Archive of Our Own ^beta

The hot water was out again. Mike’s shower started out lukewarm but was frigid by the time he’d rinsed the last of the cheap shampoo out of his hair. He would’ve skipped the shower entirely but didn’t want to spend the rest of the evening reeking of sausage grease and stale coffee.

He’d taken to sitting at a diner for hours at a time — sometimes the better part of a day. The coffee was bitter, the eggs undercooked, but the window seats offered a clear view of the comings and goings at a neighboring electronics store, which was an obvious front for a money laundering operation. If Mike had cared enough to expend the effort, he could have followed the money straight to the top, but it had been easier to leverage his professional knowledge to feign an intimate understanding of their operations.

If he could deduce all this merely by walking past the storefront, they were too obvious, he told them. They needed his help keeping things under wraps.

After a mildly convincing death threat, which Mike laughed off — If you’re this bad at covering up money laundering, you’ll never get away with murder, he’d said — Mike had secured himself a spot on the payroll. His salary was modest, but it helped fund his habit and covered a room in a shitty motel.

Mike wasn’t on the FBI payroll anymore. Technically, he was wanted for questioning — possibly even arrest at this point. No one had served him with a warrant, but that was the idea of staying gone. And he couldn’t exactly file taxes if he wanted to stay under the radar, so any job he’d get would have to be under the table. Admittedly, Mike hadn’t tried. He’d been too busy laying low, alternating between licking his wounds and beating himself up over how badly he’d fucked up his entire life.

When he stepped out of the shower that afternoon, the familiar scent of Briggs’s cologne washed over him, and Mike knew in an instant and a rush of adrenaline that Briggs was there. Briggs had found him.

Briggs was waiting for him, seated on the tacky, satiny polyester of the motel bedspread. Mike had expected Briggs to show up eventually; he just hadn’t known when. If anyone could find Jakes, it was Mike. And if anyone could find Mike, it was Briggs.

“You look like crap,” Briggs said, by way of greeting.

“You look in a mirror lately?” Mike retorted.

Briggs wasn’t wrong, but neither was Mike. They both appeared to have aged about a decade over the last six months.

Briggs stood from the bed and crossed to meet him in the middle of the room. Mike looked straight into his eyes. There was nothing there. No warmth, no spark of light, nothing. But Mike wasn’t afraid. If Briggs wanted him dead, he would have been dead already.

“How’d you find me?” Mike said. “I mean, I knew you would eventually—”

Briggs cut him off. “Hold out your hand.”

It’d been long enough since Mike’s last pill that the shakes were kicking in. He’d been thinking about it the whole time he was in the shower — how badly he wanted a pill, along with a series of vague calculations: how many pills he’d already had that day, and how many remained in his rapidly dwindling stash. How much he was spending on oxy and this crappy motel, versus how much the electronics store was paying him…

“That’s not an answer.”

Briggs didn’t waver. “Yeah, it is. Let me see your hand.”

Briggs already knew he was using, then. But of course he did. Hell, he probably saw the relapse coming from a mile away.

God, Mike hated him.

Reluctantly, he complied: hand out, palm down. There it was, that violent, telltale tremor. Try as he might, he couldn’t will his hand to remain steady. He grimaced and tucked his traitorous hands into his pockets. “Happy?”

“No, I’m not happy, dumbass. It makes me sick,” Briggs said vehemently. “Your situational awareness is crap when you’re high. It’s genuinely embarrassing how long I was able to tail you without you noticing.”

Mike’s brow furrowed. It was true: he hadn’t noticed anyone following him. What all had Briggs watched him do? “When were you…?”

“Last couple days. I kept thinking you’d turn around and notice, but…” Briggs shook his head. “Jesus, Mike. What are you doing?”

Mike laughed. Or he tried to, anyway. He could feel himself tearing up. The question was like a knife to the gut. Charlie had asked him the same thing once, nearly a lifetime ago. Or, at least, it felt that way. The two of them in his bedroom at Graceland, his belongings shoved haphazardly into a suitcase on the bed. He’d been convinced then his life was over, but he had no idea, had he?

“I don’t know,” he replied, his voice cracking. “Just fucking up, I guess. You?”

Briggs didn’t answer. Even now, after everything, he insisted on remaining inscrutable, like some kind of power play. He knew without being told exactly how Mike had fucked up, but fuck Mike for wanting any insight into what Briggs had going on. If past was precedent, Mike would find out in about six months, when it all blew up in his face and he learned Briggs had been pulling the strings the entire time, the unseen puppet master controlling it all from behind the scenes.

“You seen Chuck?” Mike said.

“She headed back to Brooklyn.”

That wasn’t exactly an answer either.

“Is she…” Mike didn’t know exactly what to ask. Is she okay? Does she hate me? I’m never going to see her again, am I?

“Not in prison,” Briggs said with a shrug.

“That’s where the bar is these days, huh?”

“You tell me, brother.”

A wave of something awful washed over Mike, but he couldn’t tell whether it was heartbreak, remorse, or withdrawals kicking up a notch. Christ, he needed a smoke. He dragged a hand down his face and sighed. “Listen, man, what do you want?”

“Doesn’t matter. You’re useless like this.”

“I’m not useless,” Mike snapped. “I’ll have you know I’m currently providing security services to—”

Briggs cut him off. “Mike, I’ve been following you for days. I know all about your so-called ‘security services.’ Shaking down petty criminals for cash — what, is that supposed to impress me?” Briggs’s derisive tone of voice made it clear his disdain for the job. “By the way, you’re about to get robbed. Kids have been casing the joint for the last couple days.”

Mike didn’t let himself react to the news. There was always unusual activity around the electronics store — people loitering, vehicles coming and going at odd hours — but he hadn’t noticed anything amiss, and he hadn’t seen any suspicious-looking youth in the area. Had Briggs invented that story as a test? Mike wouldn’t put it past him. If Mike claimed to know about it already, Briggs might say, Ha! No, you don’t, because I made it up. See? You really are worthless.

Mike stalked over to the grimy window overlooking the buckling asphalt parking lot. Drunken arguments and engines struggling to turn over had become the soundtrack of his life. Occasionally, he’d see young women being escorted into the motel by older men he was sure weren’t their fathers, and he’d be struck by vivid mental images of his time in Sylmar. He’d imagine stepping in to intervene, and then he’d be hit with the image of Lina bleeding out on the asphalt, and he’d look the other way and hate himself for it.

He still dreamed about her sometimes — about Lina. Watching the women come and go here, Mike had the unsettling sense that, although Lina had been dead for several years now, he was continuing to fail her. Then he’d smoke and realize he was being irrational. Every day, the world over, people were being used and abused and thrown away like garbage. Mike knew firsthand about being fucked over, having been well and supremely fucked by the FBI the day they assigned him to Graceland, sealing his fate with an order to investigate one Paul Briggs.

It was the FBI who’d tied his fate to Paul’s. It was their fault Mike was here. If it hadn’t been for Graceland, for Paul and Paige and Sid, for all of that—He might be deputy director by now, not on the run and wasting away in some rat-infested motel.

Much as it pained him to acknowledge, Briggs had a point about his drug use. Mike had gotten sloppy. Being high as often as he was had made him careless. It hadn’t occurred to him before, but when he was high, he wasn’t constantly looking over his shoulder or scanning his surroundings. It was a welcome reprieve, the one time his body allowed him to relax. But it was a luxury he couldn’t afford, as evidenced by Briggs’s presence. If Briggs could tail him for days unnoticed and make his way into Mike’s motel room uninvited, who else might do the same?

Mike couldn’t stay here much longer. This place was too close to L.A., and he’d been here too long. But where could he go, and what could he do? Nothing as Mike Warren — not on the books, not if he wanted to stay out of prison. What were his options, then? For months, he’d been asking himself that. And for months, he’d come up with no clear answer beyond massive amounts of oxy.

If anyone could come up with a fix, it was Briggs. The fix might feel for Mike like gnawing off his own leg, but it would free him from the trap in which he’d found himself.

“Take me with you,” Mike blurted out.

Briggs didn’t immediately reply, and the answer wasn’t obvious from his blank facial expression. “Thought you said I ruined your life.”

“You, Sid, Paige, my dad, the FBI, an Oxycodone prescription — what’s it matter? It’s not like it can get any worse.”

Briggs laughed bitterly. “Oh, baby, you have no idea.”

“Don’t patronize me,” Mike snapped.

“Mike, when you’re sucking dick for oxy, I want you to think back on this conversation, and you’ll realize I was right.”

Stunned to silence, it took Mike a moment to recover the power of speech. “Jesus Christ, you’re an asshole,” he managed at last, although that didn’t even begin to cover his feelings toward Paul Briggs.

“Why, ‘cause I won’t lie to you? If there’s one thing I know about addicts, it’s this: we’ll hit rock bottom and still find a way to keep digging. Mike… It’s gonna get worse.”

Mike’s stomach sank. He couldn’t deny that Briggs was speaking from experience — not merely his own, but the experiences of others he’d gleaned from meetings. Mike wanted to believe he wasn’t like other addicts, but he suspected every addict had felt that way at one point, and it hadn’t saved any of them.

“So, what, is that what you’re here for? To tell me I’m useless, and it’s only gonna get worse from here?”

“Wasting my breath, I’m sure.” Briggs sat down on the opposite bed and sighed. “You need to get right if you wanna stay on the outside. You’re getting sloppy, brother, and it’s gonna catch up to you. Think of this as a wake-up call.”

It was naïve to imagine he could make a clean break after Graceland. Mike could travel to the ends of the earth, but even if he never saw Paul Briggs again, a part of Briggs would always live inside him. There was a sick sort of relief in surrendering to that.

“So take me with you. I’ll get clean,” Mike said.

Briggs didn’t even take a second to consider the possibility. “Absolutely not. You’re a goddamn liability.”

“I’ll get clean, I said. Did you not hear me?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m sure. Tomorrow, right? And we’ll all quit drinking tomorrow.” Briggs said facetiously. He scoffed. “Go to rehab, get clean, and then come find me, and we’ll talk.”

“I can’t go to rehab.”

“No, you’re choosing not to.”

“I can’t,” Mike said vehemently, standing from the bed. “You know I can’t.”

Briggs held his hands up in surrender. “Hey, it’s up to you, man.”

“That makes no sense. Is the goal for me to get clean, or stay out of prison?”

“If you keep using, Mike, as sure as I’m standing in this room, you’re going to prison.”

Mike hated him.

It wasn’t up to Mike. It never had been. He shook his head, his eyes welling once more with the prickling of tears. “You have to understand,” he said, his voice strained with the effort it took not to let it waver. “I only ever wanted one thing in life, and now even that’s been taken from me. What am I supposed to do?”

“Grow up.”

Mike was sure he’d misheard, but Briggs said the words so forcefully, there was no mistaking them. “What?”

“Fucking grow up, man. You’re not ten years old anymore. The FBI isn't whatever fairytale superhero bullshit you imagined when you were a kid, and you fucked up. So you tell me: what are you gonna do? You gonna sit here, you gonna smoke your oxy and blame everyone but yourself? Or are you gonna man up and take some goddamn accountability?”

Mike buried his face in his hands. It took a minute to stuff his emotions back down, to stop himself crying, but then he sniffled, cleared his throat, and dried off the last of his tears. He could feel the crushing weight of Briggs’s gaze as he reached for his stash in the little laminate wood nightstand — in the top drawer, shoved behind Gideon’s Bible. The ziplock baggy was gone.

“Yeah, I found your stash,” Briggs said irritably.

“Oh.” Mike shut the drawer, scratched at the back of his neck. “Well, I was gonna give it to you, so… There you go.”

Did Briggs know that wasn’t the entirety of his supply? He’d had a couple pills in his sock earlier, pulled them out and sat them on the counter before he showered. So unless Briggs had snuck in the bathroom unnoticed, which Mike highly doubted, they were still there.

Briggs sighed. When he spoke again, he sounded far less like an angry, disappointed father. He had been in Mike’s place once, having blown up his entire life, standing before the charred ruins of the Estate, so perhaps he had found it in him to summon up empathy for Mike’s situation. “Get clean. Go to a meeting,” he said. “There are at least two within walking distance. If you can walk to meet your dealer, you can walk to a meeting. Tell ‘em Paul sent you.”

“And they’ll know which Paul?” It was such a common name, there had to be dozens of Pauls who attended meetings in the area. Meetings, as the organization’s name implied, were supposed to be anonymous — first name only. Besides, did Paul even go to meetings in Fontana?

Briggs pulled a face like this was an idiotic question. “Who the hell cares? I’m giving you an assignment. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

It hit him then: yes. Mike didn’t know what to do. That was the problem — or half of it, anyway. It wasn’t merely that he’d blown up his entire life; it was that he didn’t know what to do in the aftermath of the explosion. He’d gotten away, made himself disappear, and was trying to stay disappeared, but beyond that… He was lost, unmoored, a ship at sea drifting with no charted destination.

Ever since he was ten, he’d been aiming his life in the direction of one goal: become an FBI agent. He’d gotten to Quantico and refined his goal: graduate top of his class, ace his practicals, and land a job at the J Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, DC.

After graduation, Mike received his assignment, and what could he do but follow orders? He got on a plane to LAX.

Now, with his career over and LA behind him, he had nothing left. Nothing but this dinky motel room, a suitcase packed with his dwindling possessions, and the pills Briggs had taken from him.

Briggs walked closer, stopping just short of Mike’s knees. Mike couldn’t bring himself to look beyond the polyester sheen of the bedspread, the white quilting threads fraying and sticking out in odd places, his hand on the fabric, fingernails bitten short, soot staining the edges.

“Mikey, hey,” Briggs said quietly. “Baby, look at me.”

His hand was on Mike’s jawline just briefly, his chin, and then he was brushing the hair back from Mike’s eyes. It occurred to Mike how disgusting he must have seemed to Briggs, how pathetic. Mike had graduated top of his class out of Quantico, scored a 1700 on his practicals, and for what? Briggs was right: he was worthless.

“When I see you next, I want you to be able to tell me you’ve been to a meeting, okay? At least one.”

Mike couldn’t quite trust himself to speak. He cleared his throat. “When is that? When will I see you?”

Briggs shrugged. “I dunno. Guess you better get on it.” His grin was entirely unconvincing. He ducked down to press a kiss to Mike’s forehead, and it felt like goodbye.

Mike caught him by the wrist before he could pull away. “Don’t go.” The words were bitter in his mouth. “Seriously, I’ll do anything.”

Briggs closed his eyes momentarily. “No, you won’t.”

“Yeah, I would — I will.” Mike stood, crowding up against Briggs in the process. “I shot a guy on the toilet once,” he murmured. Briggs offered only a weak smile in return. It’d been so long since they’d talked about the movie, Mike wasn’t confident he remembered the title. Sunset Bust?

Briggs shook his head sadly, and Mike could feel it — Briggs pulling away, Briggs about to turn and leave him there. Leave him there to smoke his remaining two pills, to detox alone, and to die, his brains boiling inside his skull like the last time he went through detox. He fisted his hands in the soft jersey knit of Briggs’s shirt and slammed his mouth against Briggs’s. It was uncoordinated, all desperation and raw need, no finesse or technique, but god, it was everything. After a horrifying moment of doubt, Briggs was kissing him back, his hand on Mike’s back, clutching him close. Was this what Mike had been missing all this time? If this was how it felt to belong to Paul Briggs, he’d eagerly let Briggs devour him.

It wasn’t long before Briggs pulled back, and his hand was on Mike’s chest, not quite pushing him away, but creating distance between them. As Briggs took a moment to collect himself, to close his eyes and regulate his breathing, Mike imagined dropping to his knees. He could practically feel the impact of the hard floor below him, and he visualized the view from down there, the sensation of Briggs’s broad hand on his head and fingers woven through his hair, tugging his head back to force eye contact.

Briggs was the one to suggest the idea of Mike sucking dick, and it was just like him to go about things sideways like that. He would never ask outright. Instead, he’d plant the idea in Mike’s head so Mike would believe he’d come to it organically. If you can walk to your dealer, you can walk to a meeting. If you can suck dick for oxy… Hell, that was direct for Briggs. The old Briggs might have left obscene flyers around the motel or dropped anonymous hints leading Mike to instructive literature on fellatio in the nearest adult bookstore. Mike couldn’t help but wonder how things ever worked out with Charlie if Briggs couldn’t just man up and ask someone to suck his dick.

But whatever. It wasn’t as if Mike had never thought about it — about Briggs. Did Briggs know that?

Fuck, of course he did. He knew everything. At least, it often seemed that way, until Briggs revealed himself to be human underneath it all, horribly flawed with his own blind spots, the same as anyone.

Mike had hooked up with guys a few times in college, but he couldn’t remember what he’d said or done. The encounters seemed to happen organically, and nothing with Briggs was ever that effortless. Come to think of it, Mike’s track record with women was similar. He was never any good at picking women up in bars or asking girls out. If Paige hadn’t intervened on his behalf, he likely never would have spoken to Abby. And if Jess hadn’t come onto him, and if Paige hadn’t stripped naked in front of him at Graceland—

Okay, so Mike had zero game. But there was no one here to make the first move for him.

No matter. Mike was a professional. Or he had been, until recently. He could improvise. He leaned back in and lowered his voice. “I did say ‘anything,’” he murmured.

Briggs recoiled as if horrified by the implication. “Jesus Christ.” He took a step back, hands held up before him.

Okay, so Mike might’ve misread the situation. But it wasn’t as if he wanted to screw Briggs just so Briggs wouldn’t leave. On some level, maybe Mike had wanted it all along, since the day they met, and he simply hadn’t realized it. Maybe Briggs hadn’t, either.

He could feel words in his mouth, in the back of his throat. He’d relived that encounter so many times over the years, and he’d thought so many times about telling Briggs about it — about what it was like for him.

Mike was fresh out of Quantico when he met Briggs — the Paul Briggs. He expected a stern middle-aged man in a suit, disapproving and difficult to please. Then Briggs sauntered in. First thing in the morning, and he was already searching for a bottle of rum. His shirt was half-buttoned, the fly of his jeans hanging open. He didn’t have bedhead so much as it looked like he’d just gotten laid and hadn’t bothered to fully dress himself afterward.

You looked like a fucking Calvin Klein model, he wanted to tell Briggs. Like the ones Mike pretended not to notice as a teenager, growing up in upstate New York, rumors already going around his high school that he was gay.

You were so fucking gorgeous, he wanted to say. That Briggs was nothing like Mike expected was a given.

“You know, the first time I met you—”

“Mike, I’m gonna go,” Briggs said, cutting him off, and Mike shut his mouth tight and swallowed all those words. “You’re gonna be fine. Go to a meeting, and stop using. Just for today.”

What more could Mike say? I’ll suck your dick if you promise not to leave me? He wasn’t that desperate. Desperate enough to imply it, evidently, but not desperate enough to say it outright.

“One day at a time, man. You’ve got this. You’ve done it before,” Briggs said.

Then he left, and Mike was alone. His chest ached with the heavy, sharp need to cry, but he was tired. Exhausted, really. He locked the door, slid the chain back in place, and sat along the edge of the bed. The window A/C unit rattled, and Mike considered the damp spot below it on the carpet.

After sharing a house with five other people, it was unsettling sometimes, being alone. His thoughts felt too loud in the silence. In the mornings, he’d wake up and ache with homesickness for the muffled sounds of people down the hallway, waking up and going about their morning routine.

His head was cluttered with thoughts fighting their way to the forefront, some of them contradicting, so that Mike didn’t know what to feel.

Briggs left. He left him here to die. Mike needed him.

Mike hated him.

He didn’t know who he was anymore without Briggs, and that was Briggs’s fault somehow, even if he wasn’t sure how.

But he knew who Briggs was. Briggs was a murderer. Although to Briggs, shooting Ari in the head wasn’t murder, but accountability. This begged the question: how many murderers recognized themselves as such? Mike suspected it was easier for them to to live with themselves if they justified their actions as something other than murder. Something like justice, karma, an inevitability, or self-defense. Delayed self-defense, Briggs might have said, with Ari having threatened his life countless times before Briggs ultimately put a bullet in his head.

Briggs manipulated and used people habitually, and he thought nothing of it, picking people up and casting them aside like tools to be discarded when they no longer served his purpose. That was one of the most loathsome things about him. But Mike wasn’t doing anything with his life beyond smoking oxy and conning petty criminals, so someone might as well get some use out of him. Why not Briggs? Briggs’s actions generally kept the greater good in mind, even when his methods were reprehensible.

Would Briggs ask him to kill? More critically, would Mike do it? He didn’t want to think about it. But he was considering it, asking himself whether he could follow through with it if ordered, and that made him just as morally reprehensible as Briggs. Mike shook his head in an effort to dispel those thoughts.

The pills and his pipe were on the bathroom counter, where he’d left them. He could do this in his sleep. He had, in fact, done it in his dreams countless times — both while using and after getting clean the first time.

Only the night before, he’d dreamed about smoking oxy with Charlie, leaning in as she closed her eyes and exhaling a gentle cloud of smoke into her mouth. Because this was a version of Charlie that existed in Mike’s brain, he knew exactly how she felt in that moment. And when he awoke, he felt like the world’s biggest piece of shit. He loved Charlie, and he’d made her an addict, even if only in dreams.

Pipe in hand, smoke filling the air, the shaking of his hands eased. Why had he expected to die? He felt incredible. He was young and healthy; he could do this forever. Who was Briggs to order him to quit, to offer no material support, to steal his shit, kiss him on the mouth, and then fuck off, leaving him alone, condemning him to die in withdrawals?

Who the fuck was Briggs, and where did he get off? Briggs was an asshole and a murderer. Mike was better off without him and his two-faced, moralizing bullshit.

That night, Mike fell asleep alone on a cheap mattress and woke up seated beside Briggs on a memory foam mattress in his old bedroom at Graceland. Briggs was leaning in close, speaking low, and Mike could feel him, like part of him, like his own limb.

“Are you sure?” Briggs was saying.

Mike nodded. He didn’t know what Briggs was offering, but he wanted it, whatever it was. Whatever Briggs had, he’d take it.

“Okay,” Briggs whispered. His hands were on Mike’s arm, hot and silk smooth, wrapping Mike’s bicep tight with a rubber tourniquet.

Oh. Heroin, Mike recognized — no emotion attached to the realization. But of course.

Voice lowered and reverential like he was promising heaven, Briggs swore that Mike was about to feel better than ever before. This version of Briggs, existing only in Mike’s head and thus confined to the limitations of Mike’s own knowledge and experience, could offer no specific insight into how it would feel to shoot up.

As he leaned in and touched his lips to Mike’s, Briggs depressed the plunger on the needle, and it was like a punch to the stomach, a fall off a precipice, and his first hit of oxy all rolled into one, a sickening rush. Heart racing, Mike awoke with a gasp, Paul’s name on his lips, a horrifying and immense homesickness gnawing a hole in his chest. He ached with the desperate need to come, and goddamn, there was something wrong with him.

Goddamn Paul Briggs.

With an irritated grunt, Mike slipped a hand into his boxer briefs, kicking to untangle the scratchy comforter from around his legs. He could practically hear Briggs’s voice encouraging him still, and he’d barely touched himself before he spilled over his hand. Somewhere mixed in with the simmering rage and that baffling release, he felt an ache inside like a limb had been torn from him.

Later that day, hands shaking, Mike found himself standing before his dealer. The question was out in the air before Mike had fully resolved to ask it: “Got any H?”