Chapter Text
The group chat was called MILHOAN MAYHEM, which was less a title and more a diagnosis.
Liz’s phone vibrated on the counter with the smug persistence of something that knew she couldn’t ignore it forever. The sound wasn’t loud, just a soft, angry buzz, but in the quiet of her apartment it felt like a tiny drill going straight into her skull.
Outside, D.C. was easing into evening: traffic hissing past on wet pavement, a siren somewhere far enough away to be background noise, the windows of the building across the street turning into little lit rectangles of other people’s normal lives.
Inside, her kitchen smelled faintly like dish soap and the lemon cleaner she’d used earlier in a fit of productivity she didn’t remember signing up for. The overhead light was too bright, the room too clean, like it was waiting for something to go wrong.
The phone buzzed again.
Liz exhaled through her nose, picked it up, and watched the number of unread messages climb like it was doing it out of spite.
MILHOAN MAYHEM
(12 participants. Anarchy.)
The thread was already going full throttle.
RINA:
OKAY LISTEN UP. HEADCOUNT. TWO WEEKS. JULES’ WEDDING. I AM NOT CHASING ADULTS FOR RSVPS LIKE THEY’RE TODDLERS.
JULES:
My mom is one missed RSVP away from turning into a forest creature. Please respond.
RINA:
Lizzie. Sweetheart. Are you bringing someone? 😏
There it was.
Not even a question, really. A trap with punctuation.
Liz stared at it, thumb hovering. Her mouth went flat, the muscle in her jaw ticking once like she’d bitten down on a thought. Somewhere in her chest, something tightened on instinct, old, automatic, tired.
She could already see it: the crowded church hall, the warm hands on her shoulders, the pity-smiles disguised as concern. They loved her. That was the problem. Love made people feel entitled to your soft spots.
Liz set the phone down and went to the cabinet, pouring herself wine. The bottle made that hollow glug sound that always felt a little too honest. The first sip was dry and sharp, the kind that made the back of her throat warm. It didn’t fix anything, but it gave her spine a fraction more weight.
She picked the phone back up and typed before she could talk herself out of it.
LIZ:
Yes. I’m bringing someone.
The read receipts hit like a starter pistol.
RINA:
OH?????
JULES:
EXCUSE ME WHAT
RINA:
NAME. NOW.
Liz froze with her wine glass halfway to her mouth.
Names. Right.
Her brain offered terrible options like it was being paid per suggestion: Make someone up. Say “a friend.” Say “a nice man.” Borrow a stranger from a coffee shop and hope he enjoys casseroles and interrogation.
She scrolled through her contacts anyway, thumb moving, expression blank with that profiler calm she wore when she didn’t want anyone, herself included, to see the panic.
Not Ressler.
Not Aram.
Not… anyone who would have to see her on Monday.
Her thumb stopped.
Nick’s Pizza 🍕
She’d renamed him months ago, partly for plausible deniability and partly because seeing Raymond Reddington on her screen had started doing something irritatingly personal to her pulse. This way, if someone glanced over her shoulder, it looked like she had a takeout habit, not a Red habit.
“This is a bad idea,” she told the empty apartment.
The empty apartment did not disagree.
She hit call.
It rang once. Twice.
“Nick’s Pizza,” Red answered, smooth as sin.
There was soft jazz behind him, trumpet, brushes on a snare, and the faint clink of glass, like he was somewhere expensive and annoyingly calm.
Liz shut her eyes, steadying herself with the edge of the counter. “You do realize pizza places usually sound like they’ve been disappointed by humanity.”
“I run a customer-first establishment,” he said. “Unlike some federal agencies I could name.”
“Are you busy?” she asked.
“For you?” A beat, warm amusement. “Never.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’ve been waiting.”
His amusement softened, just a fraction, enough that Liz’s grip on the counter tightened. “Elizabeth,” he said, “you don’t call ‘Nick’s Pizza’ unless something has happened.”
Liz glanced at the group chat still lighting up like a distress beacon.
She went blunt. Blunt was safer.
“I told my family I’m bringing a fiancé to a wedding in Nebraska.”
There was a pause, one heartbeat, two.
Then, very carefully: “You did what.”
“It came out,” Liz snapped, but her voice wasn’t as hard as she wanted it to be. “It was either that or spend an entire weekend being evaluated like a damaged appliance.”
Red made a quiet sound, half laugh, half delighted disbelief. “Nebraska,” he repeated, savoring it. “Engagement. A room full of Midwestern relatives. Elizabeth… are you trying to punish me?”
“I’m trying to survive,” she said.
“And you’re calling me because…?” he prompted, infuriatingly calm.
She could’ve said the true thing. The heavy thing. The thing that sat behind her ribs and didn’t like daylight.
Instead she said the version that let her keep her armor on.
“…Because you can charm people,” she said. “And you can lie without sweating.”
“Flattering.”
“And because you won’t turn me into a project,” she added.
The words came out sharper than she meant, like she’d thrown them to keep him at a distance and realized too late she’d aimed too close.
On the line, the jazz continued. A glass clinked. Then a small, deliberate silence.
When Red spoke again, the tease had shifted, still there, but quieter at the edges. Like he’d leaned in.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“At home.”
“I’ll be there shortly,” he said immediately.
Liz blinked. “Red”
“Elizabeth,” he cut in, and the tone swung back toward sassy, controlled, like he’d decided she didn’t get to spiral alone, “this is not a conversation you should have with a group chat full of women who think ‘boundaries’ are a myth. Put the phone down. I’m coming over.”
“This is not an operation,” she said.
“It’s a wedding,” he replied. “That’s just an operation with more carbohydrates.”
Liz pressed two fingers to her forehead. “How fast are you?”
A pleased hum. “Twenty minutes.”
“Of course.”
“And Elizabeth?”
“What.”
“Do not answer any more questions in that group chat until I arrive.”
“You can’t...”
“I just did,” he said, smiling in his voice. “See you soon.”
He hung up.
Liz stared at her phone, the screen dimming as if it, too, was done with her choices.
It buzzed instantly, like the universe had waited for that moment.
She let it buzz twice out of spite, then peeked, because Jules had known her since childhood and had never once accepted “no” as a final draft.
JULES:
IS HE REAL OR ARE WE INVENTING A MAN.
Liz exhaled, one short laugh that didn’t have any humor in it. “Oh my God.”
She set the phone down and tried to pretend she wasn’t waiting.
Her apartment did the thing it always did when she was anticipating something: every sound got louder. The refrigerator’s low hum. The tiny creak of the building settling. The faint whistle of air through a window seam. Even her own footsteps as she paced a short path between kitchen and living room, circling the same patch of floor like her thoughts might eventually tire out.
She straightened a cushion. Stacked the mail. Wiped a counter that was already clean. Took another sip of wine and pretended it was for hydration.
Time passed in those small, unreasonable slices where you can’t tell if it’s been thirty seconds or ten minutes.
A car door shut outside, soft, definite.
Liz stopped mid, step.
Then two measured chimes at her door. Unhurried. Precise. Familiar.
She opened it.
Red stood there in a dark coat and scarf, an actual pizza box tucked under his arm.
The cold had put a faint pink in his cheeks. His eyes were bright in the hallway light, amusement already loaded but not fired yet.
Liz stared at the box. Then at him.
Red’s mouth curved. “Nick’s Pizza,” he said pleasantly. “Delivery.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Liz muttered, but her shoulders dropped a fraction, like her body had decided it could stand down a notch.
“Thank you,” he replied, as if she’d complimented his taste.
He stepped inside like her apartment had been expecting him. The air changed with him in it, warmer, fuller, like the room had to recalibrate around his presence.
He set the pizza on the counter with casual care, the cardboard still warm beneath his palm.
“Pepperoni,” he announced, as if presenting evidence. “Extra cheese. No olives. I didn’t want you emotionally destabilized while dealing with olives.”
Liz blinked, caught between annoyed and, unhelpfully, touched. “You”
“I pay attention,” he said lightly. His eyes flicked over her face, quick and practiced, like he was checking for damage he couldn’t see on a case file.
And right then, her phone buzzed again, hard enough to skitter half an inch across the counter.
Liz reached for it on reflex.
The screen lit.
Lock-screen preview, bold as a billboard:
RINA: IS HE HOT.
Red’s gaze flicked to it, quick, instinctive, and his mouth did something halfway between a smile and a held-back laugh. One brow rose, but his eyes stayed on Liz, waiting to see what she’d do with it.
Liz snapped the phone into the drawer like she was hiding evidence. The drawer clacked shut. “Don’t.”
“I didn’t say anything,” he said mildly.
“You’re thinking it.”
“I’m thinking,” he corrected smoothly, “that your Aunt Rina is refreshingly direct.”
“She’s terrifying,” Liz said, rubbing her forehead.
Red’s smile widened. “Excellent. I do love a challenge.”
Liz grabbed two plates with more force than necessary and slid them onto the counter. “Eat. You’re going to need strength.”
He opened the pizza box fully. The smell of pepperoni and melted cheese bloomed into the room like an unfair advantage, hot, salty, comforting in a way Liz didn’t want to admit hit her right in the ribs.
“I admire your strategic thinking,” Red said, taking a slice. He nodded toward her kitchen table. “Pen. Paper. We build your fiancé. Properly.”
Liz narrowed her eyes. “You’re enjoying this.”
“A little,” he admitted, chewing like this was the best day of his life. “But mostly I’m enjoying the part where you’re not answering them out of panic.”
She grabbed her notebook, slid into the chair, and tugged it closer like she was about to interrogate a suspect.
Red took his coat off first, draping it over the back of a chair with an easy flick, then sat across from her, relaxed like this was perfectly normal: two adults at a kitchen table, building a lie over pizza and wine. His sleeves rolled up as if he belonged here and was settling in for the long haul.
“All right,” he said, eyes bright with wicked amusement. “Timeline.”
Liz uncapped her pen. The plastic clicked too loud in the quiet.
“Four months,” she decided. “Not too new. Not too old.”
Red nodded, approving. “Excellent. Long enough to be plausible. Short enough that they won’t demand why you didn’t announce it with fireworks.”
Liz wrote 4 months. The pen scratched in the quiet, a steady, ordinary sound.
“Job,” she said. “You need a job.”
“I have many jobs,” Red replied.
“Not crime,” Liz said flatly, but her mouth twitched like she wanted to smile and refused to give him the satisfaction.
He sighed theatrically. “You wound me.”
“Red.”
“Consultant,” he offered, obedient in the most irritating way.
“For what,” Liz pressed, “that doesn’t sound like you’re selling them life insurance out of the trunk of a car.”
“Security. Logistics. Information,” he said. “Preferably all in one sentence so their eyes glaze over before they ask follow-up questions.”
Liz wrote it down, reluctantly impressed.
They fell into a rhythm: her pen moving, the scrape of Red’s chair as he leaned forward, the soft rustle of paper when she flipped a page. He watched the words appear with the same focused stillness he used on intel, except his expression was lighter, almost fond, like he was enjoying the act of building something with her.
At one point, Red reached for another slice and his fingers brushed hers when she went for her wine glass.
It was nothing, quick, accidental.
Liz’s hand went still anyway, heat sparking where skin had met skin. She didn’t look up in time to miss the way his eyes flicked to her fingers, then back to his pizza like he hadn’t noticed at all.
She cleared her throat too loudly. “Okay. How we met.”
Red didn’t even hesitate. “It was a deli,” he said.
Liz blinked. “We’re doing deli?”
“We’re doing deli,” he confirmed, pleased. “Lunch rush. Ticket numbers. Chaos. They called your number and I...”
“...and you claimed it was yours,” Liz cut in, pen poised, already annoyed on principle.
Red lifted a hand. “I didn’t claim. I merely… contested.”
Liz stared at him. “You are going to get me murdered by my own relatives.”
“On the contrary,” he said smoothly, “this is how they’ll know I’m worthy. Only a man with excellent instincts would risk bodily harm for pastrami.”
Liz wrote anyway, because it was, unfortunately, vivid.
“And I told you,” she said flatly, “to pick a different number and stop flirting with the pastrami.”
Red’s mouth curved, smug and warm. “And you smiled.”
“I did not.”
“You did,” he said, maddeningly sure. “And you’ll deny it, but the pickle lady saw it too.”
Liz’s pen stalled.
“The pickle lady,” she repeated.
“She had opinions,” Red said. “I respect an elder who wields judgment and brine with equal confidence.”
Liz stared at the page, then wrote pickle lady (witness) in the margin because she hated herself and because it was exactly the kind of detail Jules would eat up.
Red kept going, sprinkling details like he was laying breadcrumbs: the deli guy’s impatience, the way Liz had looked like she was trying not to laugh, the “accidental” second meeting a week later when he’d “happened” to be there again.
Liz wrote. Listened. Kept pretending this was purely tactical.
And then, quietly, without any fanfare, she realized the room felt… steadier. Like the air had stopped bracing for impact and had decided to just exist.
Red reached for his slice again like the world was simple. Like her kitchen wasn’t borrowed time.
Liz watched him for a beat too long, pen hovering above the paper. The tip hung over the page, motionless.
Her throat worked once. She swallowed.
“Thank you,” she said, the words coming out smaller than the room. “Red.”
He paused mid-reach, not frozen, just caught. His fingers stayed on the edge of the pizza box like he’d forgotten what he was doing.
His eyes lifted to hers. The teasing look wasn’t gone, but it shifted—quieter at the edges, like something softer had stepped forward and he hadn’t fully decided what to do with it.
He blinked once. Slow.
Then his mouth curved, faint and real, and he let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh. Almost.
“You’re welcome,” he said lightly, as if he could tuck the moment back into his pocket before it turned into anything dangerous.
He took the slice anyway, because he always did something casual after saying something that mattered, and leaned back in his chair like he owned the air again.
“Now,” he added, sassy returning like a shield he actually liked wearing, “tell me about the aunt. What are her weaknesses?”
Liz looked at the notebook, then at him.
Still a bad idea.
But at least she wasn’t doing it alone.