Things Left Unsaid
Setting: Between 2.19 and 2.20
He could hear it in her voice when she called. It was that tone that told him she was balanced very dangerously on the edge. Frustration mixed with fear and anxiety threatening to tip her over, but he had gone anyway. There was a good chance that that impulse was going to get him killed someday. Liz called and Tom went running. No questions asked, no hesitation. For all he knew he could be walking into a firefight without warning, but he went every time. He wasn't sure he could do anything else anymore.
The sharp, tight tone in which she had spoken to him when she called was one he knew well. Above everything else she might be feeling, she was angry at something. It might be him, or Reddington, or any number of people. There was no telling, but as Tom pulled up outside of the address she had sent him to meet, he couldn't quite push back the rising apprehension.
He saw her vehicle sitting empty down the street and moved to the door, knuckles rapping lightly against it. It took a moment, but the door finally unlatched and was pulled open. If Tom had had any questions about her mood, her expression said it all.
He followed her in silently, not risking setting off her temper. She stormed over to a chair in a warehouse that he had never seen before and sat down heavily, waving at the files strewn out on the table. "Nothing connects."
Her ex husband took a step forward, eyes scanning the files and their surroundings. Some of the files on the table were things she had dug up, others things he had brought to her, and there was a connection, even if it wasn't immediately visible. He knew enough about the inner workings of criminal organizations to know that they just had to dig a little deeper. The papers and photos and various pieces of intelligence were strewn out like she had arranged and rearranged them a dozen times. There was an empty mug with a coffee ring around the inside, showing it had recently been finished, and he wondered how many of those she had knocked back. With how wired she was, it could have been quite a few.
Liz didn't give him time to say anything after he had had his look though, and she stood abruptly and swept her arm across the table, papers and files flying everywhere in chaos. "Nothing connects. What good is any of this?" she demanded, turning her angry look on him for an answer.
Tom pressed his lips together, working through the words in his own mind before he let them escape. "Liz, it's going to take time to-"
"I've wasted enough," she growled. "If you didn't have the answers, you never should have-"
"Hey, I told you I could help you find them. You think Reddington told me everything? I knew some and am finding more, but it takes time." He tried to pull his own rising temper back. She looked like she was exhausted, stretched thin, and the last thing he wanted to do was get into a yelling match with her. They had had plenty when they'd been married, but things were different now, and he really preferred to avoid her taking a swing at him that night.
Liz glared. "Time? So you get to hang around, stretching this out, reminding me of-"
"Woh, hey, I've done enough crap on my own that you don't have to start blaming me for helping you when you ask me to. I didn't come to you, Liz. You descended on me with Reddington after he got himself shot."
"You were supposed to be gone!"
Tom shoved the frustration down, his expression carefully blank as he looked at her, determined to keep the hurt out of his voice. "Is that what you want, Liz? Do you want me to go?"
"I want you to give me the answers you promised, Tom. I want this to be over!"
She threw her hands up in the air and turned back to the table, glaring at it like it had offended her. Tom set his jaw, preparing himself "Just because you find what you're looking for doesn't mean this is going to be over, Liz. You know that. You're deep into it now."
"And whose fault is that?"
He blinked at her. "You do realize that if it hadn't been me, it would have been someone else, right? Reddington would have hired someone else, Berlin would have. It still would have happened, Liz, but at least with it being me I could try to protect you!"
He huffed, his own temper on the rise, and turned so he could only see her movements from his peripheral vision as Liz reached forward, grabbed hold of her empty coffee mug, and hurled it at him without warning. Tom's mind barely had a chance to register that it was coming at him before it connected with the back of his head hard enough to send him staggering forward. Once he was sure he wasn't going to pitch forward from the blow he turned, staring at her with more than a little shock at the fact that she'd actually hit him with the damn coffee mug. There had been plenty of times when they'd gotten riled up enough before that she'd thrown things in his direction, but the only time she'd ever tried to make contact before this was when she had dropped the bookshelf down on top of him. That was different though. And, to be fair, he'd had it coming in the wake of her finding out who he was and his own fear keeping him from telling her everything. She'd been angry and afraid. He didn't blame her, but this… All he was trying to do was help her. He was trying to be honest and she had pegged him in the back of the head with a coffee mug. He reached to the back of his head, long fingers exploring the damage done. "What the hell, Liz?"
She was fuming, tense and ready to lash out again, but she spoke instead and her voice was tight. "I didn't need your protection, Tom. I needed your love and your trust. I needed you to trust me with everything, just like you said you did."
Okay, fine. She wanted to air this out. He could do that, but he'd lost the urge to be nice about it. "I wasn't the only one with secrets, Liz," he said lowly, voice barely controlled. "How many times did you shut me out? Shut me down? You found the box and didn't come to me about it. You investigated me. What the hell was I supposed to do?"
"Not lie to your wife about it!"
"Would you have listened?" he demanded, and her eyes widened a little. "If I told you everything in that moment, would you have given me a chance to explain? Or would you have called your buddies at the FBI and locked me away? Do you know what would have happened if you had? Berlin would have sent someone after you. He would have done to you what he did to Reddington's wife. Do you think I wanted to let that happen to you?"
"I don't need you to protect me," she whispered again.
"Yes. Yes you did," he snapped, "because Reddington refused to tell you everything. You didn't know that you were under attack. "
"So what? This is all my fault?"
"That's not what I said and you know that," he growled, risking a step closer to her. If she wanted to hit him again, so be it. At least she didn't have any more dishes to throw at him. "I wanted to trust you, Liz. I wanted to tell you everything, but…" He swallowed hard. Honesty. He had promised her honesty, and not just when it was convenient for him. After everything, he owed her the truth, even if it terrified him still. "I didn't want to lose you. You said it yourself. You thought I was a monster."
He had moved closer than he realized, standing so that they were facing each other now. His fingers reaching out and hovering just shy of touching her arm. He wanted to hold her, to promise her he could fix all of this, but he couldn't. He was, however, close enough to hear the words that escaped her. "Weren't you?"
A chill swept through him and his expression closed off completely as he dove behind his walls for protection. There weren't many people that could rip him apart emotionally, but Liz was certainly one. He would have preferred her to hit him again. Hell, he would have preferred her to shoot him again next to that.
She must have noticed the change, because her own expression softened a little. "I don't meant that."
"I think you do," he answered softly, stepping away.
"I'm sorry. You know I say things I don't mean sometimes. I just get so… Please, just stop looking at me like that."
"Like what, Liz?" he demanded tightly.
"That blank, empty stare of yours that you just keep giving me. It's not you. Or it is, and I just..." Her shoulders sagged and her gaze dropped to the floor. "It's like I'm looking at you, but it's just a shell. You look like Tom, but you don't... You're not Tom. You're Jacob, and I keep expecting you to be something you're not."
He grimaced, lips twitching downward, and he made a conscious effort to come out from behind his protections, allowing his own expression to soften just a little. "There's a lot of me in who you thought I was, I think. I don't...spend a lot of time outside of my jobs, but-"
"So, what, you're saying you don't even know who you are?"
"I can be anyone that I need to be," he answered automatically.
"Except you."
Tom frowned deeply now, watching her watch him. "I don't know. I'd like to think that the man you married is what I'd have been if things had been different." If he'd been given even half a chance at being normal. Instead he had been tossed into every uncaring home in the system, labelled with this personality disorder or that, and finally picked up by a man that had taught him how to be everything he needed to be to survive the world he had fallen into.
Liz sighed, reaching out and her fingers brushed his arm as if she decided she shouldn't be touching him only in the last half second. "I don't know what to think or feel. I shouldn't trust you."
"I'm doing my best not to lie to you."
"I know." He could feel her gaze sweeping over him. "And you do keep bailing me out. You didn't have to come back."
"It's you and… I did kill the guy. It was my fault you were there."
She snorted. "Neither of us would have been there if I hadn't kept you prisoner."
"You saved my life," he murmured softly. "Everything else… You were in over your head. Maybe you're right. Maybe that's my fault too."
He heard Liz loose a breath, and her hand moved down, fingers wrapping around his. He looked up, unsure of the expression that played out on his face as she tipped up on her toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "Maybe we're both to blame some."
He opened his mouth, an apology dancing on his tongue, but it didn't quite slip off. He was sorry. Sorry for everything bad that he had helped bring into her life, but he didn't quite get it out before her fingers touched his chin, turning his head. "Let me see? I hit you pretty hard."
Tom snorted. "Yeah."
"Come here. Sit." Her voice was gentle enough, but he didn't dare argue with her as she directed him over to the chair. He took a seat so that she could see any damage left behind by her temper. Her fingers started exploring the area and Tom grimaced, the ache setting in now that the adrenaline was beginning to subside.
"I'm sorry I hit you," she said softly.
"It's okay. You know I have a hard head," he tried for a tease. It sounded forced, but at least the small smile that played on his lips wasn't.
She tried for one too. "Honestly, I thought you'd dodge it."
Tom blinked hard. "Seriously? I'm fast, Liz, but you threw a mug at me out of nowhere. Very accurately. How the hell was I supposed to dodge that?" He heard her chuckle and turned to see her looking a little embarrassed. "What?" he asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer.
"I spent so long thinking that I needed to protect you. You were…" She laughed and shook her head. "You always seemed so naive about life. I wanted to help you hold onto that."
"Liz-"
She held a hand up to let her finish. "Then when everything came out… Tom, you shouldn't have survived what you did. I'm not saying that I didn't want you to survive, just that the odds were never in your favour in it. And then, once you finally pushed past it, you were… I don't know. It's like for some reason I can't focus on any middle ground. You're either someone who needs to be protected or someone that can't possibly be brought down. Stop laughing at me. I know how stupid that sounds."
He was grinning at her. "I just wish it were true," he chuckled. "It'd make things a whole lot easier."
"Dork," she grumbled and swatted his arm. "And your head is fine. You may be sore, but I don't think it did a lot of damage. Not sure what that says…"
"Hey now," he grumbled and she gave him a real smile before looking down at her boots.
"You sticking around? If I promise not to throw things at you anymore, I mean."
"Only if you want me to."
"I think so. You promised to help me find answers. Anyway, I need to get to know you. The real you."
"Not sure there's much to know," he answered hesitantly.
"Only one way to find out."
He reached up carefully and she put her hand in his, squeezed his fingers in a reassuring way. She was trying. They were both half drowned by everything that was happening, but Liz wasn't quite ready to let him go and let him sink into the depths alone. He wouldn't let her go either, and while he knew this wouldn't be the last fight they would have if they were around each other, maybe they could learn a little more each time. She was willing to get to know the man beneath the mask and for the first time in longer than he remembered, he thought he was willing to let someone in. He was willing to let her in.
Notes: Let's try this again, because FFN ate my last round of notes.
This story came from a request from Degizzie over on Tumblr who found out that I have a head canon that Liz really has been known to throw coffee cups at Tom's head before (hence the statement when he applied for the job in Nebraska), and wanted a scene with that happening. At first it was going to be in Everything Back to You, but that scene was scrapped for rewrites and I promised her a one shot to make up for it. It's taken a while, but I finally decided that the best place to set it would be in that time period when Tom was trying to help her uncover answers about her mother. It's really the only time I could find that she might get angry enough to throw something at him, but also in a time period in which she would readily have a coffee mug at her disposal. I went searching through my one shots to try to find one that I knew I'd written so that I wouldn't write anything too similar, and realized that I had never posted this one. So, I tweaked it a bit, reworked it for the coffee mug, and here we are. I hope you guys like it!
I hope that this helps with the hiatus blues that start setting in about this time every summer. I plan to have the next chapter up on Everything Back to You edited down and posted on Thursday if all works well, and I hope to have a few one shots coming out over the next couple of weeks. I do still have that hiatus multi-chapter in the works, but I'm also working on my novel this summer, so we'll see how quickly that's being written. I'm hoping to keep it short enough that I can get it written and posted before the end of the hiatus. Also, if anyone's interested, I do have a new blog for my novel and any updates for it. You can find that over at .com