Aisling's phone buzzed, alerting her to movement on the security cameras. The touch of a button had the camera's feed streaming straight to her phone, and she narrowed her eyes at what she saw. A man was staggering towards her door, passing the security camera at the gate and approaching the one at the door. At first she squinted at him, but as he came closer to the camera, her eyes went wide.
Aisling was already flying up the stairs when the doorbell rang. In her youth she had been built like an ox, all broad shoulders and thick corded muscle and lungs that could carry her through miles of running. It was a little humbling, then, to find herself slightly out of breath when she reached the landing. She punched the button by the door and waited impatiently as it began to swing open. She squeezed through the gap before the door had even completely opened, trotting through the house towards the front door. The doorbell rang again, and the sound was still hanging in the air when she yanked the door open.
And there he was. His suit jacket was gone, leaving him in a dark vest over a white dress shirt that was stained with blood at the collar. There were cuts and bruises at the corner of his mouth, around the side of his right eye. He was shaking, almost vibrating, and those deep blue eyes were clouded with pain, eyelids drooping heavily at each blink as though he might pass out at any moment.
"Fucking hell, Raymond." The small Irishwoman breathed, ushering him inside with a hand on his arm as she leaned around him, sweeping a trained gaze around the surrounding area. He tensed up immediately at the contact, and she drew her hand away and looked back to him, concerned and a little wounded.
"They stuck me with something." He explained haltingly. "A nerve agent."
Grim realization swept through Aisling. "Does it feel like you're burning alive? Like there's a million white-hot needles being stuck in your skin at the slightest sensation?" Red cocked his head slightly at that, taking in her words and tone with growing melancholy recognition. He opened his mouth to ask the inevitable questions, and Aisling brushed past him, leading the way deeper into the house. "How much did they give you?"
He followed after her, slow and not quite steady on his feet. "I don't know." He paused, then added, "Two doses. Less than three cc's each."
Aisling stopped short, looking back at him with unmuted horror. "Two? Good God, Ray, how are you even walking?" She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Nevermind. I gotta warn you, love, these stairs are going to be hell."
"Stairs?" He glanced around the one-story home.
Aisling grinned and led the way into the study. The back wall of the room was wall-to-wall, floor to ceiling oak bookcases, the rightmost section of which was still swung open into the room as a door. Red almost smiled.
"You finally got one."
"I couldn't resist. It's such a classic, y'know? Now all I need is a creepy housekeeper and an elaborate disguise, and I'll finally be a Scooby Doo villain."
Now he did smile, just a whisper of one, and for the first time Aisling finally felt some kind of happiness to see him again. If she didn't know how the stairs would feel in his state, maybe she would have been able to smile back.
Aisling was a woman of her word, and a flight of descending stairs took nearly two minutes to traverse. She stayed a step behind Red, always in arm's reach but never touching him, waiting in patient silence whenever he stopped to catch his breath.
At the bottom of the stairs was another door with a keypad next to it, and Aisling leaned around Red to punch in the code. It opened to reveal a cozy living room and kitchen; on the island, a laptop sat amidst a sea of papers, like a crater at the center of an explosion.
"You've been busy." Red drawled, settling a searching look onto his companion. "I thought you were retired."
"I am. Mostly." He tilted his head, and she sighed. "I was trying to find you."
That familiar grim seriousness settled into the lines of his face. "You shouldn't have."
"You're too kind." She replied dryly.
"I'm serious." He growled, capturing her arm in a firm grip and turning her to gaze pointedly into his eyes. A muscle in her jaw tightened.
"As grateful as ever, I see." She returned in a similar tone. Lower, but gentler, she added, "Take your hands off me, Raymond. I know it hurts, and I don't need that on my conscience."
Something that was not quite guilt flashed briefly across Red's face, and he glanced away as he dropped her arm and stepped back. Aisling's eyes flickered over him appraisingly.
"Did you lose people today?"
"...Yes."
Aisling nodded understanding and left it there, and crossed to open a door at the back of the room. The light from the living room illuminated a king-sized four poster and, next to it, a closed door to an attached bathroom. "You can lay down here until the drugs are out of your system. I think the dark helps. Less stimulus to drive your nervous system crazy."
Reddington joined her in the doorway, nodding in response. When Aisling turned to go, he said, "Thank you."
A small, bemused smile twitched at the corner of her lips. Better late than never. "Anytime, love. Tell me when you're feeling better."
She retreated to the living room without another word, and heard the bedroom door close behind her. She slid back onto the stool at the kitchen island, absent-mindedly shuffling her papers into one pile. She tried in vain to do some work on her laptop, but her mind kept wandering back to Red, alone in the dark and in an agony she knew all too well. After the fifth time attempting to read the same report, she gave up entirely.
Aisling shut her laptop, retrieved a bottle of brandy and a glass from the cabinet, and curled up on the sectional. She turned the TV on, more for the background noise than actual entertainment, and pulled a pocket watch from her jacket. The watch itself had been her grandfather's, and she flipped it open to look at the picture that had been wedged into the inside cover. Smiling back at her were Ray and Damian, over fifteen years younger, the ocean stretching into the background behind them. Ray held a six-year old in one arm and had the other looped around Damian, who cradled a baby in his.
I certainly have a type, she mused, smiling down at the pair of lean, dark-haired men. Raymond was actually too lean for her liking in that picture, half-swimming in his polo shirt; he had only been a few weeks removed from a long stint in a Siberian prison, and had been barely above underweight when she'd invited him on their vacation. Damian had taken such great pains to pack as many calorie-dense meals into that trip as he could, and Aisling was sure that they had all gained five pounds by the end of the week. That was nothing compared to the long weekend in Morocco in the summer of '05, though…
Gradually, the stress of the day, the effects of the brandy, and Aisling's wandering mind had her drifting in and out of a doze. Some time later, she was snapped awake by a noise from the other room, and after a second, she realized that the tap had turned on in the bathroom. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and hauled herself to her feet. When Red stepped back into the bedroom from the bathroom, she was leaning in the doorway, framed by the light spilling in from the living room.
"Feeling better?"
"Better than before." He answered carefully. Aisling considered the reply.
"Good enough to be seen to?"
"See to what?" He asked with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. He touched a hand to a cut above his right eyebrow. "You know I've had worse than all this."
"And you know that infections are a bitch. Something tells me that Anslo isn't the type to worry about washing his hands."
He huffed, a bemused but not unhappy sound, as he crossed back to the bed and sat at it's edge, still not entirely steady on his feet. "Who I am to argue with my gracious host?"
"Yeah, the last thing you'd ever be is argumentative." Her sarcasm was only half-bitter. "Take your shirt off." She instructed as she crossed to the bathroom. He flashed a mischievous smile and raised an eyebrow.
"Well I'm flattered, but I'm afraid I have a headache…" He jested, beginning to unbutton his shirt before he was even done talking.
"Cute, love. Cute." Aisling said with a roll of the eyes, setting the first aid kit she'd pulled from under the bathroom sink onto the nightstand. Next to her, Red struggled to shrug out of his vest and shirt with shoulders painful and hyper-stiff from being dangled from his wrists. Aisling's expression immediately fell. "Easy, love. I'll get it."
She was unsure if touch would still be painful, and so she kept her eyes locked on his face as she brushed a feather-light touch onto his collarbone next to the collar of his shirt. When only exhaustion showed in his expression, she slid his shirt from his shoulders. The familiar burn scars curled across his torso, leaving only swathes of skin untouched on the front and next to none across his back. Dark, ugly bruises showed on almost every inch of clear skin. Aisling's jaw tightened.
"It looks worse than it is." Red offered quietly upon seeing that expression.
"No, it doesn't." she replied dryly. Silently and methodically, she began to wrap a bandage around his torso to support his broken ribs. Then she wet a rag in the bathroom and held his face gently as she wiped the blood from around the handful of small cuts on his face, and now she knew that the nerve agent must be wearing off, because he was leaning into her side, eyelids drooping as he teetered towards sleep. Aislilng smiled softly to see that, and swapped the rag out for a tube of antibiotic cream. Red woke slightly as she spread it over the abrasions, but barely winced.
Aisling retrieved a cup of water and several pills from the bathroom, and turned back to find Red nodding off where he sat. "Red," She said gently as she sat next to him on the bed, and his head came up, blinking slowly at her. She held out the pills in her hand. "Antibiotic, anti-inflammatory, steroid, vicodin."
He nodded, took the glass of water, and downed all of them. Aisling took the glass back and set it aside, and then, work done, she pulled him to her and pressed a kiss to his temple. He turned his head to rest his forehead against hers.
"I'm glad you're alive, Red," She whispered to him. She cupped his cheek in her palm and ran her thumb along his jaw, trying to re-memorize the feeling of his skin beneath her fingertips. He closed his eyes and leaned in to the touch, his hand coming up to cover hers.
"So am I." He replied, voice a rough and sleepy rumble. Those bright blue eyes opened halfway to look at her as he added, "I wanted to see you again. At least once."
"It doesn't take an attack, you know." She jested gently. "I'd be there any time you asked."
"I know." There was affection and loneliness and melancholy on his face. They loved each other, to the extent possible, but they had always known that the lives they led and the secrets they had to keep would not allow anything deeper than this, than six days in the Caribbean with her family, or three days in a hotel suite with him and Damian, or occasionally pulling each other's burning hides from the fire. Her children called him Uncle, and Damian had died trying to extract him from the clutches of an IRA splinter cell, and she was almost certain that neither of them knew the name the other had been born with.
Her face fell more serious. "I've been hearing chatter, Ray, about you and the FBI." He tensed slightly under her touch, and she ran her thumb across his cheek soothingly. "The boys are grown now. They can take care of themselves. And I don't have my own business to worry about anymore. So if it ever comes to it with the feds, or with whoever's behind Anslo… Don't worry about me, alright? Do what you gotta do."
For a second, he looked like he wanted to weep, and he closed his eyes, cradled her head to his. "When this is over," He said, voice shaking, "I'll take you back to Bora Bora. We'll spend a few days laying in the sun and drinking those fruity cocktails you loved."
"I wouldn't say no to that" Ailsling said with a smile. "You should get some sleep. You're falling asleep sitting up." She began to pull away, and his hand closed firmly but gently around her forearm.
"Stay?" He asked, with those beautiful, lonely blue eyes, and there really had never been a way for her to say no to him when he was hurting.
"Of course."
Aisling helped ease him onto his side on the mattress and laid down next to him, and he nuzzled his face into the crook of her neck and wrapped his arms around her. She kissed his forehead and ran one hand in lazy, soothing circles up and down his bare back, the other running over the stubble on his head in a way that her own time with short hair had taught her would make his entire head tingle pleasantly. Red sighed contentedly, and within moments, he was starting to drift off again, and even Aisling was getting sleepy.
"You know," Red mumbled, sleep thickening his words, "This isn't what I had in mind when I talked about a woman's warmth. S'pose I can't complain..."
"Hmm?" She asked, but he was already asleep.