Keep Her Safe

Tom had never been an overly sound sleeper, but he found that the more Elizabeth Scott spent the night, the deeper he slept. In the two months that they had been seeing each other he had managed to oversleep his alarm multiple times, usually sending them both flying out of the bed the next morning and tumbling over each other to get ready for work. Strangely enough, it never seemed to happen when she didn't stay the night. He wasn't quite sure what to make of that.

He never woke before the alarm when she was there, that much was certain, so the fact that he found himself startled awake by a noise he couldn't place was odd enough to cause concern. He jolted, eyes wide in the dark, and he lay very still for a collection of moments, barely breathing and listening. He had been tasked to protect her, but from what he still wasn't entirely sure. Reddington had a habit of speaking in long, drawn out stories that you had to manage to follow all the way through to the end if you wanted to catch the point, but he'd never told the young operative why this seemingly harmless girl would draw the attention of anyone that wanted to injure her. So without the full set of facts, Tom was left to wade through his own theories, and some of those tended to be darker than what he hoped was reality. If someone were in his apartment, interested in harming the young woman that slept by his side, he would make damn sure he got to them first.

Liz jerked suddenly at his side and Tom turned, squinting in the dark. He had had to break his habit of sleeping in his contacts when he had taken this assignment, finding that an old pair of glasses - ones he'd never worn a great deal of to begin with - had softened the appearance of the boy that had lived his life on the streets and grown into the man that could kill in just a few brief seconds. He fumbled for them, finding them on the nightstand, and Elizabeth came slowly into focus in the dim light. Her brows were drawn together and she lay curled on her side, shivering and shaking and fighting against something that Tom certainly couldn't see. Another strangled cry - the sound that had woken him in the first place, he realized - leapt from her and she shot upright, sitting up and eyes wide and terrified. "No!"

"Liz?"

She swung around at him, nearly landing a blow to his jaw if he hadn't been just a hair quicker than she was in that state. Tom just barely dodged and reached out quickly to her shoulders. "Hey? Lizzy? It's me. What's wrong?"

Blue eyes were wide and haunted as their owner sucked in huge, gulping breaths. Finally, after a moment - one in which Tom felt true worry start to creep into him - she blinked, eyes tearing up and coming to focus on the man whose bed she was sleeping in. "Tom?"

"Just me," he promised. "You okay?"

"Everything was burning," she whispered and suddenly she was in his arms, her face buried in the crook of his shoulder and her arms flung around his neck so tightly that he could barely breath.

Slowly, with a little uncertainty, he wrapped his arms around her as she sobbed into his shoulder. She felt so fragile in that moment, as if the wrong word or even breath might shatter her into a million pieces. So Tom just held her, whispering small encouragements into her ear as she cried. He wondered if that was what normal people felt like as they muddled through their own emotions and those of everyone around them. If they didn't know quite what to say to make the person they cared for - that he was only suppose to care for, of course - feel safe and secure. All of the training in the world couldn't give him the right words, so he rocked her gently, kissing her hair and whispering to her.

Finally, after what felt like both minutes and hours, she pulled back. Her face was tear streaked and her eyes were rimmed red, but she pressed a kiss to his lips that was filled with more love than he could fathom. "Sorry," she said when they finally broke.

"It's okay. What can I do?"

"Nothing. It's just a nightmare. I used to get it all the time when I was little, but it's rarer now." She rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes and flopped back against her pillow. "Sorry."

"Stop apologizing," Tom said softly and laid down next to her, propped up just a little so he could watch her expression. "You need to talk about it?"

"I don't know."

Well, at least he wasn't the only one that didn't know what needed to happen that night.

Liz rolled closer, wrapping an arm around his middle and he sank back against his own pillow, letting her lean against his chest. A sigh escaped him as she nestled in and his kissed the top of her head. "I won't let anything hurt you, Lizzy. You know that, right?"

"Yeah," came the soft reply.

"I'm serious." He didn't know why, but he needed her to believe that. He needed her to know, even if she couldn't know why she believed it. "I'll keep you safe."

The only response he received was a soft sigh and he knew he'd lost her towards sleep again, exhausted from crying and from the late hour. She might not even remember this in the morning, but he knew that he would. He knew that in that moment, more than he'd ever known anything, he would keep her safe.

Notes: We've learned so much about Tom in the last couple of weeks that I have a ton of ideas, but most of them are pieces of a whole, so let me know if you have any more requests! I have a list over in my Evernotes file so that I can make sure to remember them and let the plot bunnies bite :D