Surprised by his offer—no one had read a story to her since she was child—but pleased by the idea of it, Liz stood and accepted by sitting down next to him and tucking her feet up under her.

"What are we reading?" she sighed.

"Huckleberry Finn," Red replied, re-opening the novel. "Would you like me to start from the beginning?"

"How much have you read so far? I'm familiar with this book."

"Huck just found Pap in his bedroom."

"Keep going from there," Liz requested. "That's just a few chapters in."

"Very well," Red cleared his throat. "Would you like me to do the voices?" He tone was serious, but his face was not.

"Of course," she replied smoothly. "I'll be interested to hear your take on Jim."

She curled up next to him as Red chuckled and began to read. He chose not to do different voices or accents, but his skillful intonation and clear enthusiasm for the story left her no less enthralled. She closed her eyes and rested the back of her head against the wall behind her, letting Red's smokey voice and Mark Twain's magnificent story take her away.

At some point she leaned in and rested her head on his shoulder. He obligingly moved the book a little closer so she could read along with him. Her eyes moved over the page as the sound of his voice reading the words before her seared itself into her sensory memory. Even dressed casually, Red still smelled like Red—delicious and clean and male. Liz knew that she would never read this story again without remembering this moment, here, with him.

She slid her arm around his and hugged his bicep to her chest, relaxing her full weight against his side, head still on his shoulder. Red reached over and placed his warm hand on her knee, running his thumb over it intermittently, removing it only when he had to turn the page.

There was a sudden light tapping at the entrance overhead. Both of them startled and looked up.

Red was on his feet instantly, leaving Liz to recover her balance at the sudden absence of his support before she followed suit.

Red climbed up and unlocked the inside latch. He pushed upwards to help Eli clear the false sink. Liz looked up at him and smiled. Eli returned the smile and gave Red a courteous nod.

"How are you holding up down there?" He asked quietly.

"We're managing," Red replied at the same time Liz said, "Pretty good." Eli seemed pleased to hear this. He handed Red a pile of fresh newspapers and a heavy black duffel bag. Red passed these down to Liz.

"I thought I could take your trash and dishes," Eli offered. "Dirty laundry too…there are fresh towels in the bag."

Liz quickly assembled the items and helped Red pass them up. The smell of fresh garlic and tomatoes wafted down towards her, along with the usual smells of the pub above them.

"What are you cooking up there?" she inquired hopefully. Eli chuckled at her.

"The special tonight is lasagna. Not your standard pub fare, but my sister is visiting, and she volunteered to make it…her recipe. Would you like me to bring you some for your dinner?"

"Absolutely," Red nodded.

"Please!" Liz half-begged.

Eli smirked and grabbed the items they had pushed up to him. "Be right back."

Red climbed back down to wait for Eli to return

"I hope there's garlic bread!" Liz grinned.

"Jesus, me too," Red replied. She chuckled at his enthusiasm.

They used the wait time to see to their interim needs, using the bathroom and cleaning off the table. Red moved over to the shelf with the wine on it and held up a bottle of red questioningly.

"Will you be okay if I open this?"

"Yes. I might even have a glass. I feel so much better."

Red uncorked the bottle and poured them each a glass.

They heard the door to the closet above them open. Eli was back with two trays overflowing with huge slices of steaming lasagna and salad. As Red passed her tray down, Liz was pleased to note a giant chunk of freshly toasted garlic bread resting next to her salad.

Eli bid them farewell and moved the sink back into place, locking them together beneath the earth once more.

They ate in companionable silence. Liz practically had to refrain from licking her plate clean, and Red declared he had never had better…not even in Italy itself.

When they were done and plates cleared away, Liz poured herself a second glass of wine and looked over at Red hopefully.

"Is it silly if I ask you to read to me some more?"

"Not at all…Shall we finish the book?" he asked rhetorically, standing with his wineglass and moving back towards his bed. Liz was relieved to see him move that way. She wanted nothing more than to curl up against him again. She would drink her wine, listen to his voice, feel him warm and solid against her, and think of nothing else but Huck and Jim and their adventures on the raft.

Red seemed to have a similar mindset. He began to assemble a few items for their mutual comfort and minimal disruption. He grabbed a bottle of water for himself and one for Liz. He pulled an extra blanket from the shelf and tossed it on his bed. He grabbed another bottle of wine and the corkscrew, and then made a pass by Liz's bed and snagged her pillow.

Liz watched him do all this amusedly, wine glass in hand. While Red nested and refused her offer of assistance, she made a quick trip to the bathroom and brushed her teeth, conscious of the scent of garlic on her hands and the taste of it in her mouth. She didn't close the bathroom door, but it surprised her when Red's figure appeared in the doorway as she was spitting toothpaste—messily— into the sink.

"Garlic," she explained, attempting very casually to wipe splattered toothpaste and spit from her face with a hand towel. Red nodded approvingly and pretended he hadn't caught her off-guard.

"Ah," he grunted stepped through the door. "I should probably do the same. Scooch please," He slid past her in the tiny space that was barely big enough for one person, let alone two, and plucked his toothbrush from the holder next to the sink before she could protest.

"I…um…was going to floss," Liz stammered, unsure of why she had to announce that aloud, vaguely feeling like she needed to ask his permission before performing such a personal act in front of him…did Red really need to see her go after the lasagna bits stuck between her bicuspids? Probably not.

"Go ahead, Lizzie. I've seen you do worse," Red grinned at her in the mirror around a mouthful of toothpaste. Liz rolled her eyes, but pulled a length of floss from the plastic container anyway.

Red spit his toothpaste perfectly—of course—into the drain and ran the water to wash it down. He too then procured a length of floss and began to use it on his teeth unabashedly. Liz smiled at the surreal and ridiculous sight of them both flossing away in the mirror before her. Red caught her eyes in the mirror and smiled too.

"Ready?" he asked when they were both finished. She nodded, and they made their way back out into the main living area.

Red pulled a chair away from the table and set it next to his bed as a makeshift nightstand. He piled their provisions on top of the flat seat, and motioned for Liz to have a seat and settle in. He moved to the shelves again, picking items up and moving them aside.

"What are you looking for?" she queried as she sat on his bed and wedged her pillow behind her back.

"You'll see," he called out in sing-song. A few moments later he turned around and approached her, hands hidden behind his back, his expression smug and teasing.

"What is it?" she asked wryly, and Red gleefully produced a large glossy brown box tied with a darker brown ribbon from behind his back.

"Belgian chocolates, Lizzie!" he crowed. "I'd completely forgotten I stashed these down here! They may be a little stale, but they'll still be delicious."

"Score!" she cried, delighted as he was by this unexpected treat, laughing with him. "Things are looking up."

They cozied up together once more on his bed, the excess of blankets and pillows making it infinitely more comfortable and their positions sustainable for the many chapters ahead. It was nothing to lean back against his chest and accept the comfort of his arms around her. He was so warm.

They drank a little more wine, and Red continued reading aloud. She could feel the thump of his heart between her shoulder blades. At one point, he handed her the book in order to pour himself another glass of wine and open up the chocolates. She continued reading from where he left off, giving him a small break, but when he offered her the box, she had to stop and take a truffle.

"Amazing," she groaned after biting into it. "Did you actually get these in Belgium?"

"Of course," he replied, sounding slightly affronted that she would even have to ask.

"Of course," she echoed, rolling her eyes slightly. She looked back at him, but he only smiled softly in response.

She took another chocolate, then sighed.

"We're going to have to move the table and do some push-ups or jumping jacks tomorrow. Who knew being on the run would be so fattening?" she quipped, and felt Red chuckle behind her.

He picked the book up again and continued to read. Liz took another chocolate for herself, then took a second one and held it up to his mouth behind her. Red ate the chocolate from between her fingers, muttered "Thank you" as he chewed, and continued reading. She did this intermittently until he politely refused.

With his sable voice and his warmth at her back, the wine and terrible drunken coma-sleep she had had the night before, it wasn't long until her head dropped onto his chest, and she was out cold.

The nightmare began as many of them began since her night at the Alchemist's cabin…her entire body was paralyzed, but she could still feel it. She could feel something solid against her back. She couldn't move, she couldn't move and she needed to move, she knew. She could smell the smoke. The fire was coming, she knew. And she could only stand there, trembling and terrified, waiting for it to come.

And then they were all standing before her. All the people she had hurt, all the terrible things she had done reflected in their faces, in their eyes, Ressler and the team, looking at her in disgust. the Harbormaster, tears in his eyes. She could feel tears in her own eyes, stinging, burning. Waves of guilt and grief washed over her. She wanted to throw up. Cooper was shaking his head at her, his face hard. She was sobbing.

To the right of her, Red sat with his legs crossed in an armchair, seemingly unaware of the lynch mob before her. He had a cigar in his mouth, fedora on his head, and was reading a paper.

"Red!" she called out.

"Yes, Lizzy?" he sounded bored.

"What am I doing here? What are they going to do to me?" she asked him frantically.

"I think you already know…they're going to finish what you started."

"What I started?"

Liz looked down towards her feet, only to realize she was surrounded by bundles of stick and standing on a pile of wood. She couldn't move, she couldn't run. They were going to burn her alive.

"Red!" she cried as they approached her en masse. Red did not look up from his paper. Tom Connolly pulled out a box of matches. They all pulled out their own boxes of matches. "Please don't do this," she begged them. "Please…"

They all struck matches simultaneously, tiny vicious little flames in the dark illuminating the hate and condemnation on each of their faces. Samar looked almost triumphant…Aram was wretched with betrayal.

"Red, help me, please…" she quavered. "Please!" She couldn't breathe, tears streaming down her face.

They approached slowly.

"I'm afraid you're beyond help, Lizzie," Red sighed, turning the page casually. "Too stubborn and reckless…Even I have my limits, you ungrateful child."

Her heart sank in her chest. It was all she could do to breathe.

Ressler was the first one to fling his match. The others followed him quickly, and the world burst into flame.

She was burning, she could smell her own flesh burning, her hair was burning. The pain was searing and white hot, unlike anything she had ever experienced.

"RED!" She wailed "RED! PLEASE!"

Smoke, there was smoke everywhere. She couldn't breathe, her lungs BURNED. The fire was in her chest. She screamed. She screamed and no one came.
"RED…" she sobbed, to no avail

And she felt her body being shaken.

"ELIZABETH!" she heard him bellow, and suddenly she could move.

Her eyes flew open, and she flailed, lashing our in fear even as she remembered herself. She pushed away from Red violently, but fortunately he was already on his feet. She flung herself against the wall, eyes huge and terrified.

"It's okay Lizzie!" he rasped.

"Oh my god, Red!" she blubbered in shock. He reached for her automatically. Her entire body was trembling, and without any warning, she dissolved into heaving, body-racking sobs.

Red put his arms around her, hesitantly at first, and then pulled her face to his chest, partially to offer her comfort, but partially to comfort himself. He had never heard someone make sounds like that—like the sounds she had made in her sleep, just now. She had been wailing his name like a heartbroken child…he would never forget the raw desperation of it…it had chilled him, stopped his heart, practically. What in the world could have made her cry out like that?

He squeezed her tightly and pulled her torso across his chest so that her face was buried in his other shoulder. She curled around him, instinctively clinging to him and his offer of comfort. He held her back, rocking slightly, making soothing nonsense sounds and whispers into her hair. He ran one hand across her back and over her arm to reassure himself she was in one piece.

"You fell asleep at the part where they try to rescue Jim," he murmured almost conversationally. "I tried not to take it as a comment on my skills as a narrator," he added with a ghost of his usual humor. She was still shaking, but she had stopped sobbing. She still clung to him, every muscle clenched. "And you seemed so comfortable, so peaceful, after your day of pacing and worrying, I didn't want to wake you—I just let you rest here with me."

She could feel him swallow.

"You were only out for a few minutes…and then you started screaming. Tell me what happened, sweetheart," he coaxed. "It must have been a doozy of a nightmare."

"I was paralyzed, and they burned me alive," she gasped, fresh tears squeezing from her swollen eyes into his shirt. She sat up to wipe her face and Red immediately handed her a piece of paper towel. When she was finished she curled back up against him, she was rubbing her scar.

"Who burned you alive?" he rumbled, rubbing her back and arms..

"All of them…Kressler, Connolly, Cooper…everyone I've ever hurt. I could feel myself burning, but I deserved it…Oh Red," she sobbed. "I've done so many horrible things to so many people…what am I going to do? I can't live like this! I feel sick all the time…I'm so guilty,I can't breathe!"

"It gets easier," he soothed. "I'm sorry, I know it's ten times worse being stuck down here with nothing to distract yourself, forced to sit and stew, but it will get easier."

She wrapped her arms around his torso and hugged him back as tightly as he was holding her.

"You're all I have left," she confessed into his shoulder. "Red, please don't ever leave me. I know I'm a complete mess right now…"

"Is that what you dreamed?" he hissed, aghast. "That I left you? You were screaming for me to help you, and I wouldn't?"

She nodded into his chest, "You said even you had your limits…that I was beyond help…"

"That would never happen," Red cut her off immediately. "You're stuck with me. And you're a mess right now because you're a good person, and you wouldn't feel this terrible if you weren't a good person. I will always come for you, Elizabeth." He pressed a kiss to her forehead, held her tighter and repeated himself more fiercely, "I will always come for you."

"I know," Liz sighed in relief. "I know you will. It was just a dream."

He held her for as long as she needed, and she held him back. After a time, she let go, and so did he.

"I knew there would be dreams," she shook her head. "Was I really screaming?"

"Yes," Red looked haunted. She felt a sudden stab of empathy.

"Do you ever have dreams like that?"

Red watched her carefully for a moment, then nodded affirmatively. A muscle twitched in his cheek, and Liz knew the truth, having herself accused him numerous times before of being unable to let anyone get close to him, of being damaged. She winced to think of it now. She imagined him waking up, night after night, just as she had—shaking and terrified, each time in a new place, each time reminded that, even for a man like Raymond Reddington, some things just can't be escaped or forgotten.

But in the next minute his face cleared—one of his many mercurial mood changes—and he quipped, "Sometimes Dembe holds me after."

Liz couldn't help but chuckle at the image.

"It's true, Lizzie. He smooths my furrowed brow and spoons me so tenderly for a straight man."

Liz laughed again.

"Oh Dembe…I miss him," she sighed suddenly. "He's always so steady."

"He'll meet up with us on the next leg of our journey, and you can tell him that yourself…I believe he would relish the compliment," Red sighed.

"I'll make a point of it," Liz nodded, laughing a little to herself at the track the conversation had taken. She looked around, realizing that only minutes before they had both been having a perfectly nice time. It figured, she thought. The second she relaxed was the moment everything had to go to shit.

"Let's get ready for bed," Red suggested, bringing her back to the present. "I'll clean up out here. You use the bathroom first."

Liz did as he suggested, brushing the chocolate out of her teeth and putting on her new favorite sweatpants to sleep in. When she walked out, Red had tidied everything away and placed her pillow back on her bed. He moved past her to the bathroom and patted her shoulder kindly as he went by.

Liz crawled into her own bed. It was cold and unappealing. Being over here by herself almost felt like a punishment. It was…lonely. She repressed a shudder and wondered how she was possibly going to sleep tonight…what other horrors were lurking in her subconscious?

And she had seen the look on Red's face when he had spoken of her screaming. It had scared him, she could tell, and yet he had been so understanding, so comforting. She felt guilty for scaring him like that, and even guiltier to know that she would likely do it again at some point in the near future.

There was definitely no way she was sleeping alone tonight.

Red would be out of the bathroom soon. She had only a split second to make her move. Grabbing her pillow and the spare blanket Red had returned to the shelf. Liz ran over to his bed and jumped on top of it. She sat cross-legged with the blanket and the pillow in her lap and waited, hopefully.

Red emerged from the bathroom in a t-shirt and some sweat pants. She wondered briefly is this was what he normally wore to bed, or if he did it for her benefit—a small acknowledgement of their shared living environment. He saw her sitting on his bed and stopped in his tracks.

"Hi," she gulped.

"Hello," he replied, walking towards her, his expression perplexed.

"I…thought we could finish the book," she blurted. It wasn't untrue, but it wasn't why she was sitting on his bed, and worse, he knew it.

"Did your pillow and blanket want to finish the book too?" he clucked his tongue at her and tilted his head.

"Maybe," she muttered, feeling incredibly stupid. What the hell was she doing? She looked over at her bed in the corner. She should just get up, get back into it, and quit humiliating herself. Was she really so desperate for comfort and physical contact that she would crawl into bed with Red?

Well, yes. Especially if it was Red.

She looked up at him, ready to make her case.

"Red…" she began, but he stopped her, holding up his hand, his expression thoughtful. Without a word, he turned and finished tidying up, speaking to her as he did so.

"You don't have to explain Lizzie—If you don't want to sleep alone, you're welcome to stay with me."

She breathed a sigh of relief, so glad he understood and grateful he wasn't going to embarrass her for being so needy.

She watched him, sitting Indian-style under her blanket, as he turned off all of the lights except one—he left the bathroom light on as a night light. Coming back to his bedside, he handed her a flashlight and the book.

"Well," he swallowed, looking slightly at a loss. He hesitated for a moment, then took her pillow and set it up next to his. He pulled back one corner of his blanket and sheets. "Would you prefer to stay above or beneath the covers?"

"Um, above, I think," she said.

"Very well," he responded casually, then got into the bed, playfully kicking her under the blanket until she moved over and allowed him to get settled. He lay on his back as close to the edge of the bed as was comfortable, and she wedged herself between his prone body and the wall. "It's a bit snug," he murmured to her airily. "Are you sure you don't want to get under the covers?" His tone held just the slightest bit of innuendo. She slapped his shoulder lightly, then curled up into his side. He pulled his covers out from under her gently, so she wouldn't pin him down if she decided to move, and he covered her up with her blanket.

They lay like that for a moment, each adjusting to the the other's close proximity, pretending as though this level of physicality was normal for them both, and not something that had just manifested in the last 48 hours.

She could hear his every breath, feel his chest expand and deflate next to her. She thought she would maybe be able to sleep in this situation, but she had been so wrong…even just lying next to him was electric.

Eventually he smiled and looked over at her. She could just make out his rueful expression.

"My blanket smells like chocolate," he sighed as though the universe had let him down.

"Oh?" she asked, laughing a little. "We can trade blankets if you want,"

"No, thank-you…I just hope we don't get ants."

Liz smiled and shook her head at Red worrying about ants. He smiled with her, but after a moment, his face changed

"Are you okay?" he asked, his voice just above a whisper. She looked into his eyes and could not look away. "Are you afraid to sleep?"

"Terrified," she breathed.

Red nodded. He knew.

"It's going to be okay. Just let the dreams come. You have to sleep…Go to sleep, Lizzie," he commanded her. "Lie down, close your eyes. I'll be right here. You're safe. Your mind needs to work through everything you've just experienced…Dreams are a part of that process."

"I know that, Red," she sighed. "It doesn't make the process any easier to endure."

"I'll be right here," he repeated.

She shook her head again, but muttered, "Okay."

They both lay down and waited for sleep to find them. In their silence the noise of the open bar overhead became more prominent. Liz knew she was supposed to be sleeping, or at least trying to, but she couldn't. With the air of a child asking for another story before bedtime, Liz spoke aloud a thought that had just occurred to her:

"Wouldn't it be funny if Ressler and Cooper were up there having a drink right now?"

"Commiserating in their complete and utter failure to track us down?" Red caught on immediately and chuckled.

"What do you think they'd be saying?" she stage-whispered into the semi-dark.

"I can't believe they got away!" Red mimicked Ressler's brash tendency for overstatement. "I'm so mad!"

"Well, I thought I was dying, and now I'm not!" Liz adopted Agent Cooper's deep tones. "Let's drink cheap beer and shoot our F.B.I. guns to celebrate!"

"Oh yeah! I love cheap beer and guns," Red's version of Ressler had now taken on a frat boy quality. "Cheap beer and bullets, man! Go, America!"

It was hard to say which one of them was laughing harder, the tiny bed shaking with their combined mirth. Eventually, Liz sighed, and just smiled up at the ceiling. When things were right again, they would all go out for a drink together, and Liz promised herself she would think of this moment and be grateful to be reunited with her friends and not hiding under the floorboards from them.

Then, suddenly she remembered that she would probably never get to work with Ressler and Cooper or anyone again, and she was on the run, and that they all viewed her as the enemy now.

The realization kicked her in the gut.

Red immediately sensed her change in mood. He reached down for the flashlight and the book.

"Tuck in here," he offered, putting his arm around her and pushing their pillows into a more supportive position. "Hold this," he gave her the flashlight. He opened Huckleberry Finn and continued to read aloud. She noted that he had marked the place where they left off with a makeshift bookmark made from a folded piece of paper, like he planning on them finishing it together.

As he read, she settled in. Too soon, her eyes were drooping, and she couldn't keep holding the light properly. Several times she felt herself start to fade and woke herself up out of fear. Each time she repositioned the flashlight and pretended to adjust her position. Red simply kept reading as though he hadn't noticed, but she knew he did and was grateful for the pretense

She wasn't sure how she would have responded, had their roles been reversed and he were the one crying out…but then again, he said he had the dreams too—it was entirely possible that it might be her turn to wake him and comfort him in the near future.

How had he said it? Dembe would "smooth his furrowed brow" and "spoon" him? Liz snorted. She wasn't sure her spooning Red would calm him, exactly.

"What is it?" he whispered.

"I was just wondering how I would respond if you came to me, said you had a nightmare, and asked to sleep in my bed," she chuckled. "And also asked for a bedtime story."

"Oh that's easy," Red rumbled against her back, turning a page to the alluded story. "You would have kicked me out," his tone was rueful.

"Maybe," Liz shook her head in the dark, serious for a moment. "But I don't think I would have…not if I heard you scream, like you heard me."

Red sighed, not wanting to be reminded of that sound. So instead, he deflected.

"I try to never scream my own name in bed, Lizzie. It's just rude," he whispered wickedly, right into her ear.

"Oh, see? Now this is why I would have kicked you out!" she elbowed him playfully in the ribs.

"If you're this violent in your own bed, I might have left voluntarily," Red huffed. Liz rolled her eyes and tapped the unread page in front of them. Obligingly, Red continued to read, heaving a dramatic sigh as he did. She grinned and tucked herself against him again.

Liz was fully asleep in moments.

=============

She was paralyzed again. Always paralyzed, always unable to act when the moment was right. She struggled to move, but her body had betrayed her.

Before her were four prisoners, each in their own spotlight, kneeling on the concrete, burlap bags over their faces, hands behind their heads. They were lined up neatly before her, almost like presents, almost like a stage show…live theater.

"We have a little something in mind for all of you," Tom Connelly's ghostly voice sang out from behind her, his inflection exactly as it was before Liz pulled the trigger. He stepped out from behind her and made his way towards the first prisoner. He was bleeding from where Liz had shot him, and he left a trail of his blood wherever he moved. With the air of a magician making a stunning reveal, he pulled the hood from Agent Navabi's head. Down the line he went. Aram was next, then Ressler, then Cooper. They were all gagged and mouths sealed with duct tape. There would be no screaming this time.

"Leave them alone!" she cried. "They didn't kill you, it was me! Please, let them go!"

No one on the team made a sound, but their eyes…oh god, their eyes. They were begging, pleading with her, and she was powerless to help them. "Im so sorry," she tried to tell them, but they only cried, and continued to stare at her.

"You're right, Agent Keen," Tom Connolly mocked her. "It was you. You killed me, and when you pulled that trigger, you killed all of them too," he held out his arms. Then, he circled around and approached her, gun in hand. She tried to shy away, but her limbs were dead hunks of flesh.

"They're not dead. I didn't kill them," she growled.

"Maybe not yet," Connolly bent down and crooned into her ear, "but you will…you're on opposite sides now, girly, and everything you do now puts them in harm's way. It's only a matter of time."

He took his gun and carefully wiped it clean with a bloody handkerchief he pulled from the breast pocket of his suit. She could see the bullet wound in his chest gush as he bent down and placed the bloody gun in her hand.

"If you have any sort of compassion at all, you'll put them out of their misery now, Agent Keen. You don't want to watch what I'll do to them if you refuse."

She tried to turn and point the gun at Connelly, but she couldn't. Her hand had become it's own being, and she could feel her index finger squeezing the trigger almost to the breaking point. It was pointed at Samar.

"Please don't make me do this," she begged. "They're innocent, this is wrong!"

She was fighting her own hand. Trying to drop the gun, trying to escape and do anything besides shoot her friends.

"Stop it!" she hissed. "I won't do this!"

"Very well," Connelly stood up, and suddenly her hand went limp. "Then I'll have to do this."

He took the gun from her, marched over to Samar and grabbed her by her hair, fisting his hand into it painfully and throwing her to the ground. Liz screamed.

Suddenly, two shots rang out. Connelly dropped to the ground next to a weeping Samar, and Red stepped into the light, casting a long, dangerous shadow with his fedora and dark trench coat.

"Red," she gasped in relief.

"I'm here, Lizzie. I'm right here," he stepped over to her, took her hand, and looked into her face. The terrible scene before her vanished, and suddenly she could move again.

"Where are we?" she whispered, flinging herself into his arms and holding him tightly, feeling herself crying in sharp relief, having only been horrified seconds before.

"Someplace safe," came the reply, and it was true. Wherever Red was, she was safe, she knew.

"Thank you," she sighed. And then, she kissed him.

It wasn't the first time Liz had dreamed about Red like this, but it was the most vivid. This time, he kissed her back, ferociously—his mouth warm and pliant on hers. She could feel him, real and solid against her, and smell his cologne. It was so intense, she buried her face against his neck and inhaled, high on the sheer pleasure of it, and when he did not protest, she used her teeth and mouth to do some fine work on the sensitive spot just above his collarbone.

"Lizzie," his tone was hesitant.

"Hmmm?" she continued to nibble at his neck, then soothe the small nips with her tongue.

"Lizzie," he tried again, a little louder, tinged with equal parts arousal and desperation. "You're killing me!"

"Shhh," she hushed him, continuing her work on the soft parts of his neck. She moved one hand down over the hard muscles of his chest as he moaned,

"Please, Lizzie…"

She pressed her hand over his heart, then moved down over the softness of his stomach. He was trying to stop her with his hands, trying to push her away, but undeterred, she fumbled with the waistband of his pants.

"Elizabeth!" he finally yelled, and Liz felt her eyes snap open.

Red was starring at her, eyes dark with arousal, but his expression pained.

"Red, wha…" she started to stutter, barely awake enough to register that she was lying half on top of him. One of her legs was slung over his, and she could feel that he was hard beneath her inner thigh. She started to move away and felt him twitch under her at the friction of it. The sweetest sigh escaped his mouth automatically, and she felt the answering throb between her legs. She was so wet, she suddenly realized. She looked up at Red, struggling to make sense of it all, sheer mortification stopping her heart when she saw little the red mark on his neck.

"I tried to stop you, Lizzie, I swear," he gasped, and she could hear that he was almost laughing. "but you were so persistent…"

"Oh my god!" she cried, practically leaping over him to escape from the bed, conscious more the ever of the pool of liquid warmth in her panties and the flame of her embarrassment. "Shut up!"

She ran straight for the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.