disclaimer: not mine
a/n: I apologize for not answering your comments to the previous chapter, guys. I had some technical issues but they are sorted now, so you'll be hearing from me soon.
She leans in.
Her attention shifts to his mouth.
Her intention is clear and his conflict is excruciating.
"You should try to get some rest," he says abruptly.
The sentence tears into both of them as it leaves his mouth. She raises her eyes but he doesn't meet her gaze. He can't.
Did she misread him too? His rejection is a slap in the face. It brings yet another burning wave of humiliation. She stands mute and frozen for a long moment, trying not to fall apart.
At last their eyes lock. Her pain is reflected in his.
"I thought you…" Her voice cracks and she trails off. I thought you wanted this… Me. Us. She can't bring herself to say any of it out loud. All of a sudden, it feels ridiculous - pathetic, even. "Never mind," she says quietly, then abruptly pushes past him.
The coffee table screeches against the floor as he moves to maintain his balance. He reaches out but doesn't touch her. "Lizzie, wait."
She doesn't.
Awkward and helpless, he lets his hand fall back to his side.
And he watches her walk away.
She is tossing and turning in bed, achy, tired and fully awake. According to the clock on the nightstand, it's almost 4 a.m. but her brain is still in overdrive, mercilessly replaying the past two years of her life - including that painful moment from a few hours ago. It's an elaborate and brutal exercise in self-flagellation. She rolls to her back with a tearful sigh and stares at the ceiling. Red was right. Again. It's like being pushed from a plane. Her world can't seem to stop spinning but there's no one to grab onto.
She chokes back a sob and forcefully swallows the pain. Enough. Her breathing slowly settles and after what feels like forever, her eyes finally drift shut.
But they don't stay like that for long.
She gets up, crosses to the door and pulls it open. The house is wrapped in soft, dark silence and she wanders back towards the living room.
There's dim light spilling from the kitchen.
She hesitates for a few seconds but curiosity gets the better of her. She stalks closer and soon sees him hunched over the kitchen island, eating. He's still wearing the same clothes, only his tie is missing. A floorboard creeks dryly under her weight and it draws his attention. She stops and leans against the door frame. They stare at each other silently in the semi-darkness.
He licks his fork. "You're up early," he jokes, casual, always feeling at home.
"I can't sleep."
He keeps his eyes on her for a long moment, then grabs another fork and slides it across the counter top. "Welcome to the club."
She stays put, eying him with arms wrapped around herself. She's wearing boxer shorts and a man's shirt. She found plenty of them in the bedroom closet - all in neat piles and original packaging. "I'm sorry," she says, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. He can tell she's uncomfortable. Nervous. "For the um… for before. It was…" she trails off, lost, then tries again: "It... I was inappropriate and—"
He opens his mouth to say something but she doesn't - can't - let him interrupt her rationalization.
"It was textbook self-soothing behavior. Really. It… it won't happen again."
He swallows. His head bobs slightly as if he was about to nod but changed his mind halfway through.
Her gaze shifts, desperate to find something else to talk about. "What are you eating?"
After a short pause, he glances down at his plate. "Cheesecake."
"At 4 in the morning?"
"I had a craving," he admits simply, and despite everything, she smiles faintly. He returns it, then gently pats the stool next to his. "Sit."
After some hesitation, she moves. She goes around the island, takes the fork, then sits down. He pushes his plate closer. "Try it," he prompts her, taking another forkful into his mouth.
But she just sits quietly, staring at the elegant silver utensil cradled in her fingers. Soon there's a small clink and the soft rustle of a shirt sleeve as he puts his fork down. She can feel his gaze but she doesn't look up. Doesn't look at him. If she did, the tears might come again, so she keeps staring at her hands. The contusions. The wedding band.
Soon the silence gets pulled apart by his voice.
"Bringing you here was a… somewhat rash decision on my part," he confesses. "One that I'm sure will be sufficiently misconstrued by your coworkers." She slowly peers up at him and his lips twitch with a sad smile. "And I thought it imprudent to further complicate an already… complicated situation."
After a long pause, there's a spark of amusement in her eyes - tiny and thoroughly unexpected. "Well, I think this is hands down the fanciest 'it's not you' speech I've ever heard."
His lips curve. He shakes his head and the smile grows into laughter. It's deep, rich, soft and infectious, not the sharp, hollow kind with which he usually camouflages himself. She tilts her head, studying him, and he quiets down. Her gaze rests on him for a while - it's a pleasant, anchoring weight. He slowly turns in his seat. His hand slides closer to hers on the counter top but stops just before their fingers could touch. "You wanted us to go the smart way, Lizzie," he says. "Under the current circumstances, this is it."
Liz stares at the space between their hands. It should remain there, she knows. "Most of them already think I'm sleeping with you," she remarks, sounding as tired as she looks. Occam's Razor is a frequently wielded weapon at the Post Office. She learned soon enough that it's mostly useless against Red but the others appear more reluctant to accept that.
Not that it matters right now.
Right now all that seems to matter is the distance between fingertips. It can't be more than an inch and it's crammed with conflicted anticipation.
"You can't help what people think," he says and their eyes meet. He looks somewhat mournful - almost apologetic - and the subtle shift in his demeanor gives her a pause. A thought that's been quietly bothering her for some time simmers to the surface of her conscious mind.
"What happened on that Christmas Eve?" she asks after some hesitation.
He fixes her with a strange look. "You read my file," he replies. It's a non-answer. An evasion. Or an invitation, perhaps, to think further in a less linear fashion, as he'd say. With him, it's often difficult to tell.
"I did," she says, holding his gaze. She read everything available to her on the murky subject of Raymond Reddington. She read and re-read them a thousand times. She even unearthed some old pictures. One was taken at his Naval Academy graduation in 1984. She conveniently forgot to return it with the rest of the documents.
He watches her intently. She still craves a distraction. Earlier he refrained from serving as such but now he decides to indulge her. "And...?" he prompts, further arousing her curiosity.
"And the more I get to know you, the less sense it makes," she says.
"Why?"
"You'd never have abandoned them."
In the ringing stillness, gratitude and relief flood him at once.
It catches him off guard.
She catches him off guard. Again.
He stares at her in complete silence, grappling with a sudden, intense mixture of emotion, and his frame trembles slightly in the effort to hide it. She can see the bobbing of his Adam's apple, the twitch of his mouth, and the tipping of his head. But she can't possibly grasp how much he longed for her to see him the way she's beginning to - outside the rigid confines of tailored reports, clumsy debriefs, and her rather one-track training. Your father would be so proud, he wants to say. He wants to say so many things but he can't bring himself to utter a word.
In the dim light, under the cold, blood-rusted shell of a monster, she catches sight of the man in that old picture she kept. The man who is now disoriented by pain and grief and not-knowing. Who has lost everything. Who is still searching, still trying to claw his way back to some semblance of personhood. Who is not entirely unlike herself.
She repeats her question, quieter and more cautious this time: "What happened?"
His eyes lower for a brief moment. He rolls his jaw around, chewing a mouthful of unsaid words, then: "I wish I knew," he admits. It's the truth. An open wound. He's a half-blind king ruling over a vast empire of information, and the cruel little irony isn't lost on either of them. "I've been trying to piece it together but... I just can't see the whole picture yet."
"Is that why you left, why you just… disappeared?"
"Yes."
"Is that why you came back?"
"It was one of the reasons."
"You think Tom knows something about it?"
This conversation is rapidly turning into an interrogation.
Her hunger for information makes his mouth twitch with a faint smile, and his gaze flickers to the fork in her right hand. It doesn't go unnoticed. While he isn't particularly worried about being stabbed again, the memory of their first heated clash is a vivid one still. With a fluid, elegant move, she turns the fork in her palm, so its sharp tines are no longer pointed at him. But she's still waiting for an answer.
"I doubt his knowledge extends much beyond the task at hand."
"Me."
He gives her a small nod. "But I'm sure the person or persons he works for are much more well-informed, and with the right incentive, Tom can lead us to them." She seems to consider this. "So good thing his head was left mostly intact," Red adds with a small quirk of his lips, trying to lighten the mood a little bit.
"Not for the lack of trying," she remarks and tries to smile. Tires. Then fails. Suddenly, everything that happened in the past few days comes crashing down on her again like a ton of bricks - the rubble of a perfect life. Perfectly fake. Ashen. Burnt to the ground. But the smoke still lingers. She can't seem to escape it. She can't even take that damn wedding ring off. Its mocking her in its clingy goldness.
What do you need?, she hears him ask.
He sounds distant.
Maybe she imagined the question.
Either way, it takes some time to formulate an answer. "I… I need to not feel like this anymore... like I'm suffocating," she says, her fingers curling into a strained fist, then flattening back against the counter's cool marble surface. "I need a 'here and now,' just… here and now, not 2 years ago or 20 steps ahead."
She's angry, tired, and rambling but he understands. He understands her perfectly and his hand moves, closing the gap and sliding over the back of her fingers - still mindful of her injuries.
She keeps her eyes on their hands, hears him stand, feels him step closer.
She's pulled up from her chair into a hug but it takes some time to relax into his embrace. The fork she's been clutching falls to the floor with a loud, metallic clank, and her arms slide up around his neck, pulling herself tighter against his body - so tight she can feel his heart hammering, feel his ribcage rising and falling against hers.
"Just breathe, Lizzie," he says, his voice soft and muffled by her mussed hair.
And she lets out a mute sigh.
Soon their inhales and exhales sync up, creating a soothing rhythm.
They still have a few hours left to sleep. Both of them are exhausted but neither seems intent on letting go of the other.
They rest in each other's embrace.
tbc