Silence stretched between them as Red stared up at Liz from his seat on the edge of the bed. Every second that ticked by only served to increase her anxiety. He trailed his hands up and down her arms, stalling for some reason she couldn't fathom. What could he possibly have to tell her that was so important it couldn't wait, but would paradoxically be so hard for him to say?
She braced herself for the worst. He was married, three kids, the whole nine yards. Or he was gay. Or just stringing her along, thinking she wouldn't have the guts to go through with it and now he was going to laugh at her. (Or let her down easily. He seemed the type.) He certainly wasn't impotent, that much she was sure of. It had to be something else and, judging by his reticence, it was something serious.
"Geez, Red, what's going on? You're starting to freak me out."
His jaw worked strangely, his eyes bright, shiny, troubled; she had the oddest sensation that he was about to cry.
"Before we go any further," he said, thickly, "I have to tell you about my scars…"
His… scars? What? Was he really going to follow through with that?
"Really, forget I even mentioned them. I'm not going to make you—" He cut her off by laying a gentle finger across her lips for brief a moment before pulling away again.
"If you want me to stay with you tonight, you need to know. To level the playing field, so to speak."
"I don't understand."
"If you'd let me explain, you would."
"But your scars are none of my business, you really don't have to—"
"Yes," he said. "I do. And believe it or not, they are your business."
"All right. OK. You've successfully piqued my curiosity. How could your scars possibly be my business?"
Some of the tension in his shoulders eased; he slid himself further back onto the bed to sit cross-legged against her pillows and patted the blanket in front of him. She climbed up and mirrored his position, so they faced each other in the middle of the bed. His socks looked woolly and warm, and she wondered distractedly what they would feel like under her fingers.
That was an odd thought. She had never wanted to give a man a foot massage before.
"You have to promise me something, Lizzy." A quick touch of his fingers to her knee brought her attention back to his face. "Whatever I tell you tonight, it can't be the reason you let me stay with you. If you let me stay, it has to be in spite of what I say, not because of it."
"OK…" She sounded dubious, even to her own ears.
"Please. Promise me if you let it influence you at all, it'll be to tell me to walk out that door and never come back." The grave expression on his face brought her up short.
"I promise," she said.
He held out his hand, intending to seal the promise with a handshake. She let out an incredulous huff of air, but took the proffered hand all the same and, ignoring the butterflies in her stomach at the contact, gave it a firm shake.
Once the agreement was reached, his grip shifted seamlessly from that of a stiff and formal handshake to the kind of intimate, fortifying grasp that came with simply holding someone's hand. He studied her hand in his, running his thumb over the back of it. The butterflies became harder to ignore.
"Do you remember anything at all about your life before Sam adopted you?"
"How did you know I was adopted?"
"I told you. I know Sam."
"Right." She frowned, feeling horribly slow on the uptake. "What does this have to do with—"
"Do you remember the fire?"
Liz's stomach dropped and she forgot to breathe, her grip on his hand tightening reflexively. The fire that left her an orphan plagued her dreams as a child, as much for her lack of concrete memories as for the horror of it. Her subconscious mind had a habit of conjuring up new and disturbing variations of that night; it didn't matter how hard she racked her brain, struggling to recall actual details—it was too long ago, too traumatic, and she couldn't manage anything clearer than the terrified eyes of a young man, the overly large jacket she'd been wrapped up in, and the horrible, putrid smell of burning flesh.
Burning flesh.
His scars. Burn scars.
She studied Red's eyes, eyes which even now were wide and wild with something like fear, and tried to compare them to that old mental image she had to see if they matched. "Were you… Did you save me?"
He held her gaze, his unblinking deer-in-the-headlights stare starting to unnerve her. "Yes," he whispered, breathless, as if the admission, or maybe just the anticipation of it, caused him physical pain.
The room fell into fraught silence in the aftermath of his confession, silence filled only with the electronic hum from the incandescent lamp on the nightstand, the ticking of the clock on the mantel over the gas fireplace in the corner, the pounding of blood in her own ears. The only thing anchoring her in that moment, the only thing anchoring him, was the ever-present back-and-forth stroking of his thumb across the back of her hand.
"'Small world' doesn't even begin to cover this, does it?" she said, when she trusted her voice enough to speak.
"No. No, it doesn't."
"Why? Why were you… why was I… what happened?"
"I was in the right place at the right time. Or maybe the wrong place at the right time."
She opened her mouth, but he held up his free hand, forestalling her.
"I can't tell you everything, I'm sorry to say. There are some things I'm not even sure of, and others that even knowing about would only put you and Sam in grave danger. Suffice to say I was there that night, performing my duty to the best of my ability, but things didn't go according to plan."
"Your duty."
He hesitated a moment before he explained, "Something like naval intelligence."
A ripple of satisfaction washed over her. She had been right about his tattoos after all, those faded military tattoos even older than his scars. They hadn't been touched up or added to in years, but he hadn't had them removed or covered up. Perhaps they served as some kind of reminder, if he paid any attention to them at all.
"You're not still involved with that, are you?"
"No." There was baggage in that no, loads of it. Liz wished she knew his story, wished she could have the chance to know it.
"I didn't plan to throw all of this at you this way, Lizzy. Forgive me," he said. "You don't know me, you shouldn't have to—"
She leaned up on her knees, cutting him off with a sudden kiss.
"It's OK," she said, after his eyelids fluttered open again. "Maybe… Maybe I'm meant to know you. I mean, I don't usually believe in that kind of stuff but, really, what odds are we talking about here?"
His cheek twitched, the corner of his mouth just barely curving into a shadow of a smile. She settled back down, cradling his hand now in both of hers. She focused all of her attention on his neat, clean nails, the occasional tiny freckle or odd bit of scar tissue lighter than the rest of his skin, trying to organize her thoughts, to work up the courage to ask him what she wanted to ask.
"What happened after the fire? Did I ever see you again? Did I know you and I just… can't remember?"
"No. We've had no contact since that night." He gave her hand a quick squeeze and said, "I did send you a Christmas present that first year, but after that… life got in the way."
"You were the one who sent the bunny?"
"Sam told me you carried around the scorched stuffed rabbit you rescued from the fire like a security blanket, said you wouldn't go anywhere without it for weeks. I figured you both could use something to bond over."
"You figured right." She glanced up at him to find him studying their joined hands; she took a steadying breath and cleared her throat, drawing his eyes back to her face.
"Would you mind if… Can I see them again?"
After a long, charged moment of silence, he pulled his hand from hers and shucked off the sweater before she could react to the loss of contact. He undid the buttons on his sport shirt while holding her surprised gaze, shifting to the edge of the bed before shrugging it off his shoulders to expose his back.
She knelt up behind him, traced the mottled, thickened tissue, smoothed her hands along the breadth of his shoulders, down the length of his spine. She bent to press her lips to the base of his neck, just above the beginning of the scars; a shiver ran through him when she started to kiss her way down between his shoulder blades.
"I should go," he said, turning to face her again and pulling the shirt back over his shoulders.
"Please don't." She smiled sheepishly, reluctantly letting her grip on the fabric of his shirt loosen. She smoothed out the wrinkles she'd made, meeting his eyes with the most earnest expression she could muster. "Stay. I want you to stay. I wanted you to stay before, this hasn't changed that."
Slowly, he leaned back against her pillows, stretching his legs out on the bed. She settled into the pillows next to him, slid her arm around his waist inside his unbuttoned shirt. His hand found hers on his stomach and he entwined their fingers in a sliding caress.
"Would you ever have told me? Sam hasn't. Obviously. Do you think you would have sought me out eventually?"
"I've thought about it. Every now and then, I've wondered what it would be like, coming to see you, explaining who I was and what I'd done. Getting to know who you'd become. I always talk myself out of it. It would have been selfish of me to do that to you, unless it was strictly necessary. Just seeking validation that I've done at least one thing right."
"You make it seem like you're a terrible person."
"Like I said, Lizzy—You don't know me. It's even selfish of me to be here now, to accept this comfort from you. I don't deserve it."
Liz shook her head and he turned to search her eyes. "You let me be the judge of that, OK?"
She ran her fingers through his hair, combing them across his scalp the way Sam used to do to comfort her, to calm her when nothing else would. She pressed a kiss to his forehead and he sighed into her, clinging to her tightly until his grip loosened in sleep.
AN: The idea of a bunny for a Christmas present is blatantly borrowed from The Pretender. Also, there'll be a rating increase next chapter, so adjust your filters accordingly.