Author's notes: English is not my first language, so I'm sorry for all the mistakes you'll probably find.

This is set in the same universe as "83 days" and "Peppermint and cinnamon", so you would probably need to read those two first to fully understand what's going on. The title is part of the spanish version of "kiss it better", something that you say to kids when they get hurt and that can be translated like "Heal, heal, little bottom of a frog. If it doesn't heal today it would heal tomorrow".

Sana, sana, culito de rana

Part 1: The beginning

"The prospect of having to live without me, that must have been terrifying."
"It was."
2x07 - The Scimitar

#0

They have a fight three days and six hours after Ressler is back to active duty.

He's sitting in the back of an ambulance with Liz besides him holding an ice pack against his right temple. Liz hasn't said a word in the last few minutes since the paramedics have left them alone. She's just there, glaring at him, eyebrows completely frowned and anger radiating from her like she's a heater in the middle of winter.

The thing is that Ressler understands why she could be mad, but still thinks she's overreacting. The doctor told him he had to take it easy for a few days, and he did. The stitches are gone now and although he doesn't feel pain anymore, his muscles aren't completely healed yet and sometimes he wakes up feeling some stiffness on his shoulder. That's why he has to do his exercises every morning and avoid overusing his left shoulder.

And everything was going great until that morning when, while he and Liz were trying to catch one of the criminals on Red's list, he got hit on the back of the head with a pipe.

Now, that's not why Liz is angry at him (he couldn't have known the guy was hiding in a corner with a fucking pipe, who does that?) but for the "Stay in the car" order that he openly ignored. And okay, he realizes now that he should have listen to her, but he wasn't going to let her go to that abandon warehouse without backup, even if that backup was only him. So he waited in the car for a few seconds (he counted to five, okay?) and then got inside the warehouse where not only he almost got his head crack open, but he also hit his face with the floor in the fall, which costs him four stitches in his right eyebrow and a killer headache. Fan-fucking-tastic.

"I'm gonna suggest Cooper you take a leave until you've healed properly."

It takes him ten seconds to realize that Liz is talking to him again, and another ten to understand what she just said (some bastard just hit his head with a pipe, it's not his fault if he's a bit slow right now). And oh boy, now he's the one who is mad.

"You have got to be kidding me," Ressler answers with a snort.

The whole idea is ridiculous and there's no way Cooper is going to go with it. He's fine, perfect even. A few painkillers, a good night of sleep and he'll be ready for another day of work.

"You haven't even been back a week and you already need stitches," Liz says with a serious face. Her eyes show anger, so much anger. Anger at him for not listening to her, anger at the guy who hit him in the head, and anger at herself, because of course she believes it was partially her fault (it was not, it was all his fault). But underneath that he can also see worry, worry for him, and it's a sight that almost takes his breath away. "I don't think you're fine."

Ressler has to clear his throat before speaking, because suddenly there is something there (no emotions, of course not. He's not speechless just because he realizes that Liz worries about him, that would be silly) that doesn't let him say a word.

"I am fine," he tells her with emphasis and half smile, because he needs her to believe what he's saying. "This job is dangerous, that's all."

"It's not just that," Liz says shaking her head, and he has this feeling in his guts that tells him he's not going to like what comes after that. "You're getting reckless. More reckless."

(He hates when he's right.)

Okay, so now he doesn't like where this conversation is heading. He's a good FBI agent, a great FBI agent even (if he dares to say so), he doesn't need a lecture from her about his job performance. He has been on the job longer than her (what's this, her second, maybe third year on the Bureau? She's still almost like a newbie), he knows what that means and how dangerous can be at times. He's not being reckless (he's NEVER reckless, that's the dumbest thing he has ever heard), he's doing what he has to do, nothing more, nothing less.

"I know exactly what I'm doing," Ressler says annoyed, and for the look on Liz's face he realizes that he just sounded like a petulant twelve year old boy. Not that he cares.

Liz takes a long and deep breath, like she's gathering strength for what she's going to say next, which it's never a good sign for him.

"I can't have you around like this, for your own good."

Ressler blinks a few times, his brain trying to process what she just said. That sounded awfully like "I don't want to be your partner anymore" and something inside him breaks.

The next thing he knows is that he's fucking angry at her. Furious.

After all they had been through together she's going to say that now? Now when things between them are getting better? She had 83 days to ask for a fucking transfer (for him, of course, because Red it's not going to work with the FBI if it's not with her), for Pete's sake! Why give him hopes when she was not staying?

"You are not my superior officer, I don't have to take orders from you," he tells her, words spitting out of his mouth without thinking. "And if it wasn't for me being reckless you would be dead."

Liz turns to look at him, a shocked expression on her face. She opens her mouth to say something, but no sound comes from it.

(Okay, he's going to admit that saying that was a low blow.)

They haven't really talked about what happened, yet. Yes, she spent a lot of time in the hospital with him, a few hours almost every day when she wasn't at work (truth be told everybody went to visit him, even Red with a fruit basket and the closest thing to a thank you for saving Liz's life that he's going to get from him, "I knew you will be useful one day, Donald"), but they didn't touch the subject. At first it was because she asked to. He just woke up from surgery, that was not the right time to have that kind of conversation, so they watched a James Bond marathon together (he fell asleep halfway through Skyfall). After that it never seemed to be the right time to talk about it, and when things started to come back to normal he just thought that the whole thing was water under the bridge.

Until now.

"I'm your fucking partner, Ressler!", Liz shouts, a hurt look on her face. And okay, maybe this isn't a great time to have this conversation, because he has a terrible headache and this is making it worse. "We are supposed to trust each other, even though I know that's something difficult to understand for you."

(Ouch, he probably deserves that.)

"News flash Keen, I have your back whenever you like it or not!" Two of the paramedics turn to look at them and Ressler lowers his voice. "I'm not gonna let you walk into a dangerous situation without backup."

"You are of no help if you get hurt all the time!"

Now that is an exaggeration. He doesn't get hurt all the time. It's true that he visits the emergency room more than any other agent on the post office, but that's just his bad luck.

"We need to catch those criminals, and the fear of a few scratches is not gonna stop me," he tells her. There are risks, of course, but that's his goddamn job.

"Those aren't a few scratches, Ressler," Liz says, gently touching the stitches on his right eyebrow with her fingers. "You almost cracked you head open, I'm surprised you don't have a concussion." He almost missed what she says next, because all his attention is on the feeling of her fingers on his forehead, caressing his temple and taking his headache away. "Although you are very pig-headed, there's no way to get into that skull of yours."

"And why do you even care?" Ressler asks her, and that comes out less spiteful than intended, the feeling of her fingers against his skin making him relax. "At the end of the day the bad guy is between bars and Red is happy, that's all that matters."

"Of course I care, you stupid moron," Liz tells him, and removes her hand from his skin. Ressler looks at her and for a second he's about to grab her wrist and put her fingers back where they were, but then he realizes what she just said. "I can't do my job if I have to worry about whenever you are bleeding your life away in some hallway or not."

And okay, that shouldn't be a surprise, but it totally is.

Ressler opens his mouth to say something, anything, when Liz's phone rings. She takes it from a pocket in her jacket and looks at the screen.

"It's Cooper," she says with an apologetic smile. "I have to take this."

And he can't do other thing but nod, because there are thousands of things he wants to say stuck in his throat and no way of let them out.

#1

The first time it happens he blames Meera, even though Meera is not there anymore.

(Long story short some bastard called Berlin got her killed. Ressler still blames himself, he should have been there for her.)

He's in Liz's office (although this is also his office, he doesn't know why he keeps saying it's Liz's) with his head on his desk, an ice pack against his forehead and his eyes closed. There's a beeping sound coming from the bullpen and, if it wasn't because every inch of every muscle of his body hurts, he would get up and ask Aram what the hell is going on out there.

Ressler has a headache and he couldn't be more annoyed about it. Why does he always end up with a headache?

Let's go back to a few hours ago.

Everything started with a call from Red. Not to his phone, of course, because Red never calls him (he prefers to show up unannounced whenever he needs to tell him something, an act that Ressler obviously loves) and when he does is Dembe who does all the speaking. The damn tune that Liz has for Red on her phone woke him up at 3am, just to find out that Hudson is sleeping on top of him, again.

Great.

(To sum up there was a Christmas party with mistletoe and kissing. And then more kissing, and more, and more… And words, yeah, Liz said some words and Ressler just kind of nodded the whole time because he couldn't believe that now he was allowed to kiss Liz, the rest was all background noise. And suddenly Liz is living with him, because she was still on that crappy motel and no, thank you very much, that's not going to happen when he has more space on his house than he needs for just him. Now he's picking her clothes from the floor, because Liz is messy as fuck and their house would look like a catastrophe zone after a typhoon if it were for her. But he doesn't mind, because on the days he wakes up without the weight of Hudson on his chest he's afraid everything was just a dream and he's alone in the bed.)

After pushing the dog aside (he has to have a serious conversation with Liz about Hudson. The dog may be small but it's really annoying to wake up with him on his chest every day, he's not his goddamn pillow) and crawling out of bed in the middle of the night (although to be honest he's the one who did all the crawling, Liz has some kind of switch and as soon she's awake she's ready to go) they had to drive to the other fucking side of the city just so Red could throw a file to his hands and claim that they had a case.

A fucking text or email would have sufficed, he didn't need to drag him out of bed for that.

So they started working on the case, because what else could they do at that hour? (Not come back to bed, obviously) It seemed like an easy one, according to Red. They just needed to find this banker with some interesting connections, get the information he had, throw him to jail and case close. A piece of cake.

He should have known that coming from Red nothing is as easy as it seems.

Every time they were about to catch the guy he disappeared into thin air, which was driving Ressler crazy. So after almost 24 hours of going from place to place after that banker, when they did finally find him, Ressler (whose patience has never been one of his best traits) was so pissed off that he tackled him and they went through a glass door.

To say Liz was angry when she saw the scene would be the understatement of the year.

There were some words directed at him that may or may not have included "stupid" and "moron" (in that order) while the paramedics were cutting his clothes off on the back of an ambulance (They told him that there could be pieces of glass inside his clothes and that he could get hurt while trying to remove them, that's why they needed to cut everything, but Ressler is convinced that they were just messing with him. There was no need to cut his underwear too.)

"I can't believe you went through a glass door," Liz said, arms crossed over her chest and a frown on her face while he was getting change in the emergency room. She had to go home to get some jeans and a plaid shirt for him, because there was no way Ressler was going to stay in the hospital gown any longer than a second. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"I was thinking about not letting our suspect escape, again," Ressler said while finishing buttoning his shirt.

"You broke a glass door with your shoulder, Don."

"Obviously things didn't go as planned."

Which leaves us with Ressler in his office, an ice pack against his forehead and his face on the desk.

There is a knock on the door and he lifts his head enough to see that Aram is there, a cup of something that smells like coffee on his hands.

"I thought you may want one of this," he says, coming into the office and putting the cup of coffee next to Ressler's face.

He really, really loves Aram. Aram is his best friend in the whole world.

Ressler mumbles something close to a "thank you" and moves his body enough to start drinking his coffee. He has a really deep cut on his right forearm (courtesy of a very nice piece of glass) so he grabs the cup with his left hand and takes a sip while trying to keep the ice pack on his forehead. His body hurts and he's leaving stains of coffee all over his desk, but he doesn't care.

"You look like you had a fight with a tiger," Aram says, a hint of amusement in his voice.

Forget what he said before, Aram is not his friend anymore.

"Where is Liz?" he asks between sips of coffee, ignoring Aram's remark. "She left like two hours ago and still hasn't come back."

Oh my god, is he whining?

Aram chuckles and shakes his head, leaning against one of the cabinets in the office.

"It was five minutes ago and she went to get the first aid kit."

"I don't need a first aid kit," Ressler complains grumpily. "That's why I went to the fucking hospital."

He has a small bump on his forehead from when he hit the floor in the fall, and a few (okay, a lot of) cuts and bruises from the glass, but he is fine. Or as fine as he can be after going through a glass door, of course.

Aram raises an eyebrow.

"It looks worse than it feels, really," Ressler lies through teeth, because the truth is that it hurts like hell. He has hundred of teeny tiny cuts all over his body and he can't even move an inch without feeling one of them. It's annoying. "I don't know why she worries so much, because I'm perfectly-"

"Don, I swear to God that if I hear you say one more time that you're fine…" Liz says from the door, the white metal box of the first aid kit on her hands.

"I'm perfectly okay," he says cautiously. Liz narrows her eyes, her lips pressed in a thin line, and puts the first aid kit on his desk.

"I think that's my clue to leave."

Aram puts a hand on Ressler's shoulder, who tries not to flinch with pain under Liz's gaze (there is a huge purple bruise there under his shirt), and leaves the office, closing the door behind him and leaving them alone.

He's dead.

Ressler takes another sip of his coffee, trying not to look at Liz, and puts his head back on the table with the ice pack touching the small bump on his forehead. He doesn't want to hear what Liz is going to say now, because he knows what is coming. Another of her "Don, you have to stop doing stupid and reckless things like jumping off buildings" lectures (that happened just one time and it was a mistake. He miscalculated).

"Let me see your face."

"What?" Ressler asks surprised. That's not what he was expecting at all. "Why?"

"Because I want to see your face."

"You see my face all day, even at home." He argues, not moving an inch from his spot. "By now you should be bored of seen my face."

"Don, just show me your face." Liz says annoyed, sitting on the edge of his desk. "Why do you have to make everything so difficult?"

Okay so there's another reason why he's with his face on the desk (beside the headache, of course). He has a big and nasty cut on his left cheek. Like, really really big, from almost the corner of his mouth to his ear. If it doesn't leave a scar he's going to be surprise.

Now, he's not hiding his face because he had this suddenly moment of shyness and he's embarrassed of the cut. No, he got that doing his job, there's nothing to be embarrassed about even if it leaves a scar. The thing is that every time Liz sees the cut she makes that face, the one that means he's in trouble, so he's trying to make her forget about it.

(It's an impossible mission and he knows it, because they live together and everything, but he can try.)

Ressler sighs heavily, lifting his head from the desk. Liz's hands are on his chin within seconds, turning his face to the side so she can take a look to the gash on his left cheek. Her warm fingers leave a tingling sensation on his skin and he's so distracted by that feeling that he almost doesn't feel pain when she starts caressing the sensitive skin around the wound.

"Does it hurt?" Liz asks, her voice so quiet that it almost seems like a whisper.

"No."

The response is out of his mouth before he can even think about it, but it's not a lie. It's like Liz has some kind of magic power and every time she touches him she can take his pain away. Or at least most of it.

Liz raises an eyebrow, not believing one word of it.

"You have a cut of the size of the Grand Canyon."

Ressler just shrugs his shoulders, not wanting to go into details. He's a little embarrassed by the effect that Liz's touch has on him. His partner just shakes her head, a little smile on her lips, and removes her fingers from his face to get the first aid kit.

"What are you doing?" He asks. And no, he's not annoyed because Liz is not touching him anymore, that would be silly.

"I'm going to put a band-aid on that cut," She answers without looking at him, completely focus on the task at hand.

"It doesn't need anything, they took care of it in the hospital."

"Oh, I think it does," Liz says with a mischievous smile, holding a box. A pink box.

He has to blink a few times before his brain is capable of understand what his eyes are seen.

What the fuck?

"That's a Disney Princess band-aid box," he says with a little strain on his voice. He's not a big fan of Disney but he recognizes the three pictures of princess on the outside of the pink box.

"Yes."

Okay, what the hell is going on? There is no way, no way, he's going to walk around the post office with one of those band-aid on his face. No way. No. Never.

He crosses his arms over his chest, a frown on his face, and lays back in his chair putting some distance between himself and those pinkish things.

"I'm not wearing that."

"What?" Liz says, opening the box and looking at its content. "It hurts your man pride?"

"It's not that, they're for kids."

"Well, you are like a big child, getting hurt all the time while doing stupid things that grow up people told you not to do. I say they suit you very well."

What?

Now he knows what all of this is about. This is his punishment for going through the fucking glass door (a devilish punishment, she must be picking some things from Red). He prefers the "Don, you have to stop doing stupid and reckless things" lecture, let's go back to that.

"Liz…"

"Do you prefer the ones with Hello Kitty?" She asks him, obviously not caring about what he was about to say. "I think we also have a box of those."

"Why the hell do we have this kind of band-aids? There are no kids around here."

"I think they were Meera's."

Ressler looks at the pink box with a sad facial expression. Sometimes he can't believe that Meera is really gone. She was a good woman, a good mom, a good friend, she didn't deserve that. There are days when he walks into the office and hopes to see her there, ready to mock at him.

God, she would have had so much fun right now.

"So, are you more fan of Snow White or Cinderella?" Liz asks after a few seconds in silence.

"You have to be fucking kidding me."

"You could be Ariel if you want, she's redhead," she says, showing him a pink band-aid with a mermaid.

He takes a deep breath and shakes his head feeling defeated. Knowing Liz there's no way he's going to escape from this, it's better to go with it. Besides, he can take that band-aid off the second she's not looking at him, nobody else has to see it.

"Do you have a Mulan in there?"

Liz smiles, looking like the cat that ate the canary, and he has the feeling he's going to regret this.

"No, but I should have guessed you'll go for the asian girl."

Ressler narrows his eyes, an eyebrow raised.

"Are you making an asian-porn joke again? I told you it's not true."

"Say whatever you want Don," Liz tells him, taking one of the band-aids from the box. "I'm the profiler in this relationship."

"Wait, wait, wait," says Ressler, lifting his hand to stop Liz who was mild way of putting the band-aid on his face. "Which one is that one?"

"Aurora." She sighs when she sees Ressler's face, because it's obvious he doesn't have any idea who that is. "Sleeping Beauty."

"Why the hell I am Sleeping Beauty?"

"You mean beside the "I need my sleep or I'm grumpier than usual"?" Liz asks him with a smile. "She hurts herself and then gets knock out, leaving a mess for the prince to sort out. That sounds pretty familiar to me."

"Wait, are you saying that you're the prince?"

"What I'm saying is that…" Liz grabs his chin with one hand, holding it to the side, and sticks the band-aid on his left cheek. "You know I care about you, right?"

She's looking at him directly to his eyes and his breath catches on his throat, like every time she does that.

"Of course." His voice comes a little hoarse and he hates it.

Liz puts a hand on the back of his neck and gives him a quick peek on the lips.

"Then stop jumping and start thinking," she says with a smile, and then gets up from his desk. "By the way, Cooper is waiting for you in his office."

"What? Now?" Ressler asks surprised, trying to regain his composure. "Okay, just let me…"

"Now, Don."

"I can't go out like this!" He protests, pointing to the pink band-aid on his cheek.

"Of course you can."

Liz is still smiling and God, if it weren't because he loves her he would probably hate her right now.

Ressler sighs but stands up anyway, walking towards Cooper's office with Liz right behind him.

"I don't want to hear one word," he warns Aram, who is covering his mouth with his hands trying to suppress his laughter.