Liz looked at him and was surprised to see that there was no reaction in her body. No fluttered heart, no tears, no shortness of breath. He was just like any other suspect being questioned.
She leaned on the two-way mirror and crossed her arms, waiting for him to say something. He just looked at her with shocked eyes.
"Lizzy" he whispered, trying to hit something. Nothing happened. "You can't believe her. She's a criminal, she lies"
"So are you! Why would I believe you and not her?"
"Because you know me!"
She chuckled, and then opened his file in front of him.
"Jacob Phelps, con man, spy, origin unknown, flexible allegiance, charged with the murder of Viktor Fokin. No, I don't know you, Mr. Phelps." She closed it with a hand movement, and he sighed.
"Liz, please. I'll tell you everything you need to know, but you have to believe I did not kill that man!"
"Start talking then, Phelps." She emphasized his name, a reassurance to herself more than to him. She looked at him and she had to fight the urge to see Tom Keen, the man she once loved. He wasn't that man anymore. He had never existed.
"I know you're mad, about Gina. Look, it never meant anything, she was a handler, I've always loved you."
He had hit the subject she was trying to avoid. Gina Zanetakos had revealed a lot about their past, including the fact that they were lovers while he made plans of building a family with her. That was the last straw. It was over right there.
"You have no right to play this card with me. I don't care about you and Gina, I don't care you were sleeping with her and then coming home with adoption brochures, that means nothing anymore!"
"It clearly means something" he played her again, and she couldn't hold it anymore.
"No, I don't. Do you want to know something, Tom? Yesterday I learned you were sleeping with a criminal while we were married, do you know what I did? I went home, I took a shower, I drank a glass of wine and went to sleep. That's it.
Last week I learned something far smaller about another man sleeping with someone that wasn't me, and you know what happened? I cried myself to sleep. That's how I know I don't care about you!" She was screaming, and crying, and Jacob looked at her with widened eyes and a half-open mouth, barely believing what she was saying. She took a deep breath, swallowed the tears and left the room.
On the other side of the mirror, he couldn't believe what he had heard. He was in doubt about putting her there to question Phelps, but he would never expect to hear that. As she left the room, he came out of the other, and their eyes immediately crossed in the hall.
"Liz." He called, and she just shook her head and turned the other way, moving away from him.
"What was that?" He said to Aram, back in the observation room. Jacob Phelps was now being removed from the interrogation room by two agents. He pressed his forehead against the glass, his two hands into a fist on the wall.
"It was too personal, leaving her there" Aram said, cautiously. He knew that would sound like a critic, and he didn't want to be the one to tell Ressler that he had made a mistake.
"I know I made a mistake. I've always known it was wrong. But she... She was doing fine. It wasn't Jacob who caused that." Aram was surprised to see him admit his fault, and agreed that whatever caused agent Keen to burst, it was external. Then, he remembered something.
"She mentioned something that hurt her last week, right? A man sleeping with someone else"
"That's ridiculous her bringing up whatever this is, she would never..."
He noticed Aram's guilty face, and knew the agent knew something about it. His stomach turned as he heard what he already knew, but was in denial.
"Last week I told Agent Keen about your... Situation with agent Navabi. She was curious to understand what had happened and I may have mentioned a bit more than you firying her because she aided and abeded a fugitive"
He turned briskily and punched the glass, not so strong but enough to hurt. He was breathing heavily, thinking about her words now that he knew the context. "I learned about a man sleeping with somebody else that wasn't me." She had said "I cried myself to sleep"
He felt like crap. It wasn't enough that that night and everything that followed it still had a bitter taste, now it was affecting her, and it would certainly affect their already broken partnership. He looked at the now empty interrogation room, and decided that it was time to go home.

"There's nothing else we can do here, Aram. Let's go!"

"But...Agent..." Aram tried to speak, but he was utterly ignored. The tech agent just shook his arms in defeat and got his things.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

She stopped at his door and a voice in her head screamed that was a bad idea. She didn't know how much of what she had said at the interrogation room was clear to him, and was surely not planning to clarify this. Since Aram told her what had happened between him and Samar, she had felt jealous. She spent the whole day not admitting to that, but when she saw them leaving together at the end of the shift, it was undeniable. She came home and not even Hudson's wiggling tail was enough to cheer her up. She cried like she never thought it was possible to cry for a man. She felt pathetic, it was totally wrong of her to feel jealous, it meant absolutely nothing, and they didn't owe her anything. But then he arrested her, and then protected her with his body and soul and finally, was the one responsible for clearing her name and bringing her back to the FBI. She was confused, and scared she had seen more than the reality in all of that.

She knocked on his door lightly twice, but immediately changed her mind and turned around to go away. She shouldn't have come.

Inside, the beer was getting warm and flat in his hands. He had completely forgotten about it. For the last few minutes he was completely away, thinking about the mess that was his life these past few months. He, who was a by-the-book kinda guy, had done more messed up things in this time than his whole life combined. For a brief moment, he missed Audrey and how simple his life was back then.

This feeling vanished the minute he heard the knocking on the door. He got up on a jump and got closer to it, fast enough to hear her swearing under her breath and her steps going away. He pondered for a few seconds, hands on the door knob. If she's going away, means that she doesn't want to be there, or that it was a mistake. Should he open the door, then? Stop her? Then Audrey came back to his mind, the fact that when she left him, while he was obsessed with hunting Reddington, he didn't go after her. He didn't act, and then he lost precious time with her. Things could've been different then. Things should be different now.

He turns the knob, and opens the door just as she was about to get into the elevator.

"Keen?" he calls her by her last name, not to sound professional, or distant, but to step on solid ground. Let her clarify her reasons to coming here, don't jump into conclusions.

She freezes as he calls her name, finger on the button calling the elevator. The doors open and she could just enter, go away, forget about it. Except that she can't.

The elevator doors close again, and she turns around to face him. She can't look at him, she's scared. He doesn't say anything else, so she doesn't know where he is or what he's doing.

Only when he's steps away from her does she realize that he moved. She swallows and lets out a whimper as he touches her face, forcing her to look at him. His eyes are stone cold, and his brows are furrowed in doubt. His hands are cold, but his touch is gentle, and it makes her skin shiver. Their eyes finally met, and it's like they are doing the communication instead of their voices. He raises her hands to touch his arms, gripping on him as her eyes confirm what he had thought before. She half opens her mouth, and it's the sign he needs.

He slowly approaches his face to hers, closing the gap between their lips gently, cautiously, as their first kiss should be. His eyes are opened every second of the way, but when he touches her soft lips he closes them, as she opens hers, and a tear escapes from her right eye. She responds by kissing him back, as slowly and cautiously as he is, moving her hands to the back of his neck, tangling her fingers on his hair. The kiss is still fragile, lips barely touching, so she licks them with the tip of her tongue and pulls him closer by the neck, deepening the kiss as he moves her to the wall, pressing her against it with his body, his hands now on her sides, resting on her waist as if he doesn't know how far he is allowed to go.

She breaks the kiss, and moves her fingers through his hair as their eyes meet, and she smiles, relieved, and then laughs out loud. He looks at her confused, wondering if he did something wrong, and then thinking that maybe she now thinks this whole idea is ridiculous. She sees that he looks nervous, so she stops laughing and caresses his cheeks, kindly.

"I just thought it would take a long conversation to take us here." she explains, and he grins.

"I'm tired of wasting time, Keen." he replies, and holds her closer to him. She smiles in response.

"So don't, Agent Ressler." their eyes meet, and then he pulls her up and walks back to his apartment, as she leans down to capture his lips back on hers.