AN: First off, I'd like to (belatedly, sorry!) thank you for being so supportive of my first foray into Blacklist fanfiction. You made it an incredibly encouraging experience, and I couldn't be more appreciative!
Was supposed to be working on an upcoming multi-chapter thing…but this bubbled up instead. I sort of challenged myself to write within the limitation of one spoken line, which evolved into one spoken word. It's in two chapters (or just one, or one and half, depending on which you'd prefer) for reasons I'll probably ramble more about in part 2.
Disclaimer: As always, I own nothing!
His shadow was long in the late-afternoon light. It was what stopped her midway down the hall, what drew her to the doorway of his study. She watched it throw itself over chairs, over the mahogany desk and old books splayed atop the lacquered wood. He possessed the room—not in the way any other millionaire would, with monograms and a mouthed, unspoken mine, but like a ghost, a revenant that lived in the eyes of wall-hung portraits and water stains from his favorite lowball glass. She was struck by the sudden vision of him dissolving into the mote-filled air, seeping into the floorboards. The image stuck in her mind, propelling her into the room if only to make sure he was there and not a trick of the light.
If he heard her enter he gave no notice, save to raise a drink to his lips. Sunlight through the amber liquid splintered over his vest in incandescent shards, and she felt herself agreeing with whoever'd first said whiskey was meant to see the end of a day. She moved toward him as quietly as she could, loath to shatter the room's preternatural stillness—only to hear the floor groan beneath her. But he didn't turn, his gaze fixed on the oceanic lawn beyond the window. Fear set its small, sharp teeth against her nape. Despite his regular declarations to the contrary, she wondered if he'd finally left her, if the figure she saw now wasn't just a mannequin he'd dressed in one of his bespoke three-piece suits.
Stopping a few feet to his right, she appraised his profile and realized he hadn't been looking out over the yard at all. But for the pull of his brow she might have said he was dozing, the heavy, almost feminine lids pulled down, their bourbon-colored lashes dusting his cheek. She'd never seen him like this before. Even at his most lackadaisical she knew he was taking in his surroundings, shrewdly calculating escape plans and combat maneuvers under a guise of geniality. Each offhanded gesture concealed a dozen observations: weaknesses, handicaps, the physics of his environment, all carefully filed and ready for use. In his line of work, she supposed it was necessary.
But all that had been abandoned now. Maybe this was the only way he could rest, she thought, like a horse, unwilling to lie down for fear of being crushed under his own weight or too slow to stand if one of his many monsters crept up the bedside. Then he exhaled in a single, steadying compression—she swore he shrunk an inch—and his larger-than-life caricature was momentarily exorcised. In front of her stood only a man, her inscrutably tender protector and conniving catalyst. An old, unspeakable hurt leaked through the chinks of his smile lines, simmered in his crow's feet. It begged her to demand answers, as if this time would be different, as if tonight she could pierce his armor, exposing the soft-fleshed beast within.
Her mind jumped to an article she'd read about the oldest animal ever found, a centuries-old clam. Eager to learn all they could, researchers had forced open its shell—giving them their information and killing it in the process. At the time, she'd had the decency to be upset. These were experts dedicated to life, she'd seethed, yet there they stood, grinning like fools as they explained interior growth rings and mineral deposits, all that remained of five hundred years of existence. But now, as she stood before her own taciturn creature and its limestone walls, she wondered if frustration and curiosity would usurp compassion, if one day she'd pry him open, extract the truth and leave him to burn.
Her eyes traced the familiar purse of his lips, leaving the shell between them a moment longer. His jaw betrayed him with a telltale clench and a word emerged from her memories of graduate textbooks: bruxism. One of the myriad ways the human body seeps stress. If she had an x-ray she knew she'd find his molars set hard against one another, as if enamel alone could keep his secrets at bay. It won't work, she thought, emboldened by the cracks in his Botticellian face. Not now.
Impulsivity gripped her; she could always tell it was coming, that soon she'd cede power to some other, voiceless hemisphere. It fluttered in her stomach, uncomfortably close to a thrill. In the humming silence she raised an arm, bringing her fingers to rest over his shoulder as she stepped behind him. His skin prickled against the touch, warning her away, but she caught only the challenge in it.
Another step forward found her submerged in his shadow, breathing in his body heat, her forehead a hair's breadth from his neck. She expected a dozen things: for this illusion to shatter, for him to clear his throat and launch into a detailed recounting of some similar afternoon in Borneo—anything but what he did, really.
"Lizzie."
Just her name. He'd said it a thousand times in as many different contexts. But her fingers flexed on his shoulder and her intake of breath was short and sudden. It had only been a sound before—an attractive sound coming from his mouth, if she had to admit it—but just a sound, a denotation of Elizabeth Keen. This was something new. This Lizzie wasn't what she was; it was what she meant. He'd given her more in two syllables that he had in the past year: hurt and strain and so much want, all the pieces she wondered if she'd been imagining, vexing and tickling like stray hairs over her brow. Now it was laid before her, raw and unequivocal, and for the life of her she didn't know what to do, what meaningless words to use.
So her hands spoke for her again, sliding quietly through the spaces between his arms and ribs, fingers creeping up to hook over the front of his vest. She could almost taste his collar through her parted lips. His hands went rigid; even the remains of whiskey in his glass seemed to freeze over, but she noticed the infinitesimally-small tilt of his jaw as he leaned back into her temple, and decided she wasn't the kind of person to leave things half-finished.
She raised her mouth slowly, until the fabric of his shirt was at her chin and his aftershave suffused her every breath. Then her lips were on his neck, feeling with half-kisses for the soft indentation she knew would be there. His reaction was as much a purr as a shudder as she nestled into the curve of his spine. She felt his tremors bleed into her, finding some resonating shard buried underneath her breastbone. Whether they were fore- or aftershocks she couldn't tell; she supposed it all depended on how much more of him there was to break.
She was rewarded at last with an uneven patch of skin—the small, round scar she'd given him a year ago. He could only hiss as she set her tongue against it, suckling the pale flesh, as if to pull his tragedy through her teeth.