the scale of this story has shifted a bit, but I have handle on the reality of this fic which is at least 3/4 of the battle. As for the actual content? Well, you tell me.
They had begun over the wreckage of her marriage. Not when she came to him in tears, late, out of the frigid spring night - spring that year was also a sham, never warming til the great summer heat came - admitting he was right after all, wordlessly begging comfort in his arms. That night was almost chaste. If you can see chastity in sitting curled together for hours, long after her tears had dried, clinging but subdued with grief. She'd been dulled with sorrow and tiredness but she'd still felt something like heat or friction or a tugging cord of longing underneath her heart and between her legs, and known she was already on her way to him, already gone.
No, instead it was the little bunker, their War Room he'd called it, their files, their evidence board which was a minimal as modern art, so few were the solid facts on the ground. So much time was passed away there, in that grim basement down an alley, windowless and girded with locks, all of that time in anxiety or boredom, never comfort.
Still, afterwards she would hold always a little fondness for that grey room and their first true project together, not under the Bureau's purview but theirs. Their only great endeavor played in earthly bounds - largely, for a time.
Red had the recordings they'd recovered from the house across the street upon the demise of the man with the apple. She didn't want to watch them, and he didn't either, but they did, to see what her husband did when he was alone. She felt no connection to the woman or the man on the recordings. The angle was high, and there was no color, yes, but even so the woman in the recordings seemed a stranger, there was something wrong with this woman's posture, something limp and flinching and leaning, something nervy and aimless.
They both watched the recordings. All of them, with still faces and sick hearts, just to be sure they hadn't missed anything - just because neither was willing to admit that it was unbearable. He had suggested they skip past some parts of the recordings, the parts where she was there, the parts that should have been intimate and inviolable but she wanted to see it all. She wasn't willing to flinch and if she was going to put herself through this she was going to put him through it too, if he could stomach it, if he was willing to stand by her while she dissected the cold, decrepit carcass of her marriage.
What do you want me to say, she said, as the woman on the recording was fucked by her husband - thankfully there was no sound - and Red paced behind her, rigid with anger, That he was horrible? That he never made me come? Because I did, almost always. I was his job. He had to keep me satisfied. He's the only one who ever tried so hard, I suppose I should have known.
He made a pained noise of a sort she'd never heard him make before, as though she'd struck him. He was quiet for a long time, she could hear he had stopped pacing but she didn't dare look to see if he was still watching the recording, if she took her eyes away she would never look back at the screen. And she needed to see, she needed to understand, she wanted to see if that strange, awkward woman on the screen was ever loved or only ever flattered and distracted, if she had always been blind and stumbling and led along, if even now she could see the falsity and malice in Tom's attentiveness, the premeditation in the love and guilt he pressed on that cow eyed woman that ambled along on screen.
You shouldn't be watching this, Red said at last, sounding as though he'd like to forbid it but knowing he didn't have that option.
What does it matter if I watch? she said, I lived it, I already know what happened. Anyway if I didn't who would? You? Dembe? Who else would see this if I didn't have the stomach for it?
No one. Lizzy, no one would see them, I would destroy them rather than let anyone see… He put his hand, heavy, on her shoulder, and out of the side of her eye she could see that he was still looking off, away at the far side of the room, not even facing the screen.
On the recording, Tom had left their marriage bed to wash her off him in the shower and the little black and white recorded woman looked listless and confused among the sheets, not happy and luxuriant but sprawled like a dropped doll.
Without completely understanding that she did, Liz began to cry, slow, silent tears. Red's fingers tightened on her shoulder so much it hurt and she leaned her head into his wrist and bit at her cheek against words of shame.
After they had watched and discovered every hiding place Tom kept in their house, Red handed her the stack of disks and she snapped each one. They broke with sharp cracks that stung her hands, but she felt better when she was done.
He sat with her in the back of his sleek black car, afterwards, and told Dembe to drive them to her home, each as far to their own door as they could be and sit upright but when the time came and the car stood ready for her to disembark, she didn't move a muscle and neither did he.
Liz? asked Dembe, after a long scrupulous pause, Would you perhaps like to go somewhere else?
She couldn't speak, not having words for just how much she could not go into that townhouse with her husband, not that night. She looked to Red, a question plain on her face. He reached for her hand, which she gave, still uncertain with his touch but far from unwilling.
I think Lizzie is coming home with us tonight, my friend, said Red and looked to her for her approval.
Yes, she said, in a hoarse voice she nearly didn't recognize, Thank you.
Only by then they had run out of chaste comfort and when left alone, in dimness and comfort, replete with good things like food and dry, spicy wine, she turned to him - turned on him, nearly - and pitched herself at him like a dare, or a test or another contest to see who would flinch first in holding their hands over the flame. This time she knew it would not be her, she was restless and overwrought, her skin burned for him, she was wound too tight and somehow she'd been rewired, it was only in his direction that she leaned, only under his hands that she could find relief.
It was like the way she used to fly at him in rage, but sweeter, more gone on madness and the squirming longing in her gut. It was a rage of desire and she fell on him with it, gripping and pulling at his arms, his waist his hips, and he moved molasses slow, wariness slow, like a thing confused and waking, responding to her kisses so lightly, so faintly it made her frantic, an anticipation more like panic. And then, with a swift decisiveness her spinning head was slow to recognize, he had her pinned, against the nearest wall, her wrists trapped, pressed full length, his mouth against her cheek and her blood sang with joy, yes, good, soon I will know what he feels like between my legs and maybe I'll stop feeling like a bomb about to go off.
But he turned still and unyielding as stone, his warm breath against her skin taunting her.
What are you trying to prove here Lizzy? he asked, Is it really me you're interested in tonight? My mouth, my cock, or would any do? Are you seeking pleasure here? Or are you just trying to hurt me, or hurt your self using me? Because I can help you with the first, oh how I'd love to, even the second, simple pleasure, I wouldn't mind. But the last? I have no stomach for that. I will not hurt you, even if you ask me.
Oh, Red. I don't know, I don't know, she whined, small and pained and urgent and reached up to press more hopeful kisses to his mouth, his cheeks, his beautiful chin, I just want to do something better, feel something better. Please, you're so good to me. We could do this and it would be real, I know it would.
Real? Yes, Sweetheart, as real as anything can be, as real as anything you or I have ever managed, he said and pressed his face alongside hers, released her wrists and gathered her up instead, suddenly tender and gentle and the air turned thick, not with sex but with sadness and her eyes stung with tears.
Why does it feel like this, she asked, Why does it feel like longing for something we can't ever have? Why does it feel like a clock ticking down.
Don't think about that now, he said, Don't think about what drags at us. I'll be so good to you, my dearest dearest girl. I'll make you feel better.
And he did, oh how he did. He stripped her bare with slow reverence like he was paying homage and leaned her back against the wall and went to his knees before and made her come and come with his able fingers and his skillful mouth. She was so quiet at first, panting, almost startled at how much she could feel and how quickly but soon she was thoughtless with pleasure and making such noises of love and longing. When she was limp and sated and sagging with relief, balanced on her shaking legs and the cool wall and his bracing hands at her hips, he rested his head against stomach as if taking shelter there while she petted the short bristle of his hair and kneaded his still shirt-clad shoulders.
When she began to notice the cold in her nakedness he gathered her up and took her away to his bed and pulled the covers up over her. She was almost asleep by the time he laid her down on the fine linen sheets, her eyes were dropping closed as he kissed her forehead and smoothed her hair, but then he pulled away again, was going to leave her there, wasn't going to let her touch him, not really. Was going to tuck her in and let their little interlude end just like that.
She scrambled to sit up and turn on the bedside lamp, the soft yellow light was flattering to his tired, beloved features, to his lovely tawny skin, his cheeks still flushed, his mouth still swollen, his expression taut and sharp with guilt and wanting.
She wanted to scold him. She wanted to order him to strip down for her. She wanted order him to display some sign of selfishness or pride, some sign she was irresistible to him.
I don't think I've ever seen you turn down pleasure that was offered you, she said instead.
I want you to be able to look at me tomorrow, he said, I want you to be able to talk to me tomorrow and trust me and not feel I've taken something from you when you forgot you shouldn't offer it to me. But most of all I don't want the memory of the first time I'm with you to be forever linked to the memory of that man and those recordings.
When then, how long is long enough to make you feel that it's— she shook her head in frustration and felt her hair brushing against her back and shivered, That man overshadows everything of me, how long will it be until you can touch me and not think of that? I don't want you to see him when you look at me, I want to be clean of him, I want you to make me better.
I don't — no Lizzie, he protested with such vehemence, looking overwhelmed, but that didn't ease the sting of his noble denials in the face of her earnest hunger, When I look at you I see only you, when I look at anything, the world, the path ahead and the path behind, I see only you. You take up so much room in my vision and in my heart. But I'm not an antidote for anything, nothing about me is good or clean or healing, I'm just an aberration, just an agent for a kind of agenda or obligation that I hope you never have to understand.
But she was too hurt and too confused and he couldn't explain to her any of the things that might make her understand because back then he thought she might still escape, that she might never need to wake what slumbered in her, that she might still live a whole a simple life in the sun. And she was beautiful and unashamed and naked in the middle of his bed.
He went to her. He held her as they dozed, taking comfort together until comfort stretched needle thin and snapped and they were frantic for each other.
She was all mouth and teeth and tongue, marking his neck, his shoulder, her nimble fingers clutching and hurried. He'd been aching for her so long by then, as he slid into her he worried it might be a dream, but it was real, it was too awkward and urgent and human to be otherwise. His knees were tender from kneeling on the floor for so long, before, and her heels kept slipping against the sheets as she jerked up to meet him and he was sure he hadn't made love to a woman with so little finesse in decades but still she was so slick he could hear the wet sounds they made over her keening, wordless encouragements.
They clutched at each other in stunned, winded silence afterward, shocked despite themselves at how much, how quick, how terribly well they worked together. Shocked at how little effect it had made on how much they wanted, how alone they each still felt, how impossible it still was in the face of who he was and the life she had not yet given up for a lost cause.
Only now, she knew what she must deny herself, and him, and the size of that impossibility felt even larger inside her chest.
In the morning she slipped from his bed, only a few hours later, her thighs still sticky, ignoring the imploring hand he stroked against her back as she slid away and his drowsy, mumbled offer that she stay.
She told him, This can't happen again. I'm sorry, and did't — couldn't — look at him before she went to retrieve her clothes from his living room floor.
She had no memory of the strange boat ride from the moment he took her hand and helped her sit to when the boat arrived beside a wide stone staircase that seemed to run from beneath the river up and up through a steep and deeply shaded wood where they found themselves. Climbing these stairs took a long time, longer then her sense of space and distance told her it ought to. He held her hand the whole way, his grip firm and dry and warm, he was always so warm, so solid, so strong and human even as he performed the strange and wondrous, even as she knew he was more, was made up of liminal powers and looked into her at times with the ancient waiting watchfulness of the Awoken.
As they climbed it snowed, and the diffuse afternoon dimmed down to an evening of the most vivid white and black and indigo, the pretty woodland, the marble stairs, the great House a silhouette above them on the hill slumbering and bedecked with snow, all of it seemed to her more saturated and resplendent, and simply moreso in an undefinable way, than any other scene she had laid eyes on. She lagged behind him a step or two and he turned to face her, squeezed her hand and raised his eyebrows in question, and oh how golden and beautiful he looked, as if lighted from within but still her own familiar Red with his sweet and wearied face and a dusting of snow gathering on his dark hat and the shoulders of his long dark coat. She was freezing, she realized, and their breath misted in the clear air.
She didn't say anything, there was such a wideness to the silence on that hill over the long and ancient river that she didn't dare break it with anything more than the noise of their footsteps. She hurried up to him instead, smiled into his questioning eyes and kissed his warm cheek.
She wanted to laugh. She should be frightened, she supposed, what he had told her of Elsewhere was not nice, not welcoming, but she knew his secrets now, he'd confessed them in terms she felt nearly sure she's grasped and now he was taking her to his secret home, his Immortal house. Later she would be frightened, later when she understood, but just then she was giddy with love and discovery, the tears she had shed when she turned away from her old life were long dried and forgotten.
The stairway led at last to a great door, the back entrance to his House — later, as he led her around cavernous rooms and long hallways that came to light and warmth as they woke to his presence, he warned her that she must not enter by the front door, Not ever, do you understand my love?
Yes, she said, Never.
But she didn't understand yet, not then. She thought herself brought home and bound to him and indoctrinated, that he would not now be slipping away from her, always slipping away from her on his work, because now it was their work, she was to stand at his side. In time she would see that there would always be doors he could walk through that she could not, passageways through which she must never try to follow him, but not then.
After the first night together, after the first Never Again she went to work and didn't think about Red or Tom and she went home and she put on her edge charade for her husband and didn't think about Red or the limp, discarded version of herself on those damned, thrice damned recordings. Days went by but not many.
The next time Tom reached for her in their marriage bed she flinched and ducked his hands and claimed incipient headache, locked herself in the downstairs bathroom and shook and shook and bit down on the tender side of her own wrist hard enough she left a mark to make sure she didn't break down in hysterics or vomit or call Red and beg him to get her away from there, take her away, take care of Tom and take her away and never look back.
She didn't call him that night. She called him the night after. They met in their war room, their dry, sad little basement, and Dembe hadn't driven him, he'd come by an alternate route he'd said, which was back then just nonsense to her, but it meant they were alone, and could have stayed all night locked away strategizing with no one waiting on them, but they didn't. There was nothing much new to say, nothing new discovered against Berlin to even warrant the meeting — but of course she'd only called him there to see his face and hear his voice and be reassured there was still something of her aside from her masks of Agent Keen and Wifely Liz.
He didn't point out the hollowness of the exercise, only watched her with concern as he recited their few known things. She offered to drive him to his latest lodgings and didn't even pretend she wasn't coming in with him.
That night they didn't talk and he didn't pretend to self-denial and she didn't cry and when they'd recovered from their far too intentional coupling she pretended she didn't still hunger for his simple touch with a fervency she found unsettling and he didn't try to curl all around her the way he had the time before. Somehow she slept deep and still on one side of his palatial bed, he on the other side breathing quietly and maybe sleeping she couldn't tell, didn't yet know that when he truly slept, which wasn't often, he sprawled and twitched and snuffled like a child.
If you need to tell me this can never happen again, I will understand Elizabeth, Red told her as he lay on his side and watched her shuffle into her clothes in the dark, bruised and blustery dawn-light from the window, I will even believe you.
Red, oh, I… she said and stopped buttoning her blouse — she had expected him to rip it from her but he'd undone it so slowly, he'd undressed her so carefully as if memorizing how she moved — and pressed her face into her hands. Still she didn't cry. I don't know what to do. I don't have enough of me left for this. It can't happen. It can't.
But it did, oh how it did, she didn't even last a week, he was distant with her the whole time, with this look in his eyes like just seeing her was hurting him and it wore down her resolve so quickly she was ashamed. She was ashamed to be so eager to be hungered for, pined for like a courtly knight for his good lady in some old ballad. Only she was no knowing and benevolent Lady, she had grown up with sneakers and ripped jeans and tattered library books and all-american convenience in an anonymous Nebraskan suburb and she'd learned in school that the Old Gods slept beneath the Mountains or behind the mist on the Lost Isle, if that, if it hadn't all just been a joke, a mistranslation, a superstition, a wrong history of the world.
She didn't know that she'd been born of that other history, she didn't know what to do in the face of Red's more than mortal longing, and his more than mortal patience, and they way her own self had seemed to alter in response, as though her breath and bones were being realigned, as though he had somehow struck a tuning fork and set it to her sternum and made her ring and ring.
The third night she spent with him, neither of them slept but lay awake and each confessed things that the other couldn't quite comprehend but absorbed with a kind of bewildered hope. And in the morning she left him with a kiss to his temple and to the knuckles of his hand which had caught hers and she didn't tell him This Can't, she didn't say a word — and that silence, she warned herself, was nearly like a promise.