Ours

Setting: Just after 3.16

It was getting harder to tell when she was really angry and when she was overreacting because she had a little person inside of her that didn't like to let her sleep as much as she needed to and, as precious as it was, liked to kick at just the wrong time. She knew that she had every right to be irritable that night, but once she had calmed down she thought that maybe her anger wasn't entirely directed at her fiancé. Exhaustion mixed with Red lying to her about her mother and topped with Tom deciding that was the perfect time to fess up to an incredibly stupid move to seek out Gina Zanetakos had sent her into a yelling fit. She didn't think she had even given him time to finish before laying into him about going to see the woman that had tried to have him killed. It had ended with harsh words and Tom - with that infuriating mask of forced calm that he got - telling her that the stress wasn't good for her or the baby. Somewhere in there she had told him to get out and he had. Now, an hour later and being let off by the cab at the docks, she felt a little sheepish at letting it go that far.

Liz felt a rush of relief at the sight of Tom's boat tied to the dock where it usually was. It was stupid, she knew. It wasn't like she really believed that one fight would make him run after everything that they had been through, but there had been that nagging thought in the back of her mind. It was irrationally, which seemed to be her running theme that day.

As she made her way down the dock and closer to the boat she could see a figure bent over the far railing of the boat, working at it determinedly. The thing was a never ending source of repairs from what Liz could tell, but Tom liked to keep busy. He hadn't been able to since he had been shot, but it looked like he was taking out his frustration on sanding down something on the edge. The pier beneath her feet gave a loud creak and he whirled, his expression bordering on surprise. "Liz? What are you doing here?"

"Looking for you," she groused, and he moved immediately once she started to step over the side of the boat, offering her a hand to keep her balance.

"You told me to get out," he answered a little hesitantly.

"I'm seven months pregnant. I'm going to say things I don't mean," she huffed and risked a look at him. Her irritation eased some and she reached out and caught his wrist as he turned around to, she assumed, go back to what he had been working on. "It's been a long and pretty rotten day except for this morning. I took that out on you and I shouldn't have."

She watched him carefully, the admission difficult enough, but she wished that he would turn around and face her. Instead he had only stilled at her touch, as if frozen in place. "I was just trying to be honest, Liz. You wanted me to be honest.," he murmured, still looking ahead.

A soft sigh escaped her. "Tom, I'm sorry for yelling at you like that. I just…" She closed her eyes and took a step closer, leaning her forehead against his arm. He wasn't the only one that had trouble being honest. She knew that for this to work this time they both needed to be open with each other. "I was scared. She nearly took you from me and then you tell me that you walked back in to give her another chance…"

Finally he turned, those dark blue eyes of his more open than she had expected. "That's not what I was trying to do. I was trying to protect you. Both of you. Gina knows me and when her people didn't show up after torching the van, she would have known something happened. She would have come looking." He stopped, as if pulling himself back behind his walls all over again. That wasn't going to do either of them any good.

Liz reached up, her touch gentler than ever she expected, and guided him down until she could reach him to kiss him. He leaned into it after half a beat and she could almost feel the fear he'd felt rolling off of him as he kissed her back. Finally they broke, foreheads touching as they leaned in. "Why didn't you kill her?" Liz asked quietly. "If you thought she was a threat to us why…" She grimaced. "Do you still care about her?"

"I'm always going to care about her, Liz. It's… complicated." He motioned for her to follow him down below deck and she saw the way he was favouring his injured leg. He'd fought with her, she remembered from the part of the stir before she'd started screaming. Liz felt her temper begin to flare, but not at Tom this time. It was all at Zanetakos.

"Did she hurt you again?"

"Yeah. Somehow she knew just where to hit," he grumbled, easing himself down the stairs. "It's fine. I just need to get it propped up for a while." He eased himself down onto the edge of the bed and she motioned for him to scoot over and give her room to join him. He did, and began speaking very slowly as she settled in. "I met Gina when I was fourteen. I'd just enrolled in St Regis and had gotten into a bad scuffle first off. Apparently one of the bigger kids thought I'd popped off to him."

Liz snorted a laugh. "You? Never."

Her fiancé offered a small smile. "Anyway, Bud showed up and told me to follow him. I thought he was going to put a bullet in my head first off." He gave a mirthless chuckle at the irony. "He loaded me on his private jet, not saying a damn word of explanation the whole time, and we flew to Moscow. Somewhere along the way he told me that I was going to show him what I'd learned in my Russian language class." He leaned back, his head thumping against the wall lightly and Liz reached for his hand. Their fingers laced together in a silent encouragement and he swallowed hard. "Turns out he was looking into a new recruit. She was around my age, but so underfed you'd never know it. She'd been living on the streets, scrounging for whatever she could, but she was smart. And ruthless. At least she was good at making you believe that. If she was back then or not, I don't know. I think a lot of us just became what Bud wanted to survive."

He rarely talked about his time at St Regis, much less how it felt to be raised in an organization like that. Liz felt her chest clench as he spoke and she turned to press a kiss to his shoulder. "You've known her that long?"

"We watched each other's backs. You couldn't really trust anyone at the school, but we could always trust each other." He sighed. "That's why, Liz. I don't love her like I love you. Never have and never will, but I'm always going to care what happens to her. That's why I at least had to try to give her a chance. I'm the only one that ever would."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It might have been really stupid. I guess we'll see. I want to hope… I don't know, I'd like to hope people like us can change."

"You have."

"I'm trying," he said softly. "I should have told you, but I knew you'd try to talk me out of it."

"You may care about her, Tom, but I care about you. You're the one I don't want to get hurt. Seeing you on that ventilator again, knowing that…" She stopped, sterling herself and he tightened his grip on her hand. "I'm not willing to lose you again. You hear me?"

"Yeah."

"Just promise me you'll be careful."

"I promise."

"Good, because you and I are having a baby and getting remarried. You're half of that."

His expression lightened at her tease and she leaned against his shoulder. "And I'll promise to try not to take everything out on you."

"You said it was a rough day. Anything you can talk to me about?"

Liz sighed. "Reddington. Always Reddington. I think he's lying to me about my mother being alive. It's just…. infuriating."

"I'm sorry, babe," Tom murmured and pressed a kiss to the side of her head. "Do you want to pick up the search again?"

"I don't know. Maybe after the baby is born."

He hummed softly and her gaze swept over the space they sat in, noticing just how much he still had there. "Babe, we need to move the rest of your stuff over to our apartment. You're barely ever here anymore."

He tensed a little. "Our?"

Liz snorted. "Really? Because you haven't been living there?" They had spent most nights together since Liz had come back. She had trouble sleeping on the boat, so once she had gotten her bed set up - okay, once Tom had put it together for her, because he had always been more handy at that sort of thing - they had spent nearly every night there. It seemed silly to think he needed a formal invitation for something that had basically already taken place.

"You never offered and I didn't want to assume," he answered softly and she popped his uninjured leg.

"We're having a baby and getting married. When did you want to make it official?" she teased and shot him a smirk. "Because if you were going to ask me to move in here, I'll tell you that would be shot down really fast."

That finally pulled a grin out of him. "Fair."

"All I ask is you tell me about any go-boxes or anything you decide to keep. Deal?"

"I still keep one."

She blinked hard. "Seriously? I thought you were done running."

"I am, but if my life has taught me anything, it's that you have to be prepared. I have a few aliases that haven't been burned and I've pulled it all together to keep. Best case, it's a box of memories for a life I've left behind. Worst case-"

"If we ever need to run," she acknowledged softly.

"We," he agreed. "I'm not leaving you, Liz. Or our little one. No matter how bad the fight, no matter what happens. I love you."

"I love you too. Let's go home?"

"To our place?" he asked with a smirk.

Liz rolled her eyes and pressed a kiss to his scruffy cheek. "Ours."

Notes: Let's try this again. For anyone that saw this pop up earlier, I ran across two blaring mistakes that my autocorrect on my phone must have made while I was editing it. Go figure. Hopefully I've caught them all now.

I've wanted to do a piece where Tom and Liz talk about his visit to Gina in her hotel room since the episode aired. I know over on Tumblr the general assumption amongst the anti's is that he simply never told her, which seems a bit farfetched to me. He was willing to tell her that he buried his handler and give her a chance to walk on their wedding day, so why not this? That, and Gina got him in the leg pretty hard. I'd imagine that would have left a mark, considering he still hadn't healed enough at that point to be off his prescription pain killers. Not to mention his shoulder that was healing too took a couple hard blows and was jerked around quite a bit. He'd likely have some visible signs after the fight, so even negating the fact that he's been more honest with her, he'd be a fool to assume she'd miss all that.

I've started a one shot on it once or twice, but it just never got very far. This one bit me today, though, and just sort of fell out onto the page. I love it when it happens that way. Bickering Keens that turn insanely fluffy is one of my favourite things.