Liz stood in the middle of the living room in Red's latest hideaway and let out a heavy sigh. She finally understood why he seemed so evasive in his texts that morning and why he wouldn't speak to her over the phone. She had been worried he was trying to avoid her, trying to hide something… inconvenient about their investigation into Tom, but the truth for once was much less sinister.
Red was sick.
When Liz arrived, he was asleep with his feet propped up on the coffee table, surrounded by half-drunk cups of tea and a makeshift trash barrel filled to the brim with used tissues balanced precariously next to his dozing body. He would almost look peaceful, if his nose wasn't chapped and red from all the wiping.
Liz stashed her bag behind the couch, quickly setting aside her research and with it the reason she'd shown up in the first place. She leaned over the back of the couch in an attempt to rescue one of the teacups from certain doom and it was only when she herself was balanced rather precariously above Red that she realized he had opened his eyes. She barely managed to bite back a yelp, and only a tiny bit of cold tea sloshed over the lip of the cup.
"I must've missed the doorbell," Red said, his voice scratchy and gruff from sleep and sickness.
"I didn't bother ringing it. I figured you were avoiding me so I let myself in."
"You 'let yourself in'," he repeated, with an amused lilt to his tone and a quirk to his brow.
"Not everything has to be a mystery, you know. You could've just told me you were sick, I wouldn't have pressed the issue."
"Don't worry, this is hardly going to put a damper on our investigation."
"I'm not worried about the investigation."
Liz let her sentence and what it implied between the lines hang heavily in the air between them. She started gathering up as many cups and mugs as she could carry, bringing them with her into the kitchen; Red trailed after her, looking more than a little lost and bewildered by the sudden shift away from his apparent agenda of wasting away on the couch, alone.
"You don't have to clean up after me, Lizzy. I promise you I would've gotten around to it eventually."
"When, after twelve hours of building a collection of Petri dishes in the form of teacups?"
"I was waiting for my second wind; I needed to rest my eyes for a little while," he said, hovering a little too close while she tried to arrange the cups in the sink. He must've leaned over just a bit too far or moved just a bit too fast because he started to sway on his feet.
"Whoa, whoa," Liz said, holding her hands out to steady him. "You should sit down before you fall down."
"I'm not an invalid."
"No one's saying you are."
She held out her arm; he took it with an aggrieved expression on his face and let her lead him back to the couch. Once he settled again, she went about gathering up more of the debris littered around him.
"Really, Lizzy, you don't have to do that. I don't want you to catch anything."
"Yeah? Well, I'm gonna have to catch you again if you don't stay off your feet. Besides," she called over her shoulder from the kitchen trash can, "this needs cleaning sooner rather than later."
After she washed her hands, Liz pulled open the fridge and started rummaging around. "You don't have any juice."
"That's… true," he said, a little confused at the apparent subject change.
"You can't just not have juice when you're sick," she said in a huff. "I'm going down to the corner store to pick some up."
Red twisted himself around to catch her arm when she bent to pick up her bag from behind the couch. "Lizzy, please, you just got here. I'll be fine without juice," he said, far closer to outright begging than the situation warranted.
The idea that he didn't want her to leave warmed her. Even more than the gentle touch on her forearm.
"Well, then at the very least I'm making you a fresh cup of tea."
"If you insist," he said, and then he squinted at his watch. "Good god. Is it really three o'clock already?"
"Mmhmm."
Red let out a long-suffering sigh and scrubbed his hands over his face in an attempt to clear away the cobwebs from his brain. "I had so much planned for today."
Liz felt an odd pang in her chest. Red sounded so… normal. As if his plans for the day had no chance of involving arms deals or toppling governments or hunting down rogue assassins who just happened to be her pseudo-husband. She hated to admit how much she missed normality, but miss it she did. Even this small glimpse of it was comforting, despite the fact that the 'normal' person in the equation was in fact the same criminal mastermind who had turned her world upside down in the first place.
"Whatever you had planned is gonna have to wait until you're better, isn't it? Honey?"
"Sure. And if there's any lemon left, I'll take some of that, too," he said. "A cold just isn't something that should put me out of commission completely. How would my enemies react to finding out that The Concierge of Crime can be felled by a common cold?"
"They'd discover that you're human, just like they are."
"Well, that's simply not acceptab—" Suddenly, he brought his arm up and sneezed rather violently into his elbow at least half a dozen times. Liz sighed—if he still thought he was going to get away with downplaying just how miserable he was, he had another thing coming.
"Come on. I know you're sicker than you want to let on. What's the point of hiding it from me?"
"I don't get sick, Lizzy. At least not sick enough to warrant you playing nursemaid."
"What, you have Dembe for that?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact."
"Where is he?"
"I gave him the week off."
"Before or after you realized you were getting sick?"
He gazed up at her for a moment. "After," he conceded.
"You're impossible," Liz said. "Admit it—you didn't tell me you were sick because you didn't want me to see you vulnerable." Red fell silent for a while, studying her face with his brow furrowed. She frowned, a strange sort of disappointment settling in her stomach. "That's it, isn't it?"
"No," he said, quietly. "Not exactly. It's… Other than Dembe and occasionally Mr. Kaplan, I've never let anyone close enough to take care of me in moments like this. Not since… before."
"And the idea of that bothers you?"
"It brings back memories. Having you take care of me in particular reminds me a little too much of…" He gave a half-hearted wave of his hand as he trailed off.
"Too much of before?" Red stared at Liz, but didn't nod or shake his head. It felt like he was waiting for her to make some kind of connection, to figure out what he was saying between the lines all on her own. There was really only one reason she could think of for him to avoid saying what he meant outright. Dare she ask him if that's what it was? "Too much of… your wife?"
A shadow of a sad smile crossed his features.
"I remind you of your wife?"
"Not… specifically. But the, uh… the emotions there are… similar enough."
"Oh." The disappointment in Liz's stomach morphed quickly into the fluttering of butterflies. That was… quite a thing for Red to say. She thought they'd grown closer since the night he gave her the music box, but she still hadn't expected him to be quite so forthcoming so soon.
Well, Red's version of forthcoming, at least.
She handed him the teacup and saucer, focusing on anything and everything but his wary, curious eyes.
"Lizzy… I can't say that I meant what I just said lightly, but I also don't want you to worry that I expect—"
"I know you don't expect a damn thing from me here, Red. You tried to convince me not to come. I'm the one who broke into your house, remember?"
"That's not really what I'm trying to… never mind." Red trailed off with a sigh, lifting the cup to take a cautious sip and watching her out of the corner of his eye, as if he was expecting her to turn tail and run away.
Liz wouldn't be Liz if she didn't defy his expectations, however. Just as cautiously as he took his sip, she took a seat next to him.
"What did your wife do for you when you were sick?" she asked, casually leaning her elbow on the back of the couch so she could prop up her head as if they had conversations like this every day.
Continuing down this train of thought could easily be taken as tacit acceptance of the sentiment Red had expressed. He took a breath and held it for a long moment, setting his teacup on the side table, and Liz could tell that he was actively trying to chose whether or not to interpret it that way. Self-preservation probably told him not to, but that wasn't the conclusion she wanted to encourage.
She tucked her leg up under her, which brought her close enough that they would've been able to share a confidence even if they weren't completely alone, and he let out his breath.
"It didn't matter what she did, really. All that really mattered was that I had someone who was willing to care for me the way she did without also technically being my employee. I know I'm more than a boss for Dembe and Kate, but it doesn't erase that aspect of our relationships."
"You're not my boss."
Red gave a congested chuckle. "No, not in the slightest." He shot Liz an awkward smile and rubbed his hands up and down his thighs, searching around for something else to say, to do, to fill the silence.
"If you want to turn on the tv, I'm sure the remote is around here somewh—" Red seemed taken aback when Liz reached out a hand and rested the back of it against his forehead; he couldn't even begin to contain his surprise, the way his body jumped at the contact. He recovered from the shock enough to lean into her touch just as she moved her hand away; she didn't want him to feel as though that was why she moved her hand, so she redirected it to his cheek instead. His eyes slid shut.
"You don't feel very warm," she said.
"A lot of the time," he said softly, "my temperature drops when I'm sick. It doesn't feel any better than a fever, unfortunately." He opened his eyes again slowly; she could feel the jolt from the eye contact in her chest, made all the more intense by the hand she still had on his cheek.
Red had offered Liz comfort in the wake of Tom's betrayal at each new step along the way—quiet companionship, hand-holding, hugs, and a shoulder to cry on… She had thought she'd grown accustomed to it, had thought they both had, but perhaps offering him physical comfort was new enough territory that it still felt charged. Even now. Even when all she was doing was checking for a fever.
Checking for a fever after he implied he had feelings for her that resembled what he once felt for his wife.