Bullet Proof

[1] Nothing Hurts When No One's Real

[1]:
Nothing Hurts When No One's Real
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Thoughts of the Estate still haunted Paul Briggs much more than he would have liked to admit to anyone, but that didn't stop him from being the first agent to volunteer to be placed in Graceland. He couldn't help but to think that maybe this was the key to healing over what happened there. Unfortunately he still saw it in his dreams. He saw what he never actually saw; he saw the fire consuming the house, blazing through the hallways and creeping into the bedrooms of each of his friends, wrapping itself around everyone there... around Lisa.

The fire was his fault, and the guilt had been consuming him ever since he went back to California to see the charred remains of where he once called home. He knew he didn't light the match, but he might as well have.

That was why he went out to where the Estate burned down sometimes, always with a bottle of whisky as his only source of companionship. He'd look at what was left of his home and drink until it didn't hurt anymore, to the point where it was almost like a game to him. How much of the bottle would it take before he couldn't feel it anymore? How far down did the dark liquid have to get before the pain that gripped his chest when he looked at the ashy nothing on the beach ceased to exist?

No one in Graceland knew anything about the Estate. This spot on the beach where it was burned to nothing but the skeletal remains of wood and ash was his secret spot. It wasn't anywhere that Jakes or Johnny or Paige or Charlie needed to ever be. He felt no guilt in letting them believe he was out late working a case when he'd go to his spot on the beach and return at an unreasonable hour with the smell of alcohol on his breath and usually his clothes on a bad night.

Briggs knew that the next morning he was starting an undercover operation with Charlie as a junkie named Eric, and he knew he was going to need nothing short of a miracle to be able to pull it off without having the desire to go back to the darkest time in his life. There was no question it was going to be difficult sitting in a room full of heroin addicts, watching them shoot up and watching that feeling of euphoria overtake them and run through their veins. It was going to make him itch for a real dose instead of the hemoglobin given to him by the bureau; it was going to make him try to find any way to get away with shooting up with the real deal without losing his badge.

"Dammit!"

His curse echoed through the empty night sky, and the sound of glass shattering pierced the once silent night when he threw his bottle of whiskey down onto a log. In his drunken haze, he could almost taste the alcohol mixing with the salty beach air when he breathed. He couldn't do this heroin operation. It was too close to home; there was too much of Paul Briggs in Eric, and that terrified him. 

With that thought, he walked back to Graceland, leaving the broken shards of glass from the bottle of whiskey scattered around the sand and soot. When he started on his way back, he didn't bother to look behind him at what was left of the Estate again.

************

Graceland was quiet when Briggs returned from the beach. He would have assumed everyone was asleep if it wasn't for the dim glimmer of light that was coming from a lamp in the living room. Whoever was awake in there, he knew he wasn't going to be able to slip by, and when he tried to quietly sneak up the stairs and saw that it was Charlie flipping through a case file, he knew there was definitely no escaping her in particular.

Charlie's head turned in his direction when she could hear footsteps, and when she saw her soon-to-be case partner, her expression soured. She'd only known the man, the myth – Agent Paul Briggs – for a couple of weeks, and they hadn't spoken much outside of their everyday small talk, but if he was going to be disappearing into the night when they had a case to work the next morning, she wasn't sure how much she was going to be able to trust him to go under with her.

"Where the hell were you?" She asked. "And how much did you drink? I can smell you from here. You know we go under with Quinn tomorrow, right?"

"It's under control, Chuck," he assured her.

"Under control?" She set her case file down and stood up from where she was sitting on the couch, that ever present look of scrutiny on her face. "You're drunk, Paul. It's two in the morning, you stumble into this house reeking of booze, and then have the nerve to tell me it's 'under control'?"

She came and stood in front of him with her hands on her hips, and he couldn't help but to think about the fact that maybe she would have been more intimidating if he wasn't so much bigger than her.

"If you screw this up for us it'll be on you when we don't get our guy," she told him, lowering her voice once she was close enough. "And you know I'm not talking about Quinn. I'm talking about Odin."

Odin.

Just the sound of her saying that name sent shivers up his spine, and he knew he had to recoup before she noticed how put off he was.

"Odin's a big fish to fry. Why don't we take it one step at a time?" He asked. "Focus on Quinn first. We'll get to everything else later."

Charlie was still looking at him with those scrutinizing brown eyes, and she could still smell the alcohol practically seeping through his pores and off of his breath with every word he spoke to her. She knew they both needed to get to bed, or that she at least needed to get away from him until he no longer smelled like a distillery.

"You're drunk, Paul," she reminded him again, softening the harshness of her tone. "Take yourself to bed. We gotta be up bright and early tomorrow."

If he was a little more coherent, Briggs knew he'd have something else to say stashed in his back pocket. He always did for when she had her moments like this, but these were different circumstances. He was too drunk to think straight, and even if he wasn't, his thoughts were too occupied by the Estate and Lisa and Odin to even be concerned about what she was saying. Charlie, even when she was right in front of him, was the last thing on his mind, and her judgement was going in one ear and out the other. At the end of the day, he was still Paul Briggs. He was still one of the FBI's best undercover agents, and whether or not he was intoxicated didn't make him any worse at his job. Charlie had no right to judge.

None of that left his mouth though. Instead he looked back at her from where she wasn't taking her eyes off of him and gave her the most generic answer he was sure he could muster up.

"Goodnight, Chuck," he told her, deciding that taking the high road and going to bed was the better option at that point than starting an argument and running the possibility of waking up the rest of the house.

"Hey," she stopped him before he could make his way to the staircase, and finally a small smile graced her lips. "Tomorrow morning there's no more Chuck and Briggs. Just Katie and Eric."

Briggs almost wanted to tell her that Eric and Paul Briggs were practically one in the same, and that it was just a matter of names and occupation that set them apart, but he didn't. His secrets were his to keep, and pushing them off on Charlie wouldn't have been fair to her. His secrets were his burden. That was his mantra.

"Katie and Eric," he repeated back.

She smiled again, this time showing off her straight, white teeth.

"Hopefully you'll remember that in the morning," she teased, bumping her elbow into his arm. "Goodnight, Eric."