So this is my answer to a PM from Lily Luna Snape Riddle, who sent me a prompt too good to pass up! This will be written in 3 parts, and hopefully posted over the next few days.

Thanks to Hestia and Lourdes, who keep me sane and try to drive me crazy at the same time. Love ya'll!

I own absolutely nothing. This fact keeps me up nights.

Raymond Reddington could remember when Fridays were his favorite days. Fridays meant freedom. Freedom from work, from phone calls, from well-meaning coworkers… Fridays meant movies on the couch with his wife and daughter, followed by some celebratory alone time in which Carla would lock the bedroom door and…

He hadn't had some good and proper Friday alone time in quite a while.

Yes, Fridays used to mean a number of good things. Now… now Red wasn't so sure. For the last several months, Friday had brought nothing but trouble. It was a Friday the first time Lizzie told him to go to hell.

It was a Friday the second time, too.

Red was pretty sure that this little impromptu visit to her motel room was going to warrant a third time. He was going anyway. It grated on whatever nerves he could still feel that a fully furnished apartment sat empty at the top of the Audrey, waiting for its owner to grow up and move the hell in. Red could not afford the luxury of settling down in one place. Lizzie could. And she most certainly would.

This particular show of childishness was about to end.

Sliding out of the backseat of his SUV, Red winced at the sight of the dingy motel that could not have been worth the thirty bucks a night Lizzie was shelling out for it. "Keep it running, Dembe. This won't take long." Filth seemed to radiate from the roof all the way down to the sidewalk, but Red was probably the only person besides Dembe in the parking lot that noticed.

Or maybe he was just a snob. He wasn't sure anymore.

However, there was one thing he was absolutely certain of. Someone was smoking pot on the premises.

Classy.

The closer he got to Lizzie's room, the stronger the pungent smell seemed to get. If he could smell it then certainly Lizzie could smell it. As he knocked on her door, he wondered just how hard it was for her not to bust her hippie neighbors. Cop mentality really died hard.

"What the hell are you doing here? Don't you know it's Friday night?"

Or maybe Lizzie murdered it.

"Don't you have a life? Some crazy party you could crash where people are too fucked up to care that they're dancing with number four on the most wanted list? Or is staring at me like I have two heads your idea of a good time?"

Red couldn't have looked away if he wanted to. His Lizzie… his sweet, straight- A, law-abiding, badge-toting Lizzie…stood in the doorway of her room, wearing naught but a pair of black bikini undies and a tank top, dangling a crudely rolled joint between her fingertips.

"It looks like you're having quite the party right here," Red quipped, pulling himself together long enough to realize that he was not the only one entranced by Lizzie's nearly naked form. She was drawing stares from every eye in the parking lot.

It may have had a tad bit to do with the joint she was currently re-lighting, but for Red, it was the underwear. It would always be the underwear.

Taking a confident step forward, Red stretched his arms out to frame the doorway, resulting in Lizzie stumbling rather ungracefully back into the room.

"Hey! I didn't invite you in," she complained even as she flopped onto the bed and rolled onto her back, relighting the joint and taking a hard drag.

"Well you're certainly inviting some sort of trouble. May as well be me. Don't you know to ask who it is before you open the door?"

"Why should I? It's always you. I'm surprised you even bother to knock anymore." Adding to the thin haze of smoke that permeated the room, Lizzie blew an impressively large smoke ring up toward the ceiling. "Invading my privacy has kind of become your forte."

Invading her privacy? Red liked to think of it as keeping a watchful eye on his young protégé. Anything more than that and the word 'obsession' would be thrown around and he couldn't allow her to think that. No matter how true it was.

"Manners, Lizzie. A gentleman always knocks."

"Well, if we're minding our manners," Lizzie started, lazily moving her legs so that they were lying awkwardly to the side, "have a seat."

On the bed. With her.

How could he refuse an offer like that?

Without removing his coat or his hat, Red took a seat on the very edge of the bed, scrambling to remember what it was that brought him to her motel room in the first place. Oh yes… the Audrey.

"Don't tell me you have a case for me at this time of night. I might seriously hand in my resignation and work somewhere 9 to 5 like a normal person." Lizzie's hand fumbled with the lighter and Red found himself leaning over to take it from her, lighting the joint himself as she hollowed out her cheeks and…sucked.

"It's actually a social call," he smiled, dreading the conversation.

"Do tell."

"We have a small matter of an apartment to discuss…"

"Oh FUCK!" Lizzie interrupted, clearly not loving the conversation any more than Red did. "How many times do we have to talk about this? How many times do I have to tell you no?"

Red grinned. "This is precisely my point. You don't HAVE to say no. You CHOOSE to say no, which means you are choosing to live like a vagrant in a hovel, and I thought you were smarter than this."

A blush played across Lizzie's cheeks and Red knew he had hit his mark. Insulting Lizzie's intelligence was something he was loathe to do, but if it would get her out of the gutter…

"And it's not charity. I know you can afford a place of your own, but since you've made no move to purchase one, I had to take matters into my own hands. Watching you live like this is simply abhorrent to me. Something had to be done."

No sound came from Lizzie's side of the bed for several moments. Stealing a peek, Red saw that her eyes were closed, but her fingers played idly with the joint. When she finally spoke, her voice was small and tired.

"If I take this from you, and I make it my permanent home, that means that I am tied to you forever, and I'm not sure that I want to be."

The laughter escaped Red's lips before he could stop it. "That's a little dramatic, don't you think?"

Lizzie blushed and crossed her arms over her chest, but stayed silent.

"I highly doubt that you're going to stay in the apartment forever…just until your life gets back to normal." That earned him an incredulous look from the incredibly high woman on the bed, but still, she said nothing. "Besides… the apartment is yours. In your name. My name is nowhere near it." Lizzie raised her brow and pursed her lips. "You can have pets. You can get Hudson back. I'm sure he misses you."

If that didn't do it Red didn't know what would.

Lizzie cracked. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss the little mutt like crazy."

"And now you don't have to." Red crossed his feet in front of him and pretended to study his shoes, giving Lizzie time to come up with a way to say yes that didn't sound like she was caving.

"Fine."

The urge to gloat was almost unbearable, but Red stamped it down. It could wait until she was actually moved into the apartment.

"But you have to do something for me."

Damn.