Some days were just too hot to be awake.
Red had spent the entire morning dozing in and out of sleep, sprawled out on a lounge chair he had rolled over to the pair of french doors that led to his balcony so the table fan could oscillate across his body. He made a mental note to donate an obscene sum of money to some sort of organization dedicated to combatting climate change and drifted off to sleep again.
Until a voice filtered through the drowsy haze, at least.
"I guess you weren't expecting a visit from me today, were you?"
"Elizabeth!" Red exclaimed; he tried to sit up quickly, but his sweaty skin stuck painfully to the lounge chair, hindering his ability to pretend she hadn't startled him out of his humidity induced stupor.
Oh, well. There was no use feigning nonchalance when Lizzy had so obviously caught him unawares.
Red offered a silent thanks to whoever might be listening that he and Lizzy weren't currently on bad terms; if she had come prepared for a fight, finding him in such a state would've only added to his humiliation.
Lizzy took a seat on the bench across from him and leaned back casually. "Don't those leave a bit too little to the imagination?" she asked, raising her eyebrows pointedly towards the only article of clothing he found at all bearable to wear in the heat.
Red looked down at himself and then back up at Lizzy. "Am I making you uncomfortable? I could cover up, but—"
"I didn't say you should cover up."
His own eyebrows crept up his forehead. "Oh?"
"I just didn't picture you as a hip brief kinda guy."
"I'm not. Not exclusively, anyway—variety is the spice of life. To be quite honest, Elizabeth, considering how unbearably hot it is today, you're lucky I'm not nude."
"That's a matter of opinion," she said quietly, almost to herself.
"Excuse me?"
"Do you have anything cold to drink? It's sweltering in this place." She pinched the fabric of her camisole between her fingers and used it to fan herself. She wasn't wearing a bra; Red pretended, unsuccessfully, not to notice.
"I have a pitcher of iced tea in the fridge."
"That sounds heavenly."
When it became obvious that Lizzy wasn't going to help herself to the iced tea, Red stood and carefully maneuvered himself around her into the kitchen.
"I thought you had AC in this apartment."
Red took two tall glasses down from the cupboard and filled them with ice. "It's on the fritz. I offered to pay a premium if they would send someone to fix it today, but they refused to send anyone out until next week at the earliest," he said, topping each glass up with the tea. "Suffice to say, that repair company has lost me as a customer."
"Is that all? No blackmail or threats of physical violence?"
"In this weather? It's not worth the effort."
Red tried as best as he could to act as if there was nothing unusual about his lack of attire, as if he hadn't just felt Lizzy's eyes on his ass the entire time he was preparing the iced tea.
Lizzy took the glass from Red when he held it out to her; he kept his eyes focused on her hand rather than the way the fabric of her camisole shifted when she reached for the glass.
"What are you still doing here, anyway? Why didn't you just jet off to someplace cool instead of suffering like this?"
"That requires putting on clothes," he said, "and moving in general."
"And you'd rather lounge around like a lazy lion, conserving his energy so he'll be ready to pounce when the time comes."
"That image is very flattering for my ego, Elizabeth, thank you. Truth be told, I didn't have anywhere that I would rather be than here. Besides, if I had jetted away, we wouldn't be having this… lovely but muggy conversation," Red said, lifting his glass in a mock toast.
"God. It really is muggy, isn't it?" Lizzy fished a piece of ice out of her glass and ran it from the pulse point on her throat down to the hollow of her neck, humming with pleasure at the cooling sensation; Red swallowed his mouthful of tea, his eyes wide as he followed the progress of the melting ice cube.
That settled it, once and for all. The way Lizzy had been around Red these past few months—the flirting, the compliments, the touching—it had all been intentional. All of Lizzy's plausible deniability went out the window the moment she took that piece of ice from her tea. No one would do anything so blatant by accident, especially when their companion was nearly naked.
In fact, Red's current state of undress was probably the only thing keeping Lizzy from employing yet another one of those dubiously casual touches she'd become so fond of—there was no dissembling in the world that would give a reason for touching any part of his unclothed body and even less for touching what little was clothed.
It was an open secret that she knew he wasn't the original Raymond Reddington; he hadn't figured out how she knew, but he had been relieved he no longer had to try to maintain the facade. Their dynamic had shifted at some point so it felt like they were playing an elaborate, long-term game of chicken with that unspoken truth. At least until today, when she had obviously decided to push the boundary of 'secret' to its breaking point.
"Elizabeth… What is it you've come here for? Surely there's somewhere air conditioned you'd rather be."
"Can't I just want to spend time with you?"
"You could. But you rarely do without an ulterior motive."
"Hmm. That sounds familiar… Who else do we know who acts like that?"
"You've made your point. Now, why are you here?"
"To spend time with you." She held up a hand to forestall his interruption. "There's been a wall between us lately. I don't like it."
"A wall."
"All we do anymore is keep secrets from each other."
"I'd like us to keep fewer secrets," he agreed. "But that requires a certain measure of trust."
Lizzy watched him silently for a long moment and then she shrugged. "When in Rome…" She stood up and thumbed open the button at the top of her fly and unzipped it, before wriggling out of her shorts. Her briefs were more modest than his, but that didn't make the picture she painted any less appealing. She sat down next to him on the lounge chair.
"This isn't what I meant by trust, Elizabeth."
"But it requires trust, too, doesn't it?"
"We've never… struggled with this kind of trust."
"I guess not," she said. "I still remember the day we went on the run. I remember it like it was yesterday. The back of that panel van was pretty cramped, but you made changing together in there feel so matter of fact, I knew I didn't have to feel uncomfortable around you."
"I'm glad you felt that way."
She nodded. "All I wanted to do was watch you, though. If it hadn't been life or death, I doubt I would've been able to talk myself out of it. Instead, I had to settle for the little glimpses you let me see while we ran—a couple buttons undone here, a little bare skin there, the occasional skipped tie…"
There was little Red could do to conceal the fact that his already-snug briefs were growing even more snug.
"You…" Red trailed off and cleared his throat, moistening his lips with his tongue before he could speak again; her eyes tracked the movement. "You wanted to watch me get undressed?"
"Undressed, dressed… I could've watched you do just about anything those days and it would've held my attention. You were my lifeline."
Lizzy shifted on the lounge chair and Red could feel the warmth emanating from her body as she leaned in.
"Would you let me kiss you?" she asked, her face very close.
"Why would you want to kiss me?"
"Because you're an attractive man. I'm attracted to you." She laid her hand on his thigh and it was shockingly hot; even the air felt cool in comparison. "I'm pretty sure you're attracted to me."
"Pretty sure," he repeated.
"Very sure," she said, and closed the distance between them to claim his mouth.
Red was hopeless. He couldn't help himself, he pushed into her kiss like a dying man, like he would find the secret of life itself in the movement of her lips. His mind must be addled from the heat—the protective wall he and she had painstakingly built up between them didn't seem so important compared to the bitter tannin taste of iced tea and Lizzy.
She broke the kiss with a gasp, pressing her forehead tightly against Red's as she struggled to catch her breath.
"I should've done that a long time ago," she said.
Red let out a surprised chuckle. "On that we can agree."