A/N: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, to the lovely, witty, gifted sillhouetteredoblivion. Babe, this one is for you. Based on the slap-slap-kiss prompt, and basically, this is just AU to the hilt, because, well. I grant birthday wishes to the people I love. Disclaimed. Reviews are much appreciated.
Warning: NSFW
/
They're sitting in the dark, parked car, and everything is still as death.
Blood still flows fresh from a cut on her hand. Another Blacklister, another close call, but this time was too close, and he knows it, and she knows it. Closer, even still, playing too close to the vest, because when Jane Pachinko had spoken in slurring Russian, had Lizzie chained, and Red chained, found the scar on Lizzie's hand with her cold, foreign limbs—
Lizzie didn't know Jane, but Jane knew Lizzie, and she'd hissed Russian at Red, and Red had narrowed his eyes and hissed something back because he understood. Red speaks Russian, and Lizzie looked down, and looked at Jane, and looked back down when Jane swiped the sharp edge of her blade across the scar, reopening.
Slicing Lizzie open, white-hot, and—
Lizzie remembers screaming, and screaming, and Red yelling, yelling in a language she's never studied, a language that sounds like a lullaby she knew in a dream, long ago, far away.
By the time the task force finds them, the damage is already done.
So they're sitting in the dark, parked car, and everything is still as death.
And she's crying when he says her name.
"Elizabeth."
He has no idea why she's called for him, has no idea that she can't sleep in the motel since Pachinko because the damned stuffed rabbit sings like a caged bird, singing, singing. It's screaming to be let out, and she can't sleep near this damned thing one more night, she can't sleep, and she's tired, and—
Lizzie pulls it from her coat pocket, and she knows he's going to leave her soon, so she studies his face instead of wasting another vision on the object in her bandaged hand. His face, and his features that she's come to know like the back of her hand, and the purse of his lips as he comprehends what she's doing.
"Take it," she begs of him. "Just take it."
He does, and there's fear bubbling in her throat, pooling in her mouth, waiting to crawl out. The dread, at knowing it's about to end, and he's going to leave her, going to walk out and leave the door open, all the lights out, except—
The bird singing its spiteful song turns yellow with hope; feathers, feathers.
He won't leave me, the small voice in her head— a child's voice—whispers.
He wouldn't leave me.
The trepidation rises from her in waves, sloshing in her chest, breaking the shore line over and over again. Red tucks The Fulcrum into his jacket, and then reaches out, touches the back of her bandaged hand. In the dark, parked car, he takes her hand, and he takes her heart in his hand even if he doesn't know it, even if she's resisted being so vulnerable, so flayed. She holds his hand and she's given him the object that symbolizes her world, her worth, and it's a little like baring her neck to the teeth of the beast, like giving the monster the key.
Red says:
"It's all going to be okay, Lizzie."
There's no music box, just bird song.
But Lizzie still believes him.
Opens her eyes wide and opens her still-bleeding hand, and believes him.
/
"Most women want a man to come home to them. A dog to his evening meal, if you ask me," Samar jokes, lilting with her dark hair and her dark eyes.
They're having drinks because these days, Liz is erasing all the old lines in the sand with her thumb, and she twirls her thumb around the rim of her margarita because sucking the salt, baring a grin.
"Aram wouldn't be like that," Lizzie says outright.
She's not one for bullshit these days, either, and it's obvious from the way Samar coughs and turns her nose that she's playing it off, that she knows what Liz means. It's true. Aram is one of the nicest human beings Liz knows. Niceness is relatively priceless, these days. These days.
Since she welcomed a criminal into her life, made her job the hearth and all the fires around them the tell-tale hour, the knife to the stone.
"Tom was supposed to be a teacher," Liz notes, carrying on. Sipping the sour, bitter liquid. "He pushed for kids, for domesticity, and the idea grew on me because I wanted some semblance of normalcy, but—
"You never really wanted it," Samar finishes for the other woman, inclining her head. "But that doesn't mean you didn't want a warm bed. Someone to hold you."
"This coming from a Mossad-
"No," Samar chuckles, sassy. "No, you know what I mean. Everybody wants to rule the world, but don't tell me you want to be alone. Nobody wants to be alone."
There's the bird in the wire cage, the seagulls, the crashing rapids. Sunlight.
Fish.
"I've just never seen the point in any of it," she shrugs pointedly, pushing the emotion back, back. Samar's gaze softens. Truth in her eyes. Samar takes a swig of her drink, motions for the bartender. There's a pregnant pause before Samar responds, and when she does, it's the end of the conversation.
"I bet a man like Raymond Reddington has never seen the point in any of it either."
/
She jerks her purse higher onto her shoulder, turning out the lights to she and Ressler's office before—
"Liz," Aram catches her attention, waiting for her.
His face is solemn, like a man about to deliver a eulogy, a reckoning.
Somehow, Lizzie knows before he tells her. Somehow, Lizzie knows, like the way the crashing has been building, the pendulum on edge, the prophecy of the stars, something like that.
"Reddington asked me to do something for him, Liz. And I did it because I'm afraid he'd kill me if I— well, what I mean to say is— I mean— you need to go talk to him. I think he's planning—
/
She drives with the windows rolled completely down, despite the frigid air that blows, tangles up her hair, messes her ponytail. Flying, she feels like a bird flying away, and he was going to go away. He's planning on going away, and he asked Aram for untraceably given accounts and untraceably given records, forged documents, and Aram knew to tell her, but, but it's still stinging, it's still fire and brimstone in her belly.
Her hands shake on the steering wheel, but she's not crying.
She's falling apart, and her chest is burning with regret, but she's not breaking.
Her chestnut locks whips around her face, and in her rearview, at the edge of the skyline, a gray wall of clouds creeps; a storm is coming.
/
Her heart is thudda thudda thudding in her ears by the time she's managed to slam her car door ceremoniously, jerk her body forward, moving, moving until she's reached the ornate doors, the elegant exterior of the beautiful structure. Red's safe house has always been overpriced and overly luxurious, but today it's especially grating, and her heart is in her throat, and by the grace of God, Lizzie prays to a God that does not exist that she will not vomit, or cry, or—
She doesn't knock, but Dembe still opens the door as if you has.
Liz pushes past him like the two hundred or so pounds of muscle is no problem, no gain, but he's got his arm thrown out, trying to stop her. "Elizabeth, what is wrong? Liz!"
And she's past him, moving, moving, wind beneath her sails. The study is to the right, and she's at the door within seconds, pushing it open. Trying to remember to breathe, even though she sees him, sees the very, holy outline of his body and she doesn't know what possesses her. She'd had every line thought to a tee, but she sees him and it all goes out the window. Follows her sanity. Presses her lips to the rolling thunder and calls it religion, even if her mouth is dry as bone.
"How dare you," she seethes, and he turns around like a cat dropped, spine taut. "How dare you, you son of a bitch."
The problem is that she knows him too well. Know the criminal, knows the face.
Red knows exactly what all the fuss is about, the horror of realization dawning in his eyes. Mouth opening, hand raising. "Lizzie—
"No, no, you don't get to talk," continues on, heatedly. Tossing her head, blush across the apples of her cheeks, and the pure emotional connection of the moment leaves her gasping, trying to formulate the response she's concreted in the car, on the way here. She doesn't really know why she's here, just—
"You didn't think I'd find out," she states, and her voice is quieter, softer. Ragged. "So, what? I was going to come looking for the next Blacklister, and you'd be gone. Are you packing? Are you scurrying, Red? Leaving?"
And she heaves again, shaking her head. Red is shaking his head too, but her chest, her chest.
"What about the innocent lives you—
She stops, tries to keep it together, but—
"You leave people. You hurt them and then you leave them. Your family was only the first casualty, wasn't it? Did you even care when," and she tries to remember the details, tries to deliver the words as concisely as she can. "When your daughter tried to kill herself? What was she? Sixteen? You were branded a traitor and it ruined her life. And you just can't stop, can you? You've ruined my life, Red. And now you're leaving because you got what you want? Fine. Go! Leave."
A myriad of thoughts flit across Red's face before he settles on a mask of soberness, meticulously licking his upper lip, brow worming, until he finally settles on taking a step forward. Lizzie doesn't move away, doesn't back down. Stews.
"Lizzie, you're mistaken," he murmurs, barely there. Eyes shining, another step—
"No, you— you—
She can't finish the sentence, but he's moving closer, and she's got this fire in her pores, and it's burning her up, and—
"Leave!" Lizzie shrieks at him, finally. Face flaming, hands shaking. Unadulterated fury. "I'm telling you to go! Go! Leave me alone and never come back—
"Lizzie, you have no idea what you're talking about," Red tells her, level, and he steps closer still, and something within her just—
Snaps.
Lizzie's hand moves before she can mentally catch up with her actions, and with as much strength as she can muster, Lizzie winds back her arm. The smack of his skin against her palm resounds, and his head moves to the side with the force of it. The raw power.
With a gust of air, he looks back, looks her in the eye.
And she looks him in the eye.
And damn him, damn him and everything he's made her feel and everything he's done, damn him, damn—
She thrusts back to strike him again, raging, but he's quicker, and before she recognizes what's happening, he's got his vice, thick palm wrapped around her wrist, and—
"Ow," she mumbles, face contorting into a mixture of shock and pure distrust, overwhelming tension, and then it happens. Then she falls apart, and breaks, and breaks over and over again like the shoreline, and before he recognizes what's happening, Lizzie is writhing. Wrenching herself away, but he won't let go, and she's hitting him with both hands, face, chest, anywhere the blows are valid. And she's sputtering, and it's a flurry of motion, but then he simply wraps his other hand around her other wrist all snakelike, quick, so quick.
Liz literally sags, whimpering, and her hair is everywhere, and her makeup is smeared.
He could commit her; she looks so unmade. Pulled apart at the seams, and he holds both her wrists together, against his chest, and they're close. They're standing so close together, and Lizzie looks up. And he looks down.
Those few seconds change the course of any futuristic happening that could ever transpire.
Red lets her go, and the soft skin of the insides of Lizzie's wrist throb, but she half expects to lean in and press her lips against his, to confine everything to the space between their bodies, but instead, things happen differently. She never gets the chance to kiss him.
One can only look at Raymond Reddington to see that, in his past, he was the perfect t. Broad shoulders, bulking arms. Brute strength— and Lizzie has always felt that, with him. The stronghold. The safety. It's at that moment that she feels small, feels moment when Red bends enough to wrap his limbs around anything that matters—
— proceeds to dump her, gracelessly, onto the desk.
There's a desk. They're standing by a desk, and he's just—
He's—
They're—
Oh, oh, fuck. He's—
There isn't any foreplay, not the kind she'd like, not the kind they would have had if this was a world of peace and quiet. This is bombs going off in the dark, the way he doesn't bother to shut the door. The way he doesn't care if Dembe will hear them. The way she doesn't particularly care, either.
There's no sweet pecks, no tongues clashing, just Red going for her jeans before he does anything else. His fingers make work of the button and zipper, and Lizzie gets the picture, gets what they're doing. Her cheeks are burning with shame, and his cheek is still blazing pink from the mark of Lizzie's hand, and while Red unbuttons his slacks and shoves them and his boxers—
Red wears boxers, Lizzie notes. Black and silky.
Lizzie arches and tears her jeans and cotton, Walmart panties down her legs, shoves them, shoves them. Red doesn't make sure he's ready, but Lizzie does scoot down so that the angle is better and he steps between her legs, and—
Lizzie eyes his erection, takes it in like she's studying, like he's the teacher, and it's only another note to add to the list of reasons why they are doomed by the Gods, by the powers that dash and divide, but he's perfect. It's engorged and perhaps of a little more than average length, but deliciously thick in a way that make her squirm, engage her abdominal wall to curve her hips so that the tip brushes her pubic bone, pearled bead catching in the patch of hair, drawing out.
Her mouth waters where there was so much still, so much high and dry, and Red groans when Lizzie scoots more, lets him brush his cock against her clit that stands, pulses.
His thumbs feel like branding irons when they catch her hips, hold her stable.
He'll bruise those, too, and Lizzie closes her eyes and waits, mouth puckered, but—
Red leans over her. Braces his immovable hands against both sides of her head, looms, and he's meeting her eyes when the frantic has been so real, so palpable. He takes a moment, and he's wanting her to take this moment with him, so she does. Of course she does.
Lizzie opens her eyes, and God, the color of his are beautiful.
He's so—
He's perfect, and he smells like sleep in a warm bed, and when Red positions and pushes the tip, begins the slow slide of slick flesh against his hard, aching member, he uses his other hand to dig into her scalp painfully, pull her right so that he can bury his mouth against her own, and—
He swallows her moan with the way his mouth moves, swallows every part of her whole.
They break apart when he is fully seated, and Lizzie inhales like a dying woman and he's looking a little wild too, and in the next moment, she pushes his chest. Pushes him back, so that he can stand, still within her. Lizzie tells him what she wants with her eyes.
Pushes her own self up on her elbows and looks at how they're connected, making small noises in the back of her throat that she can't even control. Whining like an animal, whining for—
Red adjusts, a solidly determined look in his hazel eyes before he grasps her again, makes her pull perfect, and then—
And then he pivots his hips backward, and the way he brushes within her makes her belly turn molten, makes every ounce of anger she'd had within her melt away into something like inexplicable lust, something consuming. She can barely breathe, again. She can barely think, and she's trying not to sob with the physical pleasure when Red starts to fuck her precisely, slowly. Sets the pace with his hips like a job, like a man with a task.
He fucks her until she's so wet from the sensation that the sloppy, moist sounds the skin makes, it's—
It's enough to make everything burn, burning, they're burning up.
Like Pompeii, she thinks. Beautiful, beautiful.
She comes first when he steps forward without thinking, to be closer to her, and he's still fully clothed, and she watches the sweat drip down his temple when he moves forward and the angle makes him brush against her cervix, and she jerks, coughs out her release. Shakes and shakes, and Red laughs. Red laughs, and he's inside her, and—
And Red, without saying a word, drops down to lay over her, again. His breath against her cheek, panting. Hot. Everything is too much, and Lizzie is over sensitized so it's almost painful, almost not good when he's suddenly heavy, sudden weight. She thought he was going to leave her, she thought—
Red moves faster, then. Harshly, and the material of his pants makes her clit sing, makes her babble and babble, and Red stops the instructions by kissing her again, biting her lip openly, like they do this all the time. But this is the first time, and Lizzie clenches again when she comprehends the exact way he's looking at her. Like he's the king and she's the queen, and this is their castle, the whole world her throne. All for her, when he jerks and jerks until she wails, wails, and—
"Liz—
He breaks off, stops. Red stops moving, and she was just on the edge, she was just—
"Red," she tries to catch his attention, because she'll go mad if he doesn't give her exactly what she needs now, now, now, now, now.
Tries to smack his back, and she can feel him start to spasm, buck, and the warmth, the spreading. Red's nostrils flare, and Lizzie takes in the way he loses himself when he orgasms, the way he looks like he's no longer here on Earth, still suspended without the edge of release—
But then Red falls, himself. Doesn't hold himself up anymore.
Opens his eyes from the erotic grimace he'd held, looks at her all smoky, predicts the situation, and—
Red's stare is calculating when he delivers one, last, brutal thrust.
He knows what he's doing, because when Lizzie contracts, opens her mouth to scream—
Red already has a hand clamped down over her mouth, rocking her through it in little motions, peppering kisses over her nose and cheeks and forehead and chin as she sobs, only a bit helplessly, muffled by his palm. Sweat everywhere. Sweet love, but their own brand, all tangled up and ugly in the parts that matter to other people, but don't matter to them.
All monsters have mothers. All monsters come from women's wombs, and when Red slips from Lizzie's body, trickle of fluids against her thigh, Lizzie shudders lightly, turning to the side.
Even if it hurts his old bones, Red lays next to her on the desk, still half-on-top. Still good weight, good and right, so real. Stares into her eyes, still millions of miles away but right beside him, with him, bliss and unspoken things.
Red strokes her cheek so sweetly that it makes her hurt in places she doesn't know a name for.
Moon and sun. Stars and sky.
"I'm not leaving you," he mutters, all husk. "Lizzie, someone will have to kill me before I leave you."
The intensity in his stare makes her skin break out in goose bumps, makes her eyes go wide and shiny, and then his mouth pulls buck in confusion, in sordid sympathy—
"Sweetheart, I don't know what you heard, but—"
She breaks him off with a kiss, touching the same face that she'd tore into with craze, and he kisses back, moves with her. Lips and teeth, the taste breathless and unforgettable because this is the end of meaningless and double-ended conversations and grit, the beginning of something like mutual companionship, or maybe just love—
Maybe this is just love, unsustainable. Love, in transit.
That's okay. They can work at it.
Lizzie pulls back, tries not to cry again.
"Just stay," she whispers, hoarse. "Please, just stay right here…with me."
"Okay, Lizzie. Okay."
He kisses her like the seal of promise, and Lizzie believes.
/
He goes rigid when her fingertips stray beneath the collar of his shirt, brush against the skin that means everything, that changes everything. He knew it was coming, but he didn't want it to be so soon. He's flaccid, still naked, and she's still got wet thighs, but they're warm, and safe, and even if his back is going to ache tomorrow, he sees Lizzie's entire face freeze from the worn mask of content, and his heart goes thudda thudda thudda in his throat, and he wants to jerk away but he can't move.
For the first time in his life, Elizabeth is speechless.
Red's eyes are rimmed with bloodshot conveying, and he opens his mouth and twists it as he tries to say what he needs to say, but he can't—
And she doesn't move, and he doesn't move.
Until—
"I won't leave you, Lizzie," he makes out, and Lizzie has never heard his voice sound so rocky, so tight around the vowels. "I didn't then, and I won't now."
More silence, and in the same way that she can't, she can't, he can't, he can't—
"I'm a monster," Red states for her, frowns deep. All throat, when he goes, "but Lizzie, I swear to God saving you is the best decision I've ever—
Lizzie splays her hand across what of the scar she can make out, and he tries to move, tries to say more, but she stops him with that splayed hand, with the way she touches his cheek again, different from when they'd kissed side by side, energy flowing from skin-on-skin, more like soul-on-soul, and Lizzie holds his cheek and leans in, and they're both crying.
They're both crying when she tells him, only for him:
"You're not a monster, Red," she bawls, sniffling and shifting so that she's braced by her shoulder, pulling his entire jaw forth with both trembling hands, beloved, beloved. "You're not a monster," against his lips.
"You're not a monster. You're not a monster."
/
.
.
.
fin.