Liz didn't stay. At least not for long. They had agreed that it might be too much of a risk. Not that Don was expecting someone, not that anyone would drop by just like her, yet with Red being out in the open once again it might not be a good idea if she did stay. Before that she had pressed herself against him like it was most normal thing for her to do to him. Her scent still lingered in his nose, and he thought that he was still able to sense her skin on his fingertips, but as she moved away everything seemed so much colder.
Donald frowned as he realized that he was looking at the door again instead of the TV, trying to remember if he had even said a single word as Liz told him that it was better for her to leave. He knew he had nodded and tried to avoid her eyes, so that she wouldn't see that a part of him didn't care about what was reasonable and what was not. However he knew that her staying would have been even worse. Worse for him apparently. And yet he wasn't able to get his mind of wondering how it would have been, how it would have felt, to wake up next to her.
He forced his eyes back to the television, but he had no idea what was on the screen right now, he didn't even see it. Instead his glance landed on her bottle. One single sip: she hadn't drunk more beer and his was empty. Donald didn't move to get it, instead he kept staring. The faint memory, pushed to the corners of his mind was the only thing that made him feel warm. He wasn't freezing but still it seemed like the temperature in his apartment had dropped.
"You're just tired", he murmured to himself and got up, leaving the empty and the almost full bottle on the desk, while the rest of his place was neat and orderly.
That image was a distortion, like a smear on a perfectly clean window and still he couldn't bring himself to get those two bottles and bring them to the counter.
Ressler didn't bring his place back to order until the next morning, when he got ready to work; even though Cooper had told him to not get back to the post office until next week. But now it was him being haunted by his own place, just like Liz before and meeting her in their usual surrounding should expel the ghost she had left at his place, making everything appear inhabitable and cold.
The post office already was exactly this and just what it should be. Entering the garage with his car almost felt like coming home, even more handing over his ID card and stepping into the yellow elevator. The cracked ribs were merely an echo to how receiving the injury had felt. He had been through worse. A shotgun had broken his upper leg; he almost had bled to death, so there was no excuse for him taking off more than a few days. All these thoughts Ressler summoned into his head were muffling down that one voice that nagged ever since he decided to get to work today: that getting here would mean seeing her. Not hearing this threat was also ignoring the risk of not waiting until the memory had lessened. But in fact work had always been the solution to all his problems. And Liz had been one of them before. It couldn't get worse.
"Ressler, what are you doing here?" Cooper's rough voice echoed through the entrance hall like he was using a megaphone; and Donald wouldn't have been surprised to see his boss holding one.
He wasn't. Instead it was a cell. Its display was dark so Cooper hadn't gotten off of it right now, but rather had been about to call someone. He got the faint feeling that it might have been him. At least he still was good with being timely. Right then Liz appeared in Ressler's field of vision, as if she had sensed his thought, and all of the sudden this smug thought about his talent was absolutely out of place.
And even though he managed to break eye contact quickly, tearing his glance away from her to his boss again, there was this mere second of seeing her puzzlement about his reaction and the fact that his heart was beating too fast. From now on she probably would see much more in every reaction of his. Ressler's jaw tensed briefly.
"My job, Sir", he answered Cooper, not stopping his way to the desks.
"Good thing that I don't need to call you in then", Cooper replied. "We've got a call from Reddington."
"Reddington?" Donald echoed and frowned, managing to look briefly at Liz without his heart making a leap against his ribcage.
"He wants to talk to me in person", Liz responded and Ressler tried to ignore the cognition that she seemed to speak more softly than she used to.
"And he requested that no one but you should take her to the rendezvous point", Cooper added and put down his phone.
"Seemed you got a promotion", Malik grinned widely, not knowing what she was implying to two of her colleagues, but even if she would have had an idea she might not even have cared – at least Ressler was telling this to himself.
All he did was giving her a short look and a hinted smirk in return before he nodded at Cooper and turned around, walking straight back to the elevator that just had brought him down, and not waiting for Keen.
There was no difference to his behavior to the one before. Yesterday hadn't changed that. Maybe Liz would wonder about this, about how he able to act just the same. Fact was that he always had been aware of her presence, that his senses always had been alerted when she was in the room, that the spot she filled in every space was the warmest of them all to his senses. It was so easy for him because it never had been easy around her and as long as he kept his eyes away from her, it would not become any difficult than it had been all the time.