Note: This is… a lot less than it looks. It's short and kind of to the point. I just wanted to play with Liz's angstiness. I'll be writing more Liz/Ressler soon though. Pseudo smut. More angst. They're so angsty oh my god. Why am I shipping them so hard damnit. I blame Megan.
Unbetaed so all stupid mistakes are mine and i'm at blame.
-x-
When she first met him she thought he was one of those agents, so worried in becoming something far up in the chain of command that they forget who they are.
She couldn't have been farther from the truth.
He looks less rigid when he wakes up; half lidded eyes, relaxed lines, lazy smile, ruffled hair. Barely a trace of who he is with the tie on. A shadow of the man in impeccable suits and perfect hair and a frown so constant that she wondered many times if the lines were eternally imprinted on his face.
She likes to do this, watch him while he sleeps. Watch him while he stirs and his skin becomes taut over his body as he moves and stretches and dream fragments give way to awareness, to capture the one bubble of honesty in a perpetual sea of deception.
She had thought working for the FBI would mark a new start in her life, not the end of it. She's wondered many times if she had known then what she knows now, if she'd have turned around and undone everything, undone every one of her choices, every tip of a ballpoint pen across blank paper as she signed her name many times over. If she'd have chosen to live in oblivion instead of not living.
He shifts and the bed sheet slides a little lower, rumples around his waist and she stares as the sun catches on his hair and sets it alight. He almost glows in the light and she shivers, recoils into herself in the large chair of his hotel room, hidden in the soft darkness the half closed curtains provide and pretends she's safe, pretends nobody can see her sins when she's in the dark. Pretends it isn't ironic how the person who trusted her the least has become her anchor, become the flickering brightness in the ugly darkness etched to her soul. Pretends he doesn't hurt when she uses him.
She tries to think back and pin point the exact moment she became this person; tries to count the sum of tragedies that lead her to the turning point in the wrong direction that she took, albeit hesitantly, because she didn't see any other way out. Lies have become her specialty, a poker face she had learned at a young age when dark alleys reminded her over and over that the system didn't care, that a foster family was as good as any corner to sleep on, that she mastered in the past several months.
Once upon a time she had a husband she loved and loved her back. She had a new job she was anxious for and excited about. She had a child on the way. She had the dream that very few with her past saw come true. Then it shattered, and like a broken glass, she ripped her hands and her face, and her heart and her mind when she tried to pick up the pieces.
Now she's a half empty shell of the woman the orphan little girl had become, one foot back in her past, one foot stuck in the present. Now she lies again. Lies to the people she loves and the people she owes the truth to; lies without a blink, or a tell, and lives every day like someone that has nothing to hope for. Like a woman that sleeps with one man during days and nights spent elbow deep in case files, then goes home to another and lie some more.
Then she remembers that the hardest person she has ever met cracks a smile in her presence, that she managed to chip away at his walls until she opened up a hole big enough for her to crawl in and put the bricks back with herself inside.
She used to sneak out of his bed while he slept. Put her clothes and her poker face back on, and in the morning it would be like the rhythm and shared space and whispered names never happened. Only knowing looks and random brush of fingers and standing closer than she should allow that soon led to tender hands rubbing her back when pain was too much and tears won. That led to tangled feet rubbing together until warmth seeped through. That led to sunrise on sleepy bodies and hand over heart and hair spread on pillows.
Now she watches him sleep because this is one thing she doesn't want to lie about and the one person she doesn't have the strength to pretend to. She can't let him be the one ready to catch her when she falls, she thinks. She can't allow him to drag himself to rock bottom just to be with her and even as she promises herself not to let it get that far her brain scoffs at her, it's too late.