Worth the Risk
He had only met Christopher Malley once, just after he had accepted Berlin's offer that had allowed him to stay close to Elizabeth Scott. It had been brief and the operative - if he could be called that. He really was used to working at a higher level - hadn't left him with anything akin to confidence. Berlin might be a ruthless bastard, but it was becoming increasingly clear why he needed someone if Jacob's caliber on the inside.
The switch had been a win for all parties involved with the exception of Redddington, and Jacob trusted Bud enough to hold that particular firestorm off as long as he didn't suspect any attachment on his favourite operative's end. There was no reason to. It had never happened before. Bud hadn't been happy about it, of course, but he had let it slide and Jacob had stayed, sinking further and further into Tom Keen every day.
Apparently Berlin felt the need to check up on him, though, because Christopher Malley showed up at his apartment door early one evening as he was in the middle of cooking. He had been expecting Liz, so the sight of the blond man who didn't bother waiting for an invitation to enter was more than a little irksome. He was fairly certain that he was not fond of him.
"Hey there, brother," the man whose papers all read Craig Keen greeted and Tom - because that's who he was now and maybe, if he were lucky, he could stay that way - felt the muscles in his face twitch very slightly. Something about this guy set him on edge, like he was a blown cover waiting to happen.
"Craig," Tom greeted carefully. "What are you doing here?"
"Heard you just got engaged and moved back to New York with her. Busy times. I thought I'd drop in and meet this girl face to face." He glanced around, tossing his bag to the couch. "She around?"
"She just started a new job. She's on her way. Some warning would have been nice."
Craig snorted. "Some warning? You up and move and you want to talk to me about warning?"
Tom brushed past him, ignoring the tone as he moved towards the kitchen where water was boiling over. "I didn't realize that you needed a play by play as long as I'm doing my job," he growled lowly. The last thing he wanted was Liz walking in on this conversation. Yep, Craig was definitely a blown cover waiting to happen. He might have technically been his handler from Berlin's organization, but Tom would have to handle him very carefully.
Craig snorted as he leaned against the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room in the apartment that Tom and Liz had just moved into. "Berlin knows you're good, but this is delicate. You proposed to the girl. Reddington's going to know something is up."
"Reddington won't know anything. It's just the next step. Deep cover is my business. Let me do my job and you do yours."
"I am. That's why I'm here. Anyway, it would be a little weird for your fiancé not to meet your family, wouldn't it?"
There was something in the question that made Tom uneasy, but familiar footsteps echoed just outside the front door and he could hear the sound of Liz's keys jingling. He shot a glare over his shoulder as he covered the pot with the boiling pasta. "Don't screw this up," he hissed, expression shifting from dangerous warning to merely exasperated. Craig retained his consistent expression of douchebag.
"Babe, I stopped by the store to get that wine that we were talking about," Liz announced as she entered, bag in hand, but she stopped at the unfamiliar face. "Hi?"
"Hey," Craig answered back with a grin.
Tom sighed. "So, my brother has a habit of announcing visits at the front door. Sorry," he managed, and there was no faking the cringe. It was perfectly real.
Liz lit up a little more. "So you're the elusive Craig Keen? I was starting to think Tom just made up a brother or something."
Her eyes caught Tom's with the tease and he offered a strained smile. "And here he is. Living proof."
"Good to know that I'm not marrying a liar."
The words, still a light tease, twisted inside Tom just a little. Guilt was not an emotion he had ever had to worry over a great deal, so pushing it aside took a bit more finesse than some of the others.
"Hope you don't mind me dropping in like this. I had some business in town and since Tom told me you guys had just moved here, well, it just made sense to come visit my baby brother."
"No, it'll be great to have you," Liz answered cheerfully. "How long are you staying?"
"I have meetings for the next couple of days, so I'll be around. I'd like to get to know my future sister-in-law, though. Can you believe he didn't tell anyone he was proposing? If I didn't know better, I'd think he did it on a whim."
"He had it for a while before he finally worked up the courage. Waiting for the right moment, apparently." Liz was grinning so hard that Tom had to swallow his visible irritation. Craig was supposed to be his brother and he had never given indication that there was a particular rift between them, just that they weren't overly close. She had bombarded him with questions once or twice and there was a backstory for the whole ordeal. Berlin had been insistent on giving him a handler from his own ranks, especially while he balanced a rather thin line between two employers. He just had expected to have a little preparation time before Craig just showed up.
The two of them chatted like old friends over the wine that Liz had brought home with her while Tom cooked, fictional stories of his and Craig's equally fictional childhood together falling from his lips. It was like the older man had decided that he had some viable reason to try to make Tom squirm. That, or maybe that was just how older brothers were supposed to act and he'd missed the memo. It wasn't like Jacob Phelps had a great deal of experience in family.
Liz was nearly rolling by the end of a particularly painful set of stories that included the so-assumed brothers in various shenanigans with Tom at the butt of the joke. The latest one, best Tom could tell from where he was half-trying to block it out, had to do with a story about him falling out of a tree at the age of five and scaring their mother half to death. He was fine, Craig assured the woman who sat with him on the couch. The wind had been fully knocked out of him and he looked like the walking dead, but that was half the story. Thankfully, the chicken finally finished cooking by the end of that one and his fiance was wiping tears from her eyes as Craig described their mother's expression at seeing a young Tom after the whole event. Liz was still laughing as she moved to help set the table. "Babe, you've never told me any of that."
"Couldn't imagine why," Tom groused and Liz's arms encircled him from behind, her cheek pressed against his back. The tenseness eased at her touch and he hoped Craig misread it as a fantastic act.
"Don't be mad," she said softly. "I think it's cute. Well, maybe not the last one, but the other two."
Craig barked a laugh from the sofa. "Very cute, Tom," he added and Tom wondered how he was going to get through this visit without pitching the older man out a window.
Dinner went on in much the same fashion and Tom's inclination to murder the man posing as his brother didn't lessen. Liz seemed to love him though, and she laughed and joked with him well into the evening. By the end of it they had managed to go through several bottles of wine between the three of them and they were all a little buzzed. Before long Liz was leaned up against him on the couch, Tom's arm around her, and he saw their exit.
"I'll be back out in a second," he said and roused his fiancé just enough to get her back towards the bedroom. Craig, surprisingly, didn't argue as he slumped back against the couch cushions.
It took a few minutes to maneuver the tipsy woman to bed, but Tom got her there and pulled the blankets up around her shoulders. "You coming to bed?" she mumbled.
"Here in a bit. Promise."
"Don't go too crazy out there," she laughed and Tom felt a smile pull at him as he leaned over and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
By the time he'd gotten back out to the livingroom Craig had poured himself another glass and was sitting back and watching him carefully. Tom closed the door behind him, frowning at the man who had ruined his evening. Likely he would tip over on the couch soon enough and sleep the night away. If he was there to cause trouble for him, it wouldn't be that night. There was some comfort in that at least.
"She's comfortable around you," Craig murmured from his spot, watching the younger operative. "You're either a hell of a professional or you're really sweet on her."
Tom snorted, grabbing his and Liz's wine glasses from the table. "Is that what you think? Because someone like me enjoys sitting around and playing house." It was an absurd notion, and he knew it, even if it were true. It was the one thing that kept them safe in all of this chaos. Jacob was the perfect soldier. He followed orders and he didn't get attached to those around him or to any of his covers. The problem was that he had gotten attached. He liked being Tom Keen, sans the obnoxious brother that had been thrust upon him.
"Hey," Craig said defensively, raising his hands, "she's hot. I'd do what I had to to get her in bed too. Even play the perfect fiancé."
Tom felt his jaw clench dangerously as he set the glasses down in the sink, his hands steadier than he expected them to be. It took half a moment longer than it should have, but by the time he had turned back to the man on his couch, he had managed to internalize the need to snap Craig's neck and expose the dangerous truth to someone that would tattle back to Berlin and, in turn, Bud.
He fixed a smirk on his features as he crossed the room to grab one of Liz's quilts from the front closet. He threw it at Craig who just barely caught it without spilling his drink. When he looked at the man that his fiancé thought was his brother, he didn't bother to soften his voice. "You're getting a hotel if you stay past tomorrow."
Craig watched him as if he thought he'd be able to read something behind the statement. "Cramping your style, little brother?"
"I'm an engaged man. Yes, you are," the younger operative said, giving the excuse that would work. He didn't like the idea of of this man sleeping under the same roof as them.
"Fair," Craig chuckled and that seemed to be the end of it.
Tom turned and walked into bedroom, closing the door and locking it behind him. Liz was still curled where he left her, peaceful and oblivious to the dangers that surrounded her. He could protect her though. He was certain of it.
"Hey," she greeted sleepily. "You coming to bed?"
A real smile made its way to his lips and Tom pulled a pair of sleeping pants from a drawer. "Yeah. Just needed to get Craig set up for the night."
"He okay?"
Tom couldn't help but roll his eyes a little. "Oh yeah. Just typical Craig."
"You guys fought a lot as kids, didn't you?"
"What makes you say that?"
"Well, he's been trying to one-up you all evening." She sat up in bed and Tom saw that she was wearing one of his t-shirts. She waited until he had what he needed and moved closer to the bed to say in a hushed tone, "Your brother's kind of an ass."
Tom snorted a laugh as he shrugged out of his shirt and tossed it and his jeans to the side to deal with in the morning. "I thought you had fun tonight."
"I did, but I could see that getting really old really fast."
He had his sleeping shirt halfway over his head when Liz grabbed hold of it, sending him tumbling into bed with her. He found himself laid out on his back, half twisted from the fall, and she leaned over and pressed a kiss to his lips, deftly plucking his glasses from her nose as she did so. "I definitely got the better end of the Keen family tree."
A smile tugged at him and he sat up, his fingers tangling in her hair as he kissed her back. He was taking a risk that he never would have understood only a year or so before, but nothing has ever felt quite as right as this. He was fairly certain nothing ever would again. People like him weren't supposed feel anything quite as deep as love was. The fact that he did was an oddity unto itself. "I love you," he confessed breathlessly as he pulled back enough to look into her eyes.
Her smile lit his dark world. "Funny, I love you too. What are those odds?"
Tom chuckled and kissed the top of her head, feeling her arms go around him as she giggled and pulled him down to the sheets. For just a little while, nothing else needed to matter. The danger wasn't over, he knew, but some things were worth the risk. Elizabeth Scott certainly was.
Notes: So does anyone have a solid understanding of the timeline in regards to where these two have lived? Liz says that they met at a cafe at Georgetown (I would assume she means University, which makes sense if they met when she was finish up grad school.. the ages would be about right). That would mean that they met in the DC area and she and Tom moved to NYC before moving back for Quantico, but then she tells Jolene that she was up in NYC for three years. I definitely fudged some of that to make this work, but it's still driving me nuts. Any thoughts?