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“River, you really should go to A&E.”
Louisa opened the door as River limped past her and straight to the couch, soaked from the rain, having left his grandfather’s house disappointed but convinced about what had to be done. He collapsed heavily on her couch as if he couldn’t manage an inch further, which might not have been too far off.
“I’m fine,” River replied, his expression attempting to say nonsense while the bruises marring his face made it entirely unconvincing.
“Right,” Louisa said, raising her eyebrows and sending a quick text to Shirley. River was going to need a bit more help than she could give. “Yeah, you look fine.”
He made a noise of objection that sounded like a mix between a scoff and a whimper. It wasn’t really helping his case. River shook his hair out and pulled off his jacket slowly, looking more like a wet puppy than an MI5 agent, even a slow horse MI5 agent.
“You’re soaked.”
“Yeah, it’s raining,” River said, and Louisa fought the urge to roll her eyes. It looked like they were both stating the obvious tonight.
“Get up. You’re soaking my couch,” she ordered and then regretted it as soon as she watched River struggle to his feet.
Swallowing her worry, Louisa turned to her bedroom, rummaging through the closet and finding a random pair of sweats, some socks, and a T-shirt she thought might fit River enough so he could at least put on some dry clothes and tried not to think of who the clothes belonged to. River hadn’t moved from where he stood by the couch, leaving Louisa unsure if he was in shock or just in the last few hours, but he had become much more adept at following directions.
“Take off your clothes,” Louisa instructed.
“Oh. What?” he asked, eyes blinking owlishly at her.
“You’re soaking wet, River,’ Louisa sighed, entering her bathroom, finding a dry towel and returning to her injured colleague. “You’ll catch pneumonia.”
“That’s not actually true; it’s just an old wives' tale.”
“Do you want dry clothes or not?” Louisa said, fighting to keep her voice light as she tossed the towel at him.
“Fair point,” River said as he toed off his trainers, wincing and favouring his left leg as he did so..
“All right, let me help you before you fall over,” Louisa said, quickly cutting the distance between them.
She kneeled in front of him to untie the shoe he was still wearing, guiding him to sit as she gently removed the shoe. River stood, and Lousa avoided his gaze as she undid his wet jeans and eased them to the floor, letting him lean on her as he stepped gingerly out of them.
It was painful to watch him struggle out of the hoodie and then make an almost pathetic attempt to remove his T-shirt.
“I got it,” Louisa whispered as she gently pulled the shirt over River’s head after he managed to pull both arms inside it. “Jesus Christ, River!”
Louisa’s hand went to her mouth automatically, wincing inwardly as she took stock of the array of colours covering his chest and sides. Reds, blues and purples littered his torso, angry colours that would only deepen over the next few days, their colours a history of every punch, fall, and projectile River had been on the receiving end of the last day.
“Oh. That,” he said, looking down as if only noticing the damage now himself. “I guess that does look bad.”
“You guess?” Louisa squeaked, alarmed at the pitch of her voice as she quickly helped him step into the sweatpants and pulled them up before easing him to sit on the couch, his face creased with pain. “River–”
“I’m fine,” he said a bit too quickly, which might have been more believable if he wasn’t sitting shirtless, perched on Louisa’s couch, looking like he had gone through the wringer and lost. It might’ve been a bit more believable if she wasn’t staring at Hobbs and Chieftan’s handiwork graffitied across his ribs.
“No. River,” Louisa said, shaking her head. “You are a lot of things, and fine is not one of them.”
Louisa didn’t wait for his inevitable denial; instead, she walked quickly back to her bathroom, rummaging for the painkillers and Arnica she knew were stashed away somewhere. River was in rough shape, and she only had over-the-counter painkillers. She knew they probably wouldn’t dent River’s pain level, but she handed them over with a glass of water when she returned to the living area anyway. River took them and gratefully gulped the water, returning the almost empty glass to the coffee table.
“This won’t do much,” Louisa said, holding up the Arnica tube for him to see before sitting next to him and starting to apply it to his side, “but it’s better than nothing.”
River stiffened at her touch to his injuries but easily deflected, “Sorry, your hands are cold.”
Goosebumps covered his skin, prickling against the pale whiteness as well as the rainbow of bruises. He was sitting shirtless with wet hair; maybe he wasn’t lying after all. Her phone vibrated as Louisa finished liberally smearing the Arnica across one side of his bruise-filled torso, and she made for the door, opening it to an also wet Shirley Dander.
“He alright?” she asked, standing on her tiptoes to peer at River over Louisa’s shoulder but made no attempt to enter the flat.
“No,” Louisa said flatly.
Shirley handed Louisa a small, generic-looking bottle, “Well, let me know if you need more. This should help for now.”
“Thanks, will do,” Louisa said as Shirley turned back to the hall, disappearing to wherever Shirley spent her time when not at Slough House.
Louisa was too relieved at the small supply of something Shirley promised would be better at taking the edge off to ask more questions of her co-worker. Louisa closed the door and locked it, turning to see River had managed to shuffle painfully to her freezer. She bit back her instinct to swat it from his hand as River grabbed a much more expensive than he realised carton of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and pressed it against his eye.
She watched with a mix of concern and pity as he let out a small sigh of relief and struggled slowly back to the couch. Louisa gently took the ice cream container from his hand and replaced it with a pack of peas. She hurriedly returned the diamond-encrusted ice cream to the freezer before it began to melt, and she had to offer him an explanation for something she had never planned to discuss.
River offered his other side to her as she returned to sit heavily beside him. Louisa was beginning to tire; she could only imagine how exhausted River was from his jaunt to the Park earlier in the morning and everything else. He hissed as she rubbed the salve across a particularly nasty spot, and Louisa worried her lip between her teeth as she continued.
Cartwright Junior was a bloody mess, and it hadn’t even been a full twenty-four hours since his beating at the hands of the Dogs; Louisa knew his bruises would turn worse before they got better. They would be darker and meaner in no time. As it was, they painted across his skin with the promise of pain and discomfort Louisa wished she could heal.
“I’m not joking about the hospital, River. You more than likely have a concussion, and who knows what you did to your ankle? Your ribs could be broken. And what about internal injuries?” Louisa sat back and swallowed hard, attempting to keep the terror that had built up in her voice at bay. “You were knocked unconscious by a fucking grenade, for Christ’s sake.”
“Hospitals ask questions,” River said, his voice soft, comforting.
“I know that–”
“Louisa. I can’t,” he interrupted, his voice firmer as his eyes fell to the copies of the file on Louisa’s coffee table, the file they had both nearly died to retrieve. The file Donovan and Ben Dunn and poor Douglas had been killed for. She couldn’t even think of all the Chieftain bodies littered through the facility—or Duffy’s, which she had left without a second thought or even an attempt to check if he was still breathing.
Bastard.
She rubbed some more Arnica against him, maybe a tad bit rougher than she intended, and River groaned, an audible reminder of the Jackson Pollock painting on his side. She was convinced now at least one of his ribs was broken; more were likely as well, but at the very least, the others bruised. Louisa had the sudden urge to hit Duffy in the head again for what he had done to River, maybe with an even larger slab of concrete this time. She couldn’t bring herself to find pity for him or for Hobbs, who Roddy informed her didn’t survive the Dunn’s house and his encounter with Jackson Lamb.
Louisa only wished she could have seen it.
“Shit, sorry,” she apologised, her hands ghosting in the air above his mass of bruises.
“I’m okay,” River said, and Louisa was unsure if he was attempting to convince her or himself.
He failed either way.
Louisa studied her handiwork, or Duffy’s and Hobbs, she thought belatedly, trying to see if she missed any of the battered areas. River’s torso seemed to be more bruised than not between his adventure at the Park and getting caught on the wrong end of a grenade. It was hard to believe he was even upright between his damaged ribs and ankle.
She was torn between whacking him on the side of the head for being such a fucking idiot and wanting to, needing to, pull him into a hug. The desire to hug him won, but Louisa couldn’t bring herself to act on it due to a greater fear of hurting him further.
“You really should see a doctor,” Louisa said more to herself than him this time.
River ignored her and hissed as he tried to pull the shirt Louisa left for him over his head, unable to lift his left arm farther than shoulder height. Wordlessly, Louisa took the shirt from his hands, ignoring the tremble of her own, and eased his arm through and pulled it over his head before he pulled his other arm through himself. She helped him lean back onto one of the sides of the couch, pillows on each side to support his ribs.
Careful of his left foot, she pulled his socks off, manoeuvring his legs onto the couch. She slid the dry ones on, gently moving around the swelling and bruising that covered the outside of his likely sprained left ankle, wincing in sympathy as she did so. Louisa then took another pillow, elevating his lower leg onto it before covering the damaged limb with an ice pack and handing him another for his ribs. She was running out of freezer items at this rate, covering all of River’s injured body parts.
“Thanks,” he whispered, voice heavy with things said and even more left unsaid.
She nodded and turned to the kitchen to refill his water glass, swallowing the lump building in her throat and threatening to overwhelm her. She leaned heavily on the counter, blinking away the images of unconscious River that threatened to take out her knees. Louisa took a deep breath and reminded herself that River was here, he was alive, he was safe, at least at this moment in time.
Composed, or as composed as she was going to get, Louisa handed River one of the pills from Shirley, which he swallowed without question. His unspoken trust in her threatened for the lump in her throat to expel itself with a sob. She swallowed hard again, taking a deep breath and sitting in the closest chair, leaning back and staring at the ceiling, blinking away any tears that were threatening her carefully constructed composure.
“What’re we going to do?” Louisa asked once; her voice could be trusted, but still staring at the ceiling.
“We have to get the file to the right hands. Then Tearney will have to back off.”
“And then you’ll go to hospital?” Louisa challenged, sitting up to face him.
River didn’t look at her; he simple stared at the ceiling as Louisa had done a moment ago herself. Louisa struggled to read his face, which was still etched with pain as they waited impatiently for Shirley’s painkillers to take effect. She studied his face and again but came up empty. Maybe he was a better spy than Lamb gave him credit for. They had become closer over the last few months, but she still couldn’t read him, not the way she could read Min.
Of course, it was different with River. River and her were friends, but she and Min were more. She and Min were a lot more. But River had become more, too, not in the same way, of course, but in another way, just as real but different from Min. And River cared about her, something Louisa didn’t always find easy to accept. But River had snuck around her carefully constructed defences like a Trojan Horse, and she let in a coworker, but she hadn’t noticed when he had become a friend.
River showed that earlier in the car when, though she hadn’t wanted to talk to him, he had stumbled through one of the most awkward, challenging, yet endearing conversations of her life. River had shown her the heart she always knew was there. He was so pure at times that it was hard to believe he had both gone into the Service and ended up at Slough House, and that broke her heart.
And it broke her soul to think his heart might get him killed the same way Min had gotten himself killed.
Louisa stood up abruptly, suddenly unable to be this close to River as her mind swirled with thoughts of the last man she had cared this much about—the last man she had lost. Then, her thoughts tilted abruptly to how close Louisa came to losing River today, how lifeless he looked, how she had genuinely thought he was dead, and wire wrapped around her heart, threatening to squeeze.
“How is this happening?”
But it hadn’t happened.
She needed to keep reminding herself that River was here; he was alive. Her eyes traced him from head to toe, stopping to watch his chest rise and fall with each laboured breath. He was in a sorry state, but he was alive. It hadn’t happened.
Not again.
But it had been so fucking close. If Louisa had thought too long about their time in the bunker, on the grenade and the guns, and Chieftan, she might have shatter and wasn’t sure she had the strength to put herself back together.
Not again.
“Are you alright?” River asked because–because he was River, so of course he did.
He sat up abruptly and winced, a hand falling to his side, a small and futile attempt to keep the pain at bay. Louisa cut the distance to him and readjusted the fallen ice pack from his side. It wasn’t enough; nothing she could do would be enough to lessen his pain, and the thought threatened to cripple her.
“I’m fine,” she said, her voice flat. Her hands lingered on his, another reminder that he was here and alive—not remotely okay, but here and alive.
He was also cold still, even with a shirt on again, and briefly, Louisa feared he was too cold until she remembered the mound of ice packs he was buried under at the moment, attempting to make him even slightly more comfortable and stave off some swelling. Still, he shuddered once under her touch, which turned into another wince, another stab into Louisa’s stomach.
River, though wisely didn’t press her further on her denials as she moved across the room swiftly, returning to River with a blanket in hand. She laid it over his stomach, then down his legs, leaving his socked foot and ice-covered ankle just outside the warm fleece of the blanket.
“I’m sorry,” Louisa offered along with the blanket. “For what I said in the car about your grandfather.”
“I’m sorry, too,” River added quickly. “I didn’t mean to upset you with what I said. I just I–I don’t know what I was trying to say, but I wanted you to know you weren’t alone.”
Louisa smiled sadly. Alone was the one thing she knew she was. She had almost gotten used to it, at least until Min showed her what it was like to have someone in her life, someone who cared about her, someone who had her back. But then he was gone as quickly as he entered her life, and his absence made her loneliness feel more significant than before; something ripped away just as she had gotten accustomed to it.
It was cruel, and in her lowest moments, she found herself wishing she had never let Min into her life in the capacity she had. Then there wouldn’t be a Min-shaped hole she tried to fill with booze and sex. But if losing Min had been the worst thing to happen to her, having Min was one of the best, and she wouldn’t give up knowing him for all the heartache it brought upon her.
She just missed him.
“I appreciate your intentions. I do. And when—if–I ever want to talk about everything, I will let you know.”
River lowered the ice pack from his eye and then nodded, offering her a satisfied smile that she couldn’t help but return. Maybe she wasn’t alone after all.
“So what’re we going to do with the file?” Louisa asked, her brain grasping onto something tangible she could think of, a task she could accomplish so she didn’t get lost in the darkness of Min’s memory and River’s disastrous last twenty-four hours.
“I sent it to Roddy. He’s going to send it out through all his channels. It shouldn’t take long. By morning, it should have made it to the right people, so Dame Ingrid isn’t a threat to us or anyone,” River said before lifting the ice pack back to his face.
“Good, good,” Louisa said. “You should probably try and get some sleep. I’ll wake you in a few hours.”
River lowered the ice pack, a serious look setting over his face. " Why don’t you sleep first? I’ll take the first watch.”
“Are you insane?” Louise asked, wondering if maybe she should insist on A&E now; he had to have a worse head injury than she thought if he was actually suggesting what he was suggesting. “Absolutely not, River. You nearly died hours ago. I’m only waking you in a few hours to check your concussion, and then you’re going right back to bed.”
Louisa shook her head and then almost laughed at the determined look on River’s face, which would have been more effective without the bruising, cuts and ice packs.
“You’ll probably be more comfortable in my bed. Come on, I’ll help you there,” Louisa said, pushing herself to her feet.
“Can I stay out here?” River asked as she approached, his voice quiet and reserved. His eyes looked above her before meeting her own, a layer of fear passing through them before he blinked it away and set a neutral look on his face as if he were asking about the weather.
“Yeah, of course,” Louisa said, walking to the kitchen to fill up a water glass for herself, leaving it on the coffee table.
Louisa didn’t much fancy being further away from a door than necessary either, not after thinking they might die in an underground bunker. She made sure River was as comfortable as he could be before chancing a kiss to his forehead, her mind drifting unbidden to the first time he had done the same for her, the first time she leaned into his comfort when she needed it the most.
His eyes slipped closed at her touch. “Sleep for now, River. You’re safe.”
“I know,” River mumbled.
He was asleep before she made it to the other side of the room, Louisa letting out an exaggerated exhale, relieved that he was resting. Louisa checked her watch and set a timer for three hours. She would wake River reluctantly then to make sure his concussion hadn’t worsened. Until then, she double-checked all the windows and doors were locked.
Then, she checked that the gun was loaded and watched the door. Ho or Lamb would tell them when it was safe. Then she would convince River to go to A&E and get himself properly looked at. Until then, she’d watch him sleep.
It almost happened again, but as she watched River’s chest rise and fall with each breath, she thanked every god she could think of that it didn’t.