Grey resented Elizabeth Keen. Whoever the hell she was.
For a while he believed the whispers floating around Reddington's organization that surmised she was his long lost daughter. When she tried to kill him and he didn't retaliate, didn't even hold it against her, Grey thought it must be true. Why would a man like Reddington ever be that forgiving of an attempt on his life? Multiple attempts. But then Grey saw them together and no—Reddington didn't look at her like a father looks at a daughter. Not at all.
The girl didn't look at him like a daughter would either. She looked at him like she used to look at her husband, before Reddington sicced Zamani on him. More so, even, because the affection she showed her husband always had an odd uncomfortable edge to it that Grey had never quite been able to decode no matter how long he observed them interacting. With Reddington, it was attraction and denial and conflict and longing, right from the start.
Reddington would move mountains for her, without a single thought for the consequences. Whispers of another sort started circulating, speculating about Reddington's past lovers and his tattoos and "please, God, tell me, when they first met, what did she say?"
Grey balked at the gossip trying to romanticize the relationship between them. Surely, it would turn out to be as much a flash in the pan as the others, as long as it didn't kill him first. As far as Grey was concerned, the girl was a liability, to Reddington's business, his life, and the lives of all of his associates. She was a distraction, nothing more.
And Reddington was a fool.
Late November 2013
Ressler stood over Aram's shoulder while the man cued up the security footage from the day Red turned himself in. Aram's nervousness was palpable; Liz saw fear in his eyes as his finger hovered over the play button. Ressler quickly lost patience with his hesitance and punched the button himself. Aram shot her and Red a silent apology as the footage started.
Tension thickened the air in the interrogation room, helped along by the sirens blaring second-hand through the monitor speakers. Watching her own apprehensive descent down the metal stairs towards her destiny, Liz was surprised by just how accurate her memory of that first meeting was. She would have thought her nerves and hindsight would have distorted it, but there it was in front of her in high definition. Her heart clenched and her grip tightened on Red's hand as he said the fateful words that seared their way up her arm that day.
Agent Keen, what a pleasure.
Despite the accuracy of her memory, the undercurrent of the interaction played differently now that she knew Red as a man rather than a monster. They've shared so many experiences, so many intimacies, in the scant few weeks since that first exchange, it was hard to believe so little time had past.
Well, I'm here, said Liz on the monitor, and Red's thumb moved over the back of her hand.
Ressler jabbed the pause button and started to cross the room towards the pair of them.
"It's on your right arm, isn't it?" he asked; Liz backed up as far as the restraints would allow when he reached for her.
"For God's sake, try for a little finesse, Donald."
"You want us to go over you with a fine-toothed comb until we find yours instead?"
"If you'd deign to uncuff me for a few minutes, I'd show you myself."
Ressler glared at him for a long moment before motioning for a guard to unlock Red's restraints.
"No funny business, Reddington," he warned.
"I wouldn't try anything that would put Agent Keen at risk of being caught in the crossfire."
Free from his shackles, Red turned his back to the room and gave Liz a tight smile; he made a show of rubbing his wrists and began stripping off his vest and shirt, presenting his bare torso with his arms spread. He slowly spun around, and could tell when Liz caught sight of his back by the sharp intake of breath behind him. By the time he locked eyes with her again, he knew she understood the implications of what she saw.
"Fate," he explained, with a shrug. Liz was dumbstruck; their conversation about fairytales and childhood fears in the backseat of his car suddenly made a heck of a lot more sense.
Ressler eyed the two of them suspiciously. "You wanna tell me what the hell just happened?"
"I believe Agent Keen has had a revelation," Red said, still holding her gaze.
Ressler rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the matter at hand. He scoffed when he located Liz's words. "Over your heart? Could you be more of a cliche?" He motioned for Aram to come over and snap a few photos of the tattoo.
"We don't get to choose where our tattoos are any more than we get to choose our soulmates. Life would be so much neater if we could, wouldn't it, Donald?" Red replied; Ressler scowled.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Reddington, but would you please turn your head so there's no shadows obstructing your tattoo?"
"No need to apologize, Aram," Red said, with a warm hint of a smile. To Ressler, he asked, "Are you satisfied with mine or are you going to needlessly compel Agent Keen to show hers as well?"
"You keep saying Agent Keen like it still means something. She's a criminal now, just like you."
"Of course. And there are certainly no criminals in the FBI." Red sat down, still unrestrained, and took Liz's hand again.
Ressler shot him another black look, but said nothing.
"So, what now? Are you going to lock us up again and throw away the keys? Interrogate us until we confess to every unsolved mystery in the last decade? Bury us in a deep, dark hole in the ground and forget we exist?
"As tempting as it might sound to get rid of us, we'd be more valuable to you in other ways."
"Valuable?"
"The Blacklist," Liz supplied, following the flow of Red's thoughts as easily as if they were her own. "You're passing up a huge opportunity if you don't put us to some use."
Ressler regarded them for a long, silent moment, contemplating. "I don't see any reason we can't pick back up where we left off," he said. "I'm sure Cooper will sign off on it."
"That's unusually sensible of you. When did you learn how to play ball?"
Ressler shrugged. "All I've gotta do is look at it like this—we get two informants for the price of one."
"Excellent," Red said. "However, we have a couple bombs to drop on you first—not literally, Donald, unclench before you break something—but we have to have some assurances that our needs are met before we share them."
"What sort of needs?"
"Well, for starters, we won't be any use to you if we can't think straight." Liz lifted their clasped hands for emphasis.
"You want us to keep you together?"
"Last time I checked, you Americans were supposed to be against cruel and unusual punishment," Red said. "Or is that just the company line?"
"'It'll be nice and cozy', he said. Nice and cozy, my ass." Liz fumed as she started to undress for bed, or what amounted to a bed in Red's old cell. She never dreamed she would ever be on this side of the glass. She couldn't say she enjoyed it; now she knew what a goldfish must feel like.
Red shielded her as much as he could, staring reproachfully at the most obvious camera, while she changed into the drab blue jumpsuit that would serve as pajamas. She tied the long sleeves around her waist in a makeshift belt, leaving her soft gray ribbed tank uncovered.
Red stripped down without shame or anything resembling shyness, a rather marked difference over how reticent he'd been to be shirtless around her before, even when they made love. Well, at least that mystery was solved. It never quite jibed with how open he was with her sexually in every other way.
He slid his arms into the sleeves and went to work on the line of buttons; Liz bit her lip. It was madness to find him so appealing in the shapeless jumpsuit, but the way the fabric stretched across his shoulders stirred something in her she had to consciously tamp down. Judging by the way he closed his eyes and sucked in a breath through his teeth, he sensed the direction of her thoughts anyway.
"Careful," he warned. She gave an offended huff and he watched her warily as she crossed the tiny cell, frowning slightly when she crouched in the corner and wrapped her arms around herself.
"Lizzy—"
She glared up at him, his remorse infusing every inch of her body—guilt for chastising her, for the situation they were in, for everything.
"If you try to apologize for getting me into this mess right now, I swear I'll try to kill you again," she snapped, cutting him off. "I don't regret what I've done to get here. I don't regret you."
His frown deepened. "That's not going to do you any favors with the powers that be and their hidden ears. What if someday you decide you want to—"
"I'm not going to. I'm not gonna pretend I'm not with you by choice to save my own ass. I won't throw you to the wolves like that. I mean, my God, Red—you're my soulmate, you're…we're…" She trailed off, blinking rapidly to stave off the tears that burned behind her eyes.
Red swallowed hard. "Come here," he said; he stretched out on the metal cot as best he could and held up his arm so she could tuck herself against him. "We've had enough practice today to last us for a while."
She pulled his arm around her, feeling some of the lingering tension between them fade. "Is it getting any better?"
"Worse, actually." He pressed a kiss to her hair. "It's the stress, I think. When we were separated earlier, my thoughts were… ugly." He traced lazy patterns over her abdomen. "I've always been a protective, possessive man, Lizzy. All this has done is turn up the dial."
Ressler sat glued to the night-vision security feed like it held all the answers to the universe. Not much had changed for at least an hour—Reddington and Keen slept as soundly as possible spooned together on the narrow steel cot under a thin blanket, with Keen's head pillowed on Reddington's arm—but Ressler still couldn't convince himself to look away.
Soulmates. He shook his head. He should hand in his badge for not figuring it out sooner.
It should have been obvious, really.
The way they always stood much too close to each other for two people who had ostensibly met so recently, like they were playing a game of chicken with their personal space and neither one wanted to lose.
How defensive Keen was over her tattoo, with no real reason to be.
How defensive Reddington was over Keen.
None of it made much sense until now.
He sighed. He wasn't unsympathetic to their plight, now that he understood what he'd been witnessing. The itch from being near your soulmate for the first time could be distracting in the extreme, especially when you can't acknowledge it or do anything about it at all. He'd seen it time and time again, although he had to admit he'd never seen two people still so caught up in each other months later. It was supposed to settle eventually; it usually did.
It was clear Reddington had been blindsided by this soulmate bullshit as much as Keen had. While Ressler didn't doubt he was every bit as ruthless and dangerous as he always had been—perhaps more so with someone to protect other than himself—even he had to admit this Reddington was a changed man. Had been from the moment Keen sat down in front of him in that stiff-backed metal chair.
He would get them a pillow and a proper blanket tomorrow, maybe even a thin mattress if he could swing it. As much as it pained him to admit it, Reddington was right—there was no need for petty cruelty.