"Red?" Liz whispered into the eerie quiet of The Box, in a Post Office manned only by a skeleton crew of an overnight shift. Red squeezed his arms around her in acknowledgment, nuzzling the disheveled wisps of hair that escaped her messy ponytail. So he was awake. She thought he might be. "What time do you think it is?"

"Dunno," he said, his voice slightly sleep-slurred. "Still early morning. I don't hear any of the usual hustle and bustle out there."

"Did you sleep?"

"Off and on. You?"

"Yeah. If we weren't… here, I would probably need to nap later, but that's not really…" Liz trailed off and shook herself before she could travel too far down that path. Thinking about normal days would only make her crazy. For the foreseeable future, this was her reality.

Red inhaled deeply, hugging her closer and hooking his head over her shoulder. "A nap sounds wonderful," he said, drowsily drawing out the last word.

She poked his forearm. "We're not even up yet, you goof. I don't think it counts as a nap unless you get up first."

"Mmm, but if we're sleeping, we can't cause any trouble. Maybe they'll let us out for good behavior."

Liz's smile died just as quickly as it appeared. It was easy to joke, maybe even healthy to do it, but the reality of their current situation was as stark as the steel cot under their bodies was hard and unyielding. She closed her eyes and took a deep, shaky breath.

"What are we gonna do?" she asked, her voice sounding impossibly small and uncertain to her own ears.

"We're going to go see Sam. That's obviously the most pressing priority. Then we'll get back to work. After all, there's still empires to run, blacklisters to hunt…"

Liz had meant in general, in an existential dread sort of way. That Red had chosen to answer in specific, with such confidence, almost succeeded in chasing away her anxiety. But there was really no way to know if they'd be successful negotiating a new deal, especially one that allowed her to see her father. Red could accomplish some remarkable things, but even his powers of persuasion had limits. He had just absconded with a rookie FBI agent, after all.

Liz had so much more power on the other side of the glass. Inside, she felt… useless. She couldn't try to sway Cooper to take Red's suggestions with any semblance of authority anymore. She was tainted now, far more than she was the day Red turned himself in and asked for her by name—and that had certainly put her reputation under a microscope enough by itself. This time, however, it was her fault.

And Tom's.

And whoever the hell Tom worked for.

And the absolutely awful confluence of events that aligned all of those things in such a way that she had no real choice but to do what she did. Staying and keeping her secret just wasn't a viable enough option once she killed him. Not to mention the fact that she just… didn't want to stay.

God. Why did they have to get caught? Life with Red—short-lived though it was—had fit her like an old, cozy sweater. It felt right for her in ways that nothing else ever had. Which wasn't really a surprise. They were soulmates. Even now, having him with her felt like she had found an oasis in the growing maelstrom. But she could still feel the storm gathering outside the safety of his embrace, hear the winds threatening the integrity of the near-impenetrable walls surrounding them.

Figuratively speaking, of course. It would take a hell of a lot of destructive force to even make a dent in The Box.

Red must have sensed her growing distress, felt it bleed into his mind like the insidious poison it was.

"We will convince them to let us see him, Lizzy," he said. "It would be unusually cruel if your colleagues who claim to care about you deny you the right to say goodbye to your dying father."

"They're not my colleagues anymore; Ressler sure as hell won't let me forget that anytime soon."

"Maybe you're not colleagues in quite the same way you used to be, but your skill set and my resources haven't changed despite the fact that you and I are on the same side of the law now. The opportunities we can afford the task force far outweigh the possible inconvenience of our humble request."

"I hope you're right. Everything is happening so fast, I don't even know how to process it all. If anyone told me on my last day at Quantico that I'd end up a fugitive in a few months, I'd tell them they were crazy. Even my first day here, even after you said those words to me and I knew, there's no way I could've fathomed how quickly everything could change. Hell, look at us right now—locked up in the same godforsaken box where we first met."

Red was silent for a long moment before he said quietly, "Technically, it's where we first spoke."

Right. They had met before.

Your terror was so strong, it was all I could do to stay conscious.

No wonder. The fear Liz felt that night as a child, coupled with the searing pain of his own burning flesh? It's a miracle he survived at all.

It was moments like this that made Liz believe there could be such a thing as destiny. And, really, there was such a thing—in the simplest sense, everyone was destined to meet their soulmate at the barest minimum. Why couldn't destiny go beyond that? If not for everybody, then for some.

Oh, I think you're very special, he had said to her, in this very space. What if she was special? What if they were? And if they were, why were they?

Rivulets of Red's guilt began to seep into Liz's apprehension, creating a mixture ugly enough to derail her own train of thought. And, oh, she knew what was coming; she could feel his self-condemnation in every fiber of her being.

"Don't. Don't you dare apologize to me, Raymond Reddington. I'm alive today because of you. My words were already on your chest that night. Nothing you could have said or done differently would've changed that. Like you said, this was fate. For better or worse, we're where we're supposed to be. Together."

Liz pulled his arm tighter around herself to emphasize her words and he heaved a heavy sigh into her hair.

"I suppose that type of regret is… uniquely futile. I have plenty of experience with feeling guilt over things beyond my control, but rarely are they things I would consider… dictated by fate."

Moments passed in the strange hollow silence of the empty Post Office; the weight of exhaustion pulled once again at their eyelids as their emotions began to stabilize. Liz drifted in and out of sleep until it was impossible to ignore Red's growing hardness, pressed snugly against her ass.

"Red?"

"Mmm." He pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck. "We could try to ignore it," he suggested.

"That didn't work out so well for us last time."

Red chuckled, the sound of it reverberating through his chest and into hers. "No, you're right about that. Wouldn't want to have a repeat performance so… publicly."

"We could… try to be quiet. And quick."

"I doubt we could be anything but quick at this point."

"You, too, huh?"

"Like you don't already know."

Red pulled at her jumpsuit sleeves tied around her waist and pushed the fabric down over her hips, only far enough to give him access to her. His fingers slid easily between her lips, already drenched with her arousal; he dipped one and then another inside her, testing and teasing her heated flesh for a moment, before moving on to focus his attention on her swollen clit.

He had to weigh each and every move he was making, had to pace himself, because if he brought her over the edge so quickly, chances were he'd follow soon after. They'd discovered that the hard way—no pun intended. (Though Red could probably climax just from going down on her even without the secondhand pleasure from her orgasm. He loved pleasing a woman with his mouth more than just about anything else in the world and he was more than happy to extol the virtues of it—verbally as well as orally.)

Sex was still the most efficient and long-lasting method they'd found so far to ward off the most distracting side effects of their connection, which could be inconvenient at the best of times. At the worst, it was downright dangerous.

They'd been apart for hours yesterday, unable to share even the most fleeting of touches, which wreaked havoc on their psyches. During their reunion, they were aware of no one and nothing but each other—for those few short moments, they had been completely at the mercy of the FBI agents in the interrogation room.

They couldn't afford to have that happen under less secure circumstances. Not if they could prevent it. It wasn't as if it was something they didn't want to do. If they were free, they'd be just as eager. Perhaps more so, with the potential to have a bit more… creative freedom. (Sometimes Liz wondered how much of their sexual compatibility could be blamed on being soulmates and how much was due to them having very complimentary quirks and kinks to begin with.)

Red slicked his cock, spreading Liz's slippery wetness along his length before aligning himself with her entrance. Liz wriggled her hips when she felt the blunt head press against her, attempting to seat him faster, harder, deeper; she sobbed in relief as he pushed inside, only to realize belatedly that she had made such an audible noise. She bit down on her fist, hoping to muffle herself as he began to move with sharp, shallow, skillful thrusts.

The sound of heavy breathing dragged Ressler from a fitful slumber over his keyboard. He rubbed his eyes, squinting blearily at the monitor in front of him. In the sickly, distorting green glow of the night vision surveillance footage, he could just make out movement in Keen and Reddington's box. A rhythmic sort of movement—beneath the blanket, below the belt…

"Oh, God. Why would you—Jesus." He turned away, face burning, and punched the mute button right as Keen gasped and arched suddenly into Reddington, twisting her arm behind herself at an odd angle to hold him to her body with something like desperation.

Ressler buried his face in his hands; his head throbbed with the beating of his heart.

It was going to be a long day.