disclaimer: not mine
His cold fingers struggle to coax the shirt buttons into their holes. He straightens his back and tilts his head, frowning as his vertebrae pop and crack. His neck muscles are still numb from the local anesthetic.
And it seems his tie has gone missing.
The lock clicks. Clothing rustles as someone quickly, quietly slips into the room - clearly someone who doesn't wanna be seen entering. An intense feeling reaches him. A warm surge of anticipation. His hands still but he doesn't turn around.
The door closes with a soft click. That someone is watching now. Assessing.
He inhales deeply, then finally moves to face his visitor. "You shouldn't be here," he remarks, buttoning another button. "Tongues will wag," he adds with a twitch of a smile and something else - something weary and heavy and forlorn that lives behind the jovial shell.
Liz keeps looking at him, her face expressionless, and he slowly lowers his arms, offering himself up for a better view.
He looks ghostly standing there, soaked in cold-white fluorescent lights.
Focused.
Intense.
Deceptively vulnerable in a sort of boyish disarray.
And she takes her time, takes him in, re-acquainting herself with his presence and all its consequences.
Her gaze drifts up from his shoeless feet to the loose-hanging belt buckle to his half-unbuttoned shirt to the adhesive bandage on his neck.
"Does it hurt?" she asks, her voice gentle yet still cutting after so much static silence.
He regards her, pondering the possible ramifications of her chat with the Assistant Director. "No." She looks neither pleased nor disappointed. "How did your meeting with Harold go?"
"Did you try to have Tom killed this morning?"
Apparently, it went as expected.
When he doesn't immediately respond, she steps closer.
It affects him instantly.
"Did you try to have Tom killed this morning?" Liz repeats the question.
He watches her lips close around the firm words and stretches the silence, shamelessly enjoying the pleasant sensation of her closeness. "I didn't."
She eyes him. "They are going through the security footage. There was a man in Tom's room minutes before Ressler arrived. His face is in frame only for a few seconds but I recognized him. He was in the extraction team Mr. Kaplan mobilized after Garrick took you."
He smiles, pleased. "Impressive, Lizzie." He moves, slowly chipping away at the humming space between them. He's trying to turn her tactic against her - that's what he tells himself. Truth is, he, too, forgot how to keep a safe distance. "Have you shared this with the rest of the group?"
The lack of response is telling, making his grin grow.
"Why was he there?" she asks, voice low but even.
Something has opened up between them last night and it cannot be closed back up. They keep slipping back into it with unsettling ease, testing and teasing and poking and prodding.
Manipulating, even.
He tilts his head. It still feels like the left side of his neck is missing. It's a peculiar incompletion but its edges are now embroidered with a faint, dull ache - a good kind of pain, heralding an eventual return to normalcy.
Her eyes drift to the bandage, to the red spot of soaked-through blood, to the messy-yellow residue of iodine, then back to the deep green of his gaze. Up close he's all warmth, skin, and color - so overwhelmingly alive and real. She doesn't mean to stare but she does and he doesn't mind. He holds her gaze, wondering how much she sees.
She will strip him of his armors soon enough and, if she allows, he will help tear down every lie and liar holding her captive.
They will make them kneel.
And then he will kneel with them.
"I sent him to make sure Tom didn't get dispatched prematurely."
"He took out his protective detail."
The statement earns her a small chuckle. "They weren't protecting him, Lizzie. They were dutifully guarding a door with their backs turned, in typical FBI fashion, while Tom was quietly bleeding out on the other side."
"Your guy messed with the IV line."
"Yes. If he hadn't, our best lead would be dead by now due to a massive Heparin overdose. Check with the hospital. I'm sure they've already complied a preliminary report."
"I can't. Cooper had to put me on leave, pending an incident review."
Red's eyes narrow. "Had to?"
"It's politics," she says but doesn't believe it. "They're bringing in a liaison from the local police. I need to give a statement and my psych eval is in 30 minutes."
The soft teasing fades. "What do they have?"
She shakes her head, helpless for a moment. "I don't know."
"You really shouldn't be here."
"Yeah," she says with a sigh. "Yeah, I should be busy being a mom. Ressler and Audrey should be married. You should be a highly decorated admiral. And yet... here we are."
"And I am to blame for all that loss."
"The government may have granted you immunity but you are a long way from absolution."
"You think that's what I want... Agent Keen?" he asks, his quick smile abrasive, his tone challenging. "Absolution?" he repeats, tasting the word of her choosing.
"Maybe you don't know what you really want anymore."
Her words land with impact. His smile fades but he doesn't say anything.
"I had to make sure," she says.
He raises an eyebrow.
"That you are telling me the truth about what happened," Liz clarifies. "That's why I'm here."
He regards her. "And? Are you satisfied?"
"For now."
He nods and then there's a trace of a grin as the realization arrives. "You already checked with the hospital."
She looks at him for a long moment and her features soften somewhat. "You could have just told me, you know. Before we came in. Before the accusations started flying."
His gaze shifts for a second. There's a pain flaring up. Not in his neck. Behind his sternum. A growing pain. He blinks, his mouth twists but no words come out.
"You don't trust me," Liz summarizes his reaction.
He squints. The mood shifts and the playfulness returns."I trust you will arrive to the right conclusions," he says, "eventually." He needs her to hear the accusations as well - both the deserved and the baseless. They provide options she can choose from. And he needs her to choose, to decide for herself.
He wants to be a choice.
Hers.
"I don't have time to play your games, Red." She sounds tired. "This job is the only thing left that makes sense to me right now. If I lose it..."
"You won't."
She isn't so sure.
Her cell phone starts buzzing. She fishes it out of her pocket, checks the caller ID, then taps ignore. "I have to go."
He gives her a small nod.
She doesn't move. "Are they letting you go?"
"Yes," he says as if the FBI had any real say in where he goes and what he does.
It's her turn to nod.
"But you know how to reach me."
"Actually, now I know exactly where to find you," she says, gesturing to the chip freshly embedded in his neck. "Aram created an app, so now I can track you on my phone."
"An app?" he echoes, brows pulled together, and he looks at the phone with a mixture of aversion and curiosity. "How thoughtful."
For a brief moment she forgets.
She forgets all the bad. Their dark weight slips off and she smiles.
And in the eternity of that same moment, he feels a sudden, peculiar urge to taste that fragile curve of amusement.
"Do you trust me, Lizzie?"
The curve collapses into a thin line. "In the past 10 minutes I disobeyed a direct order, lied, and broke a dozen regulations just to figure out if you were honest about one thing you told me last night. Wh-"
"No," he firmly interrupts. She didn't hear him. She misunderstood. "Do you trust me?" he repeats the question. The same four words are flung at her but this time they don't sound quite the same. They reach her at a different angle and the answer doesn't present itself quite as clearly or vehemently.
There's another long pause. Reason struggles with some unknown intuition and the anger leaves her. She didn't have to figure out if he was telling the truth. She had to confirm her gut feeling that he was. Does that constitute some sort of trust?
"I want to," she admits, quiet and honest, "but I think there's a language barrier."
"We don't speak the same language?"
"We don't seem to attach the same meaning to certain words."
"Such as?"
"'Fun'," she quickly offers the most innocent example, eliciting a small grin.
But he doesn't allow it to last. He never does. The lightness of the moment quickly deteriorates. "'Love'?" he offers the most dangerous of all, watching her reaction.
The word hangs in the air between them, loaded and heavy and ticking, and she doesn't quite understand why he fixates on it. Such a crude, transparent method of manipulation feels beneath them. Maybe he can't help it. Maybe he can't help feeling it. Maybe he feels as confused as she does. Maybe this is a clumsy grab for understanding and being understood; an attempt to climb over that barrier and meet somewhere in between words and meanings.
They are drowning in maybes.
"I've never been loved this way," she tries to explain. To him. To herself. Especially to herself.
Her phone buzzes to life again but they keep looking at each other.
Something inside him rips itself loose and words start leaking again. "Have you ever been to Chefchaouen?"
She feels another rush of confusion and hears herself answer: "No."
A fond smile shadows his face. "Remarkable city. Swirling. Calming. Intoxicating." He inhales a lungful of memories. "It smells of freshly baked bread, spices, and mint tea, and the buildings of the Old Town..." A soft, deep hum escapes him. It resonates in her ribcage. "They are painted in the most brilliant shades of blue."
Her eyes search his. Brilliant blues clash with starving greens in the gray stillness of the room.
"Do you wanna flee, Red?" she asks, echoing him from earlier.
He doesn't answer.
Thumping of boots and radio static draw their attention towards the door. Guards walk down the corridor outside. Fortunately, they don't stop and the intruding noise soon fades.
When she looks at him again, she finds his gaze already back on her.
"Don't go back to your house. It's not safe."
"I know."
He nods, then: "Stay with me tonight."
The sentence slaps and stuns her.
Are you out of your goddamn mind!? would be a proper reaction. Anger, too. A lot.
But that's not what comes out.
Nothing comes out.
He is toying with you.
But he doesn't look smug or amused. If anything, he seems to be in some sort of strange, uncontrollable pain. His eyes are pleading.
And her phone keeps buzzing.
He's being selfish and greedy and scared and he can't seem to stop himself. "Your colleagues are treating you as a suspect. If you go to a friend, you'll put their lives in danger. And the thought of you alone in some cheap mo-"
"Stop." It's a whisper. An order, not a plea. And he stops. The rationalization ceases. He obeys.
The phone's buzzing dies down too.
Only to start back up again. She pulls it out and they both glance at the screen: it's Ressler.
She taps ignore again and wishes it were that simple with Red too. She wishes his abrupt lunacy didn't make so much sense to her so often. "I have to go."
This time she moves.
More words rush up and collide against his teeth.
He forcibly swallows them.
Too many have escaped already.
tbc