briggs takes advantage of Mike's shocked silence to continue explaining.

Mike has shut down. He is standing next to Briggs his fists tightening at his sides as he sees the entire story from a new light with this information. This whole time Mike's been feeling like it was his fault, like he was a poison for Paige who got her hurt. But it wasn't him. It was Briggs.

"How could you?" Mike chokes out.

"I was thinking on my feet! If Bello suspected you of being the one in charge of the bullet interception he would have killed you. You saw what he did to Eddie!"

"We should have arrested him then and there! We had enough on him! You sacrificed Paige to get to Jangles just like you did Charlie! Why the hell would you lie to Bello about her being my girlfriend? You could have told him anything."

"The only way to save your ass was to convince Bello that you initially seduced her to protect him, but ended up falling in love with her. By the time I told Bello, you were already his bodyguard. You'd proven yourself to him." Briggs defended. "Think about what we know about Bello, Mike. It makes sense. Bello's a narcissist but his love of westerns and his wife shows he's a bit of a romantic. He already knew you had a secret, he just thought it was a secret girlfriend! It was the only way to keep suspicion from you Mike!"

"And you never thought of warning either me or Paige of this?!"

"I handled it." Briggs says defiantly. The man had so much guilt on his shoulders already, pure out denial was the only way to take any more.

"Handled it? Did you see how well that turned out? Look at her Briggs!" Mike screams as he thinks of Paige. Poor broken Paige. Everything she's been through, she didn't have to. If Mike had known ahead of time, he could have saved her.

"This whole time, I've been thinking it was my fault, but it was you." Mike's voice is shaking. He feels like he may vomit.

"Look Mike, it wasn't your fault and it wasn't mine. It was Bello. Bello and those bastards who kidnapped her and they're all dead now."

"This wouldn't have happened if you hadn't told Bello she was my fucking girlfriend!" Mike screams at Briggs.

"I wouldn't have had to tell him that if you weren't the idiot who was spotted out with her at a bar! What you think you were subtle? That we all didn't know about your little crush? Anyone with eyes can see it Mike. Right now it's easier to blame me, than to face the fact that you're in love with her and people are fragile and we live in a dangerous world! And that's life! One day you're not going to be able to get there in time and she'll be gone."

"Fuck you." Mike spits all his hatred at Briggs for saying his worst fear aloud. "I am not you, and Paige is not Lisa. I won't make the same mistakes you did."

After that the next few minutes are just a blur of punches and struggling. Mike's not sure who actually threw the first punch, or how long the fight lasted, but it ends with both men lying bruised and beaten on the sand gasping for breath.

"I love her." Mike chokes out.

"Tell her." Briggs says, tilting his head back to try to stop his bloody nose.

"What if something happens to her? I can't protect her." Mike admits, too spent and sore to pull his body up from the sand.

"No, you can't." Briggs agrees, "But don't worry Paige's right hook is better than yours. She can do a damn good job protecting herself."

Mike almost laughs at the joke, but the very real fear that one day something will happen to her chokes it out. "I can't go through that again. If anything happens to her..."

"Trust me Mike, I know it better than most. Sometimes we lose the people we love, but that's not any reason not to love them while we can." Briggs admits. "Come on, let's head back to the house. I need to put some ice on this."

Mike allows Briggs to pull him to his feet and the two men limp back to the house.