A/N: Hello, hello, I have returned because while this season has been good, the last episode was exceptional. Not only because it had a fantastic plot but also because all the Liz/Ressler moments were like sprinkles of gold all over that episode, and I very much had to write something down.
Takes place after episode 2x07.
Disclaimer: Naah, don't own 'em. Title from Sade's Pearls.
In the end, despite Cooper's protests and Aram's suggestion, Ressler goes home alone. The drugs are wearing off, his head is killing him and really, with the amount of injuries he has sustained in the previous months, Keen shouldn't really fault him for taking painkillers all the time. Because what he told her was the truth: he hasn't felt this good since he was last high. The drugs made the world hazier and slower but they also made it more bearable, made him more tolerable towards everything. Now the pain is catching up with him again, and his mood sours just with the knowledge that it will only get worse.
Bethesda – the real Bethesda – prescribed him painkillers for his injuries, legitimate injuries which need proper care and medication. He didn't tell Keen this because he could imagine the way she would look at him, the concern in her eyes almost as painful as the physical toll his body has taken. He knows that she cares, he likes that she cares but the bottle of white pills is still in his coat pocket.
Ressler stares at himself in his bathroom mirror for a while, contemplating the bottle in his hand. It would be so easy to take one, just one because he wouldn't have to go farther than that. He knows how good it would make him feel, or rather, how good it would be to not feel. But that damned look in Keen's eyes, and the way her voice caught ever so slightly has stayed with him; he might not be a profiler but he's not an FBI agent for nothing.
"The prospect of having to live without me must've been terrifying."
"It was."
He tried to make a joke and she just had to turn it serious and important, couldn't let him deny her concern, didn't allow him to brush it off as nothing. There was honesty and sincerity there, and almost too much to understand and withstand. He doesn't remember the last time someone was so genuinely and empathetically concerned for him.
He flushes the pills down the sink.
When his phone rings, he could almost laugh at the predictability of it.
"Ressler."
"Hey, it's me."
They both know that he knew that the moment the phone rang but pretend like it is a surprise because this is the civil thing to do.
"Did you get anywhere with the Scimitar's body?"
She releases a huff of breath in annoyance but relents. "No evident signs of what happened. It looks like an execution."
"He probably deserved that."
His words don't come as a shock; he doesn't find it in himself to care for the man who orchestrated an elaborate scam, complete with a car accident and a fake hospital, just to find one scientist. For all that it was fake, both of them could've very easily died, for real, and that possibility terrified him as well.
"I guess somebody else agrees with you. But you know that's not why I called."
"No, I have not taken any pills since you last asked."
His annoyance is more with himself than her and with the throbbing headache and the twinge in his right leg but she happens to be the perfect outlet for it.
"Good. Then you can have a beer with me."
He lets out a short laugh. "I really don't feel like going anywhere."
"Who said we're going anywhere?"
And there's a knock at his front door. He really should've guessed she would corner him and not let him get away with any diversions.
He sighs loudly into the phone but she's already hung up, so he reluctantly makes his way to the door and lo and behold, of course it is Keen with what appears to be takeout.
"Were you just in the neighborhood?"
For the second time this evening, she surprises him with her candor. "No, I came to see you." And he lets it pass, lets her pass because he can't fight this much honesty and approachability with anything left in his arsenal.
She unpacks the food – by the smell of it, Thai – and props two bottles of beer on the table, sitting down on his couch like they've done this before. And he knows that they have, remembers the first and only time she was at his apartment, the utter desolation on her face when she told him that she had nowhere else to go, and wonders if that same desolation is somehow evident on his own face now.
Mercifully, she does talk about the case while they eat, briefs him on the body, the little physical evidence they gathered, the scene of the crime. He listens and the monotony of the report, the concrete nature of what she is saying helps him centralize himself, find a footing and lulls him into an erroneous sense of normalcy.
When they've finished eating and he could basically recite the case by heart, a small but not uncomfortable silence descends on them.
She doesn't prompt him to say anything, doesn't ask him if this thing he has with painkillers will be a problem going onwards but he can almost sense the question in the air and suddenly finds that he wants to tell her.
"They prescribed me more painkillers at the hospital today."
She looks at him but doesn't comment, so he has to push forward himself.
"And I flushed them down the sink."
"That's good."
"But I was tempted." He sneaks a glance at her face; she is curious but not judging or disapproving, and the ever-present concern is still there but he doesn't find it irritating, more soothing.
"I was tempted because I know what it would feel like. The aftereffects of whatever sedative they gave me at that warehouse were incredible. I haven't felt this good since I stopped using, I won't lie."
"So why didn't you take them? You would have just cause today."
And this is what he wrestled with in the bathroom just an hour earlier. More than one reason came to his mind, as it does now, all of them truths but some more revealing than others. He doesn't know how to explain to her that the way she looked at him is one of those things because he can't yet accept what that would mean, but knows that it would entail unveiling something which neither of them might be ready for. But there is at least one truth he can give her.
"I would. But maybe I wouldn't know when to stop. Because I like it and I'm not sure I can really control it."
This is more than what he told her at the office when he so boastfully exclaimed that he could handle this on his own, that he could stop whenever he wanted to. That is something addicts always say, he realized only later.
"You will probably be tempted more than this once; going sober just like that is not easy."
He nods but there is something else he has to tell her, while they are in this window of opportunities, of truths and honesty, and unflinching realities.
"I'm sorry I let you down in Poland."
It's something he's often thought about since; how his slow reaction almost cost his partner's life and the nagging suspicion that he could've done more has never quite fallen away. If there is anything he has always been proud of, it's his stellar career as an FBI agent, as someone who never takes the shortcuts and who always operates by the book. The knowledge that he was less than good in that moment will always stick out for him, even if no one ever finds out officially.
She nods slowly. "I'm not holding that over your head, you know. But...thank you."
They are still learning to be partners, properly, as their first months were spent mostly under tense circumstances, with him so wary of her, and her trying to do everything right but never quite managing to win him over. They've changed a lot during their time together, have moved on from that place of distrust and total animosity but this partnership-friendship they're trying to balance will take some more effort before it fully works, so she gives him something in return for that.
"I won't tell Cooper if you are still worried about that. He doesn't have to know everything, as long as you manage this, and if you don't shut me out."
Though he accused her of trying to run to Cooper, and tell on him, he knew even then that she would never do that, knew but couldn't explain it. She doesn't really owe him anything, she could very well report him because he was well below in his duties for several weeks, and after all, he has reported her at least once before.
But there is something different between them, something more, something exceedingly important.
He will give her one more truth today. "I know, I trust you."
It is something he's never said, something which he's always felt doesn't need to be said. But by the way her eyes soften and the corners of her mouth ever so slightly tilt upwards, he realizes that this was a good call, that this was something she needed to hear, and he needed to say.
A/N: Let me hear you say things.