Unwanted

Jacob Phelps had been shuffled around the foster system from his earliest memories. Some were clean, well maintained, and likely were run by somewhat decent people, but those never knew what to do with him. They didn't understand the blank stares or the reason that he rarely smiled. He wasn't normal, wasn't the child that they expected, so they either left him to his own devices or shuffled him off to a new home.

The one truth that he had learned from an early age was that things changed and life moved on. He wasn't overly inclined to become attached to begin with, so the first time that he was turned away from a family that he almost wanted to be a part of was a wake up call, even for a child. He had tried. Really he had. At seven Jacob had proven that he was fully capable of faking most every emotion that those around him felt, but apparently he hadn't been good enough. In the end all the smiles at all the right times still rang empty to them and they had sent him away. He never understood why.

He had drifted then, unwilling to try to care. The effort yielded no reward so he didn't bother.

At eight he was removed from a home after they broke his arm, at nine he was shuffled around to three different homes within the year. He was ten the first time he ran.

Nothing notable happened when he was eleven outside of an uptick in the number of therapists that he saw. He moved in and out of single homes and group homes for the next few years - the idea that he couldn't connect cemented into his mind until it became his reality as much as it was theirs - until he was fourteen. That's when he had been forced to make a choice and he had chosen to live.

The state hadn't been quite so quick to take him from the Douglas home as they had other ones. Charlie Douglas was careful most of the time, and the marks he left on the troublesome teens that came through his home weren't seen. He had been drunk and less cautious than usual when Jacob had mouthed off at just the wrong time. It had been a struggle and luck was really the teen's only excuse. When the man had fallen down the stairs and broken his neck, Jacob ran. He never looked back and the next person that found him had been Bill McCready. The Major told him that everything the others said was wrong made him special and had given him more opportunity than he had thought would be possible.

Years later he was a different person. He had turned his lacking empathy into a cool calculation that easily manipulated those around him. He wasn't the terrified teenager running from his problems. He was one of the Major's deep cover operatives. He was a professional. He didn't need to belong to anyone or have anyone belong to him. Family was a foreign concept that he had never been able to understand.

Until now.

Until Lizzy.

Jacob Phelps was now Tom Keen, and in the last two years of marriage Tom had learned more than he would have liked about emotional connections. In the beginning he had pulled nearly entirely from his training to get close to Elizabeth Scott, but as time had gone on he felt his own smiles felt a little less practiced and he wanted to do things for her, not just because it would help him achieve his goal, but because her smile stirred something in him that he had been told that he could not feel. Somehow, what had begun as just another job had turned strangely real, and the lie that he had simply sunk deeply into his cover wasn't one that he could really believe.

He cooked for her, he listened to her, and when the truth would hurt more than the lie, he found himself considering her feelings. It was unfamiliar territory, and he knew he shouldn't be comfortable with it, even if he was.

Tom had never considered a family of his own - what would someone like him want a child for? - until Lizzy had brought it up. He told himself that they were married, and that's what married people did, but somewhere between the conversations, her intense honesty about her own fears and reservations, and the adoption meetings, Tom found himself wanting it. He wanted to spend his life with this woman and he wanted to share a family with her. The idea that she wanted the same - that she wanted him - was something that stuck with him more than it should. Somewhere in there it had become so damn real that to have it ripped away from him like this felt like his world was shattering.

Tom didn't have to put on an act to appear flustered as his mind scrambled for a way to fix the situation as she told him that they were broken. The fact that they were was something that his mind had trouble accepting. Even if she didn't know it, Elizabeth Keen knew her husband - or at least what was left of him under all the masks he had worn over the years - better than anyone else alive. Twisted into the lies were pieces of truths that he hadn't dared reveal to anyone before. Including the fact that he wanted this child that they had chosen.

But she didn't want that child with him. It hurt deeper than he would have liked to admit, and as they stood there, her hands clinging to his, Tom didn't know what to say. He didn't know what to feel, because he shouldn't have felt anything.

"I'm sorry," Liz whispered, looking up at him and her face blurred for a moment. She reached up and ran her thumb along his cheek and he realized that he was crying. "Tom, please say something."

He swallowed hard, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. "I don't know what to say," he repeated roughly. "What could you possibly expect me to say to that?"

She was crying too and it killed him a little. There was no satisfaction in knowing that her world was tipping just as dangerously as his own was. "I don't know. Something. Anything." She looked up at him and he couldn't breathe. "Please don't shut me out."

He couldn't tell her the truth, though. He couldn't tell her that this hit far too close to his own childhood issues and that, somehow, that left him feeling abandoned all over again. The truth wasn't an option in that moment, so he drew a steadying breath and shoved the rare flood of emotions back behind the dangerously unsteady wall in his mind. His lips thinned and he pressed a kiss to her forehead. "I'm just... Processing it," he answered carefully. "If you think we need to wait, we'll wait."

She looked terrified as a question tumbled from her lips. "You're not going to leave, are you?"

Tom pulled her into his arms and held her tight. "No, Lizzy, of course not. I'm not going anywhere."

Liz clung to him and he held her, whispering assurances for them both. He was blurring dangerous lines for this assignment, but he didn't care. When the emotional tidal wave subsided, maybe he could look at the situation rationally, but right then he needed her. He needed them.

"I need for us to be okay," he whispered and felt her arms tighten around his middle. "I love you."

"I love you too. I just… can't do this. We can't do this. Not right now."

Tom didn't risk saying anything in return as he held her close. He didn't trust himself not to tell her everything about the little boy that had been unwanted by every home he had landed in and how he wondered sometimes what would have been different if he had had someone like what Sam had been to her in his own life. He wondered if they couldn't be that for this little baby. He didn't dare say it, though, because telling her that would break his cover and in the end, he needed to remember that this was just a job, even if he no longer believed that lie himself.

Notes: I'm pretty sure I've had a request for the adoption scene from Tom's POV among the many awesome requests I've received (please keep them coming!), so here it is. I'm very interested in delving into Tom's emotions and how much they likely confuse him. It's different writing them after Liz finds out his backstory, at least in part, and when he has to keep everything in, because I do think that he is likely aware that he has very strong feelings for her, even if he tries to push them aside and ignore them. It's fascinating, and I can't wait to see where the show takes it.

Anyone else super excited for tonight's episode? Freakin' Ryan Eggold and his tweet last week… He has all of Tumblr freaking out. I love it. :D