When Red was anxious, he tinkered. He fixed things. That's why when Liz caught up with him again, he was bent over the back of Dom's piano, attempting to tune it after replacing a broken key he had discovered the night before while he noodled around as they waited for their food to be delivered. (Much to Dom's chagrin, of course.)

Liz could read a hell of a lot into it if she chose to—that Red's first instinct, the thing he chose to do to feel grounded in the world was to repair, to create, rather than to destroy. If only she understood that this was his tendency from the beginning; the first time she really got a glimpse of it was when he gave her that music box and by then so many of her opinions of him had already solidified.

Dismantling her first impressions took time and conscious effort. She thought spending time around Dom might help her in that quest, because it was much easier to see the real Red when she took a step outside of herself and explained her understanding of him to someone else. Especially someone whose own opinion of him was so decidedly dim.

Liz smiled softly as she watched Red work. A smattering of glitter still clung to his short-cropped hair; she had a feeling they'd be finding the horrid stuff in the most inconvenient places for weeks. That would be a hell of a thing to explain to Ressler if, god forbid, the task force caught up to them anytime soon.

"Hey. You almost done?"

"Just about." Red grunted as he hauled himself upright again. "That should do it," he said, rubbing at a crick in his neck. (Sleeping on the old couch had not been kind to either of them; she almost dreaded when they'd have to turn in for the night.)

Liz slid onto the piano bench and examined the old instrument. The new key was almost indistinguishable from the rest of them now; she tested it along with its brothers, running her fingers over the keys in succession. "Sounds much better."

Red came over to sit down next to her on the bench with his back to the keys and rubbed his hands along his thighs, wiping either real or imagined dust off onto his trousers.

"You play?" he asked, nodding towards her hand still poised over the keys. "I thought Sam mentioned something about lessons at one point."

"Oh, wow. I haven't thought about those lessons in years. Yeah, that didn't last long."

"How come?"

She sighed. "It was too frustrating for me. I didn't pick it up immediately and I didn't care enough to put in the work to really learn, so I let it go."

"That was very mature of you."

"Are you kidding? I had a total meltdown. I couldn't stand failing, even as a kid."

"Well, that's understandable."

"I guess," she said. "What about you? Did you learn when you were young? I bet it came easy for you."

He gave a halfhearted shrug. "I've always been good with my hands."

In another place, in another time, Red's statement would probably hold some innuendo, but surrounded by the odd air of solemnity in this place, it held none at all. Which was a shame, because it was true. He'd been an attentive lover that night on the container ship; it had taken every ounce of willpower Liz possessed to keep herself from approaching him again ever since.

The rare comforting, comfortable kiss had had to sustain her—and it had. But sometimes she still wished that they hadn't made the unspoken agreement to return to some semblance of the status quo after their night together. As she studied his profile in the warm light from Dom's old incandescent lamps, she couldn't help but wonder if they were missing out on something greater than they gave themselves credit for.

"We should probably think about leaving soon," Red said, after a long while of companionable silence. "Tomorrow, maybe the day after. We don't want to impose on Dom's—ehem—hospitality for too much longer. Especially now that he knows we've been…" He made a face. "He might try to castrate me in my sleep."

"It's a little late for that."

"Speak for yourself," he said sharply, and crossed his legs pointedly.

Liz let out a huff of a laugh, shaking her head. "Listen, if anyone's gonna try to get at those particular parts of your anatomy, they'll have to go through me first."

He raised an eyebrow. "Anyone?"

"Anyone," she said, with exaggerated seriousness, punctuated after a beat with a wink. Red's mouth curved into a slow grin. It seemed he didn't mind at all that she would be so possessive of him. But then again, this was the same man who had surrendered himself to her like a knight in the throes of courtly love. It wasn't terribly surprising he found the idea appealing. "Although I wouldn't mind having access again myself from time to time."

Red's cheeks went a bit pink. "Ehem. That could… be arranged."

There was that bashfulness again. Liz found it strange how shy Red was about sex since they'd slept together. Strange, but endearing. He seemed like a much younger, less confident man, rather than the worldly ladies' man his stories would imply he was. Like he was, indeed, still the man he used to be, the man she saw when he was around children, the man who lost everything. The man who very well could be the father of her unborn baby.

Liz's stomach dropped out from under her. "What are we gonna do?" she asked, with a breathless, fearful kind of desperation. She thought Red might not understand what she was truly asking and she'd have to verbalize how scared she was, but she needn't have worried. He reached back and lowered the fallboard over the keys so he could lean against the piano without pressing any of them. He studied her face, his eyes moving over the furrow in her brow and the worried curve of her mouth.

"Let's worry about getting you exonerated first. After that… We'll figure something out."

"The simplest solution is…"

"I know. But…"

"But."

Red took her hand, and cleared his throat. "Your fantasy, what you told me after your meeting with the Djinn…" He trailed off, his jaw working wordlessly for a moment. "Is that… something that you would ever want… with…"

"With you?"

He nodded faintly while he stared down at their hands, not daring to meet Liz's eyes after asking such a question. Did she dare to answer it? Even to herself?

Even when she and Tom were married, he never quite fit the husband-shaped hole in her fantasy. She figured it would come in time, that once they'd adopted their little girl, everything would eventually fall into place. It never even started to. Even now when she tried to picture him in that role, her gut churned with unease. She was afraid if she tried to picture Red instead that it would be impossible to ignore how well he might fill it—and once she knew, it would be impossible to forget it.

Everything about this situation was impossible, yet here they were. A few moments of vulnerability and the two of them had made their already complicated lives infinitely more complicated, while also throwing themselves headlong into inadvertently fulfilling some of their deepest, most closely-held desires. Of course, what she wanted the most was also absolutely the most dangerous.

"I want to keep the baby," she said, the only answer she could give so definitively at this particular crossroads. It was enough for Red, it seemed. Enough to leave open a sliver of hope that her answer to his specific question could also be yes.

He shifted abruptly on the piano bench, cradled the hand he held in both of his, and brought it up to his lips. "She'll never want for anything," he vowed, giving her hand a final squeeze before letting go. "Whether she's mine or not mine. It doesn't matter. I want you to know that."

"I know. I know. Thank you."

Bracing herself with one hand on his thigh, Liz cupped the side of his head with the other and leaned forward to kiss him. Red exhaled softly with his nose against her cheek, his voice catching in a sigh high in his throat. He tilted his head, pressing closer, chasing the spark they both tried so desperately to tamp down most of the time.

Out of breath, they pulled back only far enough to rest their foreheads against each other; Red reached for her hand again. "We can do this, you and I."

"That sounds familiar."

"Has it not been true for us so far? We can do this. We can do whatever we put our minds to. We'll find a way. There are… contingency plans in place. Here, actually. If things start to look dire, if exoneration seems impossible, we come back here and set them in motion. It's a last resort, but if it's necessary, it'll be worth it."

"What does that entail?"

"We disappear. Or you and the baby do. Whatever you want."

"All of us. I would want it to be all of us."

"OK. All right. Yes."