AN: It didn't get away from me this time, woohoo! But I did spend almost as much time this past week working on the beginning of a sequel as I did this chapter. So that is on the horizon, but I can't give a timeline because it's going to be a little more complicated to write than this was. (It *probably* won't be the next Lizzington story I post, though.) Thank you so much to everyone who's followed this story along the way. Hope you enjoy!
"OK, so I guess the shower really did live up to your…"
Liz trailed off when she noticed Red had fallen asleep. He'd been propped up against the pillows reading when she headed for the shower; now his book lay open on his chest and his glasses had slipped down the bridge of his nose. He had one arm stretched out toward the empty side of the bed.
Sleeping peacefully as he was, he seemed so… human. Not so much the larger-than-life caricature he presented to the world as a shield, but a man with strengths and vulnerabilities like any other. She felt a familiar ache settle in her chest as she watched him.
His glasses were making him snore softly. Carefully, she slid them off his face and placed them on his bedside table. She searched around for something to mark his place in his book, all the while marveling at how quickly they had slipped into such an easy domestic routine even in the face of the precarious nature of their situation.
Because as tense as her day had been, now that she was here, she couldn't imagine being anywhere else.
Setting his book down, she crawled under the covers and, despite her best efforts to avoid disturbing him, he stirred when the mattress dipped under her weight. He turned onto his side and curled around her, tucking his legs up behind hers and draping an arm across her waist.
"Did I fall asleep on you? Mmm, I'm sorry." He nuzzled her hair away from the nape of her neck and pressed a kiss there. "I can't remember the last time I've felt so… comforted… by someone's presence. Apparently, you don't even have to be in the room with me, just the knowledge you're nearby puts my mind at ease. I haven't slept so well since I was a boy."
"I thought you said you didn't find me sedating."
"Oh, no. Exhilarating, challenging, soothing, maybe even exhausting in the right context." He pulled her snugly against him and cupped her through her pajamas, sending a thrill through her drowsy body. "But not sedating. Never that."
She hummed her approval and rocked herself against his hand, letting him know she wouldn't mind if he continued. He was more than happy to oblige, slipping his hand beneath her clothes to find her already slick with arousal; he made a strangled noise in his throat and the arm he had snaked between her and the mattress pulled her even tighter against him.
"Are you always this eager or am I getting special—mmm." She interrupted him with a kiss, craning her neck and holding him close with a hand at the back of his head to maintain the awkward angle.
She could feel him growing hard against her and suddenly his fingers weren't enough; she pulled her pajamas and underwear as far down as she could, pressed close to him as she was. He started to shift his way down the mattress, but she reached back a desperate hand, holding him to her, halting his descent.
"No?" She moaned from the sensations his relentless fingers were producing and shook her head, tugging at his pajama bottoms. She whimpered when he withdrew his hand. He rolled away and shoved his pajamas down one-handed, kicking them off. When he turned back to her, she gasped at the heat of his bare skin. "Would you prefer if I…?" He pressed himself against her ass, his fingers damp at her hip as he rubbed his cock against her smooth, soft skin.
She rocked her hips back to meet him and gasped, "Oh God, please, I need…"
He trailed his hand around to her inner thigh and lifted, pressing forward at the hips to slip his cock between her legs. He made a few teasing thrusts, dragging himself through her slickness, before he reached down to align himself and slid inside her.
Free from the constraints of urgency and her makeshift restraints, it felt as if his hands were everywhere at once. There was something extremely sensual and indulgent about the way he approached lovemaking when she let him take the lead, like he wanted to trace and memorize every inch of her. She'd gotten a taste of it that first night when he tended to her so thoroughly after he'd already been sated. While all of their encounters had been passionate in a way she thought was reserved for people other than her—a notion she was more than pleased to be disabused of—having his complete and total attention focused on coaxing her to new heights of excitement was overwhelming in an entirely different way.
"I would apologize for having such a hair-trigger lately if you weren't right there with me," he said, surging into her again with a twist of his hips, punctuating his words with open-mouth kisses up her neck. "Still, I feel I've given you a false representation of my finesse in this area. When I'm not overcome with unbridled lust," he paused to take her earlobe between his teeth, tugging at it lightly, "I am more than capable of controlling myself long enough to ensure—"
She dragged her nails across his scalp as she clenched her inner muscles around him. He grunted and plunged into her in a series of short, involuntary thrusts before he regained control of himself and stilled. He pulled her tightly to him at the waist, keeping her lower half from moving independently of his.
"You don't play fair," he growled.
"And you talk way too much."
He chuckled; the vibrations it sent through her made her gasp and dig her nails into his forearm. He hissed at the pin-pricks of pain, and slowly, agonizingly, he started to move again.
Soon enough, she felt balanced on the razor edge of release, his thrusts teasing at the friction and pressure she needed, but not quite delivering enough to push her over. She tried to direct his caressing hands down to touch her, but he kept skimming over where she needed them the most. She growled in frustration and he chuckled again.
"What, you can dish is out, but you can't take it?" he asked, sliding a hand up to trace her throat, her jaw, her cheek. Blindly, she turned to close her mouth around his fingers, nipping and sucking at the skin. He sped up his pace with a groan.
When his rhythm started to become more and more erratic, he finally brought his other hand down to touch her; she screamed her release through teeth sunk into his palm and he tipped over the edge with her, thrusting frantically through both of their climaxes.
They drifted off to sleep still wrapped around each other.
The next morning found Liz wandering into the kitchen while the first rays of sunlight were shining through the window over the sink. Red greeted her with a lingering good morning kiss and pushed a steaming mug of coffee into her hands.
"Try that and tell me it's not a hundred times better than the pre-ground caffeinated sawdust from the grocery store or the stale burnt swill that passes for coffee at the Post Office," he said, turning his attention back to whatever he had on the counter.
She shook her head at his unnecessary hyperbole, but cupped her chilled hands around the mug and took a cautious sip.
"Jesus, that is good." She closed her eyes and inhaled, letting the rich, earthy aroma wash over her. "Let me guess, you know a guy who has it shipped in fresh from Brazil every morning."
Red smiled at her over his shoulder. "I'll have him send you some next time I talk to him."
She snorted; she hadn't been serious and she was pretty sure he wasn't either, but it really didn't matter. She made a mental note to keep an eye out for a delivery just in case and came up behind him; she laid a hand between his shoulder blades, peering over his shoulder to see what he was doing. Preparing ingredients for an omelette by the look of things.
"You're cooking for me?"
"Mmm, I like to provide sustenance for my overnight guests whenever possible," he said, turning just far enough to meet her eyes, his own dancing with amusement. "Unlike some people."
"Red, I burn take-out."
His surprised bark of laughter caught her off guard. She moved her hand up to run her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck as she watched him slice mushrooms with a deft hand. She could have predicted he'd be good with a blade—hell, he probably knew forty-seven different ways to kill someone with a paring knife. Still, there was something satisfying about watching the competent, confident way he moved.
He turned to nuzzle at her neck. "You think you can handle the toast?" he murmured, his lips brushing her ear.
"Depends, do you like charcoal?"
His answering chuckle rumbled through his chest. She raked her nails down his neck and, feeling him shiver in response, gave the base of it one final caress.
She filled the toaster with slices of freshly baked bread she was sure came from the bakery they'd had lunch in the day before. The ticking of the toaster was soon joined by the sizzle of eggs cooking over on the stove. She hadn't had a home-cooked breakfast in a long time. Even if she could manage to cook a decent egg—and she really couldn't; breakfast foods in particular were her mortal enemies—she usually didn't have the time and ended up shoving a few mouthfuls of leftovers into her mouth on her way out the door when she ate anything at all. Her stomach growled.
"Your cooking can't possibly be as bad as you make it out to be, Lizzy, not when you're such a quick study at everything else."
"If you heard Tom talk about it, you'd think it was a sign of the apocalypse." Red looked over at her with an eyebrow raised, waiting to see if she would elaborate. "Don't get me wrong, I'm all for a little good-natured teasing, but there was always something cutting about the way he did it. Whenever he caught me trying to cook something, he'd ask if we needed to talk, like I was angry about something and making him eat my cooking was my way of getting back at him. Or he'd say there were kids starving in Africa, so I shouldn't waste food, that kind of thing. Bastard wasted more food than I ever did."
After she finished buttering the toast, she sank down onto one of the seats in the breakfast nook, glaring dejectedly into her coffee mug as if it were to blame for all her problems. She shouldn't have mentioned Tom. It was becoming easier and easier to put him out of her mind with Red to distract her, but she could feel herself falling into a familiar spiral of dark thoughts and, once she fell, it was extremely difficult to drag herself out.
Red sensed the shift in her mood. He set the finished omelettes on the table in front of her, then came over to crouch down next to her chair.
"You're allowed to mourn what should have been, Lizzy. He didn't deserve you. He didn't deserve to breath the same air."
"And you do?" she snapped before she could stop herself, her anger making her cruel. He didn't even flinch.
"Of course not," he said, emphatic and matter-of-fact, like it hadn't occurred to him as a possibility. She felt a twinge of guilt. Red might have questionable motives about a lot of things, but he never gave her any reason to think he felt entitled to being with her. Quite the opposite, in fact.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."
"Yes, you did," he said. The was no judgement in his tone, only understanding. "I don't deserve you. After everything I've done, I don't deserve the chance you've given me, yet you still gave it. You have a file on me as thick as The Fellowship of the Ring detailing only the misdeeds your government is aware of, and you still gave it." He rested a cautious hand on her knee, tracing a pattern with his thumb.
"You asked me the other night why I chose you. It's because I thought, out of everyone, you would be able to see the man behind The Concierge of Crime, and you did. I laid all that out on the table the day you met me. You're my second chance. Although I didn't mean it quite like this."
"You're the king of making profound statements that explain everything and nothing at the same time."
He quirked a smile. "Are you trying to tell me you find me frustrating, Lizzy?"
"You have no idea."
"Oh, I think I do," he said, his eyes crinkling with amusement as he spoke.
She glanced down into her mug absently and frowned when she saw that it was empty.
"Here," he said, taking the mug from her, "I'll refill that for you. Get your caffeine fix from actual coffee for once."
They lapsed into silence while they ate. It was companionable if not exactly comfortable. Her thoughts were still too tumultuous, too bleak, too hateful. She snuck glances at Red while his attention was safely on his food. She was tempted to vent her frustrations with him the way they'd been doing the past few days, but she had to be at work in an hour. Still, she ran the risk of brooding all day again if she didn't do something.
"I think hindsight has made me a terrible person," she said, spearing an errant mushroom with her fork.
"What do you mean?"
"I've spent hours lying awake at night since Tom was captured wondering what it would have been like if things had gone differently. If I hadn't been so desperate to cling to the image I built of our relationship and noticed there was something off sooner, maybe I could have… I don't know. Stopped him? Saved some lives?" She sighed. "Sometimes I think it would have been better if Zamani had killed him."
"That doesn't make you a terrible person, it makes you human." Red reached across the table for her hand, ran a finger along her scar. "If Zamani had succeeded, you would have been spared the fallout from Tom's duplicity and the pain that came along with it. It's only natural to wonder how that might have changed things. How different you would be today if you never had to experience his betrayal."
She studied Red's face as he spoke; he wouldn't look at her. While he never confirmed he was responsible for Zamani's attempt on Tom's life, she always knew in the back of her mind he had never denied it either. For Red, that was as good as confirmation. She didn't think she would have ever come to a point when she could be OK with that, yet here on the other side of Tom's deceit, she found that she was.
"That kind of betrayal," he said, staring at their hands, "it shakes a person to their core, makes them reevaluate everything they know about themselves, doubt everyone they trust. It's a wound that can take a lifetime to heal, if it ever does. You could have avoided that."
He was speaking from experience, but what experience, she couldn't say. It was deeper than the betrayal of an associate, of a superior, even of a friend. She knew so little of the circumstances surrounding him turning his back on his country that didn't come sanitized and summarized in black, white, and red ink; in moments like this, she felt that lack of information, lack of context, like a jagged hole, a missing piece in the puzzle that was Raymond Reddington.
She didn't know what to make of this side of him, only that it showed through the cracks in his armor most obviously when they talked about Tom.
"He would have gone to his grave a loyal husband, a devoted teacher, an aspiring father. I can't deny that it would have been easier, but it wouldn't have been real. I would have seen his death as a tragedy and remembered our time together fondly. He doesn't deserve to be remembered fondly." She tugged lightly on his hand, urging him to meet her eyes. "I never would have trusted you."
Once he finally made eye contact, it was as if he couldn't bring himself to look away. "You'd rather experience the soul-crushing pain of betrayal than have a reason not to trust me?"
She held his gaze in silence for a long moment before she spoke. "You might want to keep that in mind."
"I need a vacation," Liz said, flopping face down on top of covers next to Red. The task force had managed to capture their target, but only just. Ressler and Meera escaped serious injury by the skin of their teeth and Liz wasn't terribly much better off. "Where the hell do you find these people?"
"The deepest, darkest recesses of the world's underbelly," he said, gravely. "Or, you know, the corner office, various embassies, Congress…" He trailed off with amused lilt to his voice. He hadn't changed yet for bed, and the image of him lounging in his day clothes—dark vest unbuttoned, shoes kicked off, tie undone—was something she never wanted to forget. "Or did you mean that hypothetically? Lizzy?"
She tore her gaze away from his chest to find him peering down at her over his reading glasses. "Hmm, what?"
"You're not listening, are you?"
"No, sorry," she said, reaching out to run her fingers up his forearm. He set his book and glasses on his nightstand and moved down to face her, cupping her cheek and tracing his thumb along the scrap on her jaw in a sort of apology.
"Were you serious about the vacation? Because I can always orchestrate the takedown of a low-level Blacklister in some far-off, exotic place, tell Cooper it'll take a week when it will only take a day, and insist I just have to have you with me."
She blinked at him, not so much surprised by his suggestion as the fact that she could almost see herself taking him up on it. "That sounds more appealing than it should."
"It does, doesn't it?"
She slid closer to him, tucked herself against his side, and rested her head on his chest. He pressed a kiss to her temple and wrapped his arm around her. She fell silent for a long, long while.
"What would we do on this hypothetical vacation?"
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's a fabulous concept, I think you'd appreciate it."
"Going too long without doing something productive makes me stir-crazy."
"I'm sure if you twist my arm, we could find something productive to do." She glanced up at him with an eyebrow raised; he threw back his head and laughed. "You have a truly filthy mind, Lizzy. What did I tell you about innuendo? I meant something more along the lines of teaching you to cook."
Her own laughter died in her throat when she saw the expression on his face. "Wait, you're serious?"
"With all the Chinese takeout you eat, your blood probably has more MSG than iron at this point." He shrugged. "Besides, it's a useful skill to have."
That familiar ache settled into her chest yet again and she could feel the sudden burn of tears behind her eyes. Chances were he had no idea how much it meant to her for him offer that so casually, for him to have confidence she would be able to improve in an area she'd always felt inadequate in, but had never really been taken seriously about in the past. She swallowed around the lump in her throat and asked, "Are you trying to make me fall in love with you?"
"What, by making small, thoughtful gestures, making you feel like a human being worthy of respect and affection?" He tilted his head and studied her face. "I could easily accuse you of the same thing."
"I'm not—That wasn't what I—"
"I know, Lizzy," he said, suddenly serious. "You're doing quite well in that regard without any extra effort on your part." His cheek twitched in an uncomfortable half-smile that disappeared so quickly she almost thought she imagined it.
"Red." Liz worked her jaw but her voice refused to cooperate with her. Rendered speechless by a cryptic, implied declaration of love—that's what her life had become.
"It's OK," he said. "It's fine. I'm sorry, I don't want you to—"
Liz grabbed him by the back of his neck and pressed her lips to his. If she surprised him, he didn't show it, immediately bringing his hand up to thread through the hair at the nape of her neck. He tilted his head for a better angle and parted his lips, encouraging her to deepen the kiss. She moaned into his mouth, but pulled back before she could get carried away.
"—Feel obligated," he said, breathless, continuing right where he left off. "Whatever feelings I might have for you, they come with no expectations of reciprocity."
"Red, I… If I ever…" She toyed with his buttons, slipping one or two from their holes so she could rest her fingers on the skin of his chest over his heart. It beat strong and fast as he came down from their kiss. "It wouldn't be because I think I'm obligated. You know me better than that."
"You're right. Allow an old man a moment of insecurity."
"Old man, my ass," she said, elbowing him lightly in the ribs. She settled back against him where his shoulder met his chest and heaved a heavy sigh. "Everything would be so much simpler if I didn't need you."
He looked down and shot her a tight, knowing smile. If he didn't need her, she never would have met him. She wondered if it was selfish or foolish to be glad that he did.
"Relying on someone out of necessity and shared circumstance, it bonds you. Relying on someone because you want to, because you choose to… That's something different." He paused, shifting so he could face her more comfortably, and framed her face with his hands. "In time, perhaps I can be that person for you."
She brought her hand up to his, running her thumb along the back of it as it cupped her face; she met and held his gaze. "I hope someday I can be that person for you."
He pressed his lips to her forehead in a lingering kiss. "You're well on your way, sweetheart. You're well on your way."