Title: Hollow, Thin as Air (1/1)
Universe: Blindspot, 1x01
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Oscar & Ruggedly Handsome Man
Summary: "You don't get to act like your feelings about her are more important than mine just because you have a ring." Oscar and RHM watch the news.
A/N: So I wrote this story in a very different style than what I'm used to (not sure where it came from, honestly), and if you have time, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Also, this is my first time taking a stab at RHM, so here's hoping I did that tall drink of werewolf water some justice. :)
x x x
The man on the couch sat still and completely silent in front of the television, keeping his eyes glued to the clock in the bottom right corner. He was bent forward, staring up at the screen; one elbow was propped up on his knee, and in his hand he fingered what at first appeared to be a small charm on a plain chain around his neck. He rubbed his fingers back and forth over the curve of the circular item, though if he did it for comfort or for luck couldn't be ascertained. He seemed to be doing it mindlessly, like breathing, without receiving any overt pleasure from the act. Every couple seconds, he looked down at his watch, as if to check the time, or perhaps to gauge which clock was fast and which was slow, but besides that, there were no hints of his impatience.
The bearded man, the only other person in the room, paced. Back and forth, back and forth, behind the couch he paced, with his arms alternatively shoved into his pockets at his sides, or crossed tightly over his chest. Sometimes he hunched over himself and stared at the floor as he paced, muttering about things few people except the two men in the room understood, or even knew of. Sometimes he kicked things. Other times, he brushed a hand through his hair—it was getting long; he had an errant thought that he should cut it soon, lest he become easily recognizable—or he ran a hand over his beard and pulled at his chin. None of these actions seemed to bring him peace, and more than once he swore out his frustration, not having another option to blow off steam in this small apartment they were currently occupying but to curse.
The man on the couch never blinked at his outbursts; it was almost as if he didn't hear them. In his periphery he watched whatever meaningless program was on the TV, but he truly kept himself occupied by counting down the minutes until the turn of the hour. Every time a commercial break came on, and the six o'clock news banner flashed across the screen, he leaned closer and turned on the volume. His eyes jumped around the screen, but it did not seem like anything shown there truly interested him. The upcoming top stories about food poisoning and emergency jet landings were not, it appeared, what he was waiting so anxiously for.
When the local news logo disappeared, and the screen flashed white, he and the dark room around him were bathed briefly in light. For a moment, his features became clear—dark green eyes, bloodshot; circles beneath them that betrayed how long he'd been awake, waiting for this moment; and a sparse stubble that showed neither planning nor care. In the light, too, the charm he kept trapped between his thumb and forefinger could be seen for what it really was: a diamond ring. There were hints that he kept other things on that chain around his neck, too; when he leaned backward or forward, the other items hidden beneath his shirt clinked against one another. The metal sound they made sounded almost like a wind chime. He did not seem to hear it.
Finally, the clock in the bottom right corner of the screen turned over—from 5:59 to 6:00—and the screen flashed white again, the local news banner trumpeting through the apartment at full volume now. The bearded man stopped pacing at the sound, and turned his head towards the TV. The man with the ring was leaning fully forward now on the couch, almost falling off of it in desperation to be closer to the screen. He did not even flinch when the bearded man sat down heavily on the couch beside him, disrupting his equanimity. He only focused on what was before him, and blocked the rest out. He'd gotten rather good at that, over the last couple years.
The male-female pair of news anchors began with the stories their network's commercials had teased over the last hour: an Ebola outbreak on the west coast of the country, resulting in two fatalities and a number of hospitalizations thus far; a passenger plane that crash-landed safely in rural Iowa, with no deaths; Liberty Island's spring cleaning routine, just in time for the mayor's visit this coming Friday…
"What are they waiting for?" the bearded man demanded, impatient again to the point of anger now, tapping the toe of one of his worn-out combat boots against the wood flooring incessantly. "Why aren't they leading with her? Are they idiots?"
The man with the ring didn't reply; he just kept staring at the TV, like he could force it to divulge the information he wanted to hear if only he maintained eye contact long enough.
For half an hour, they let the top news stories pass them by without comment—save for the bearded man's displeased mutterings—and by the time commercials broke in again, the bearded man was up on his feet, pacing once more. He kept it up until a familiar trumpeting noise echoed out from the TV, and the news anchors appeared again, this time with an all-caps message running across the top and bottom of the screen.
"Of-fucking-course," the bearded man shouted, spreading his arms out in a mix of resignation and helpless anger. "They pull this 'breaking news' shit, even though they've had to have known about her for—"
The man with the ring pointed the remote at the TV screen, and pressed his thumb on the volume button until the other man's voice was drowned out. The news was deafening now, at this volume, but the man with the ring around his neck hardly seemed to notice. He leaned closer to the television as the news anchors all but screamed in his face:
A woman was found naked and alone in Times Square early this morning. She appears to be the escaped victim of an abduction attempt or some sort of hostage situation, though at this time any explanation is only speculation. We can confirm, however, that she has indeed been heavily drugged and is currently incapable of recalling her identity or how she came to be completely naked in the most famous spot in downtown New York City...
Naked? The female newscaster feigned surprise, disgust. As if she hadn't been briefed on this story an hour ago. She gave a little shudder for the camera. Oh, how horrible.
The male newscaster nodded in commiseration, putting on a grim face for the viewers at home. Terrible, yes. One can only imagine what she's been through. As doctors attempt to uncover what harm may have befallen her, authorities have released a picture to the media—
An image of the woman in question appeared on the screen beside the news anchors, and a moment later, the screen shifted and the picture grew to take up the whole frame. The man with the ring pinched the diamonds so tightly between his thumb and forefinger that the skin beneath his fingernails went white. He had leaned so far forward that he had all but risen out of his seat to get closer to the screen, and the woman displayed there.
The image was simple, stark: a neck-up only shot of a very pale woman with dark hair, set against a neutral sky blue background. Her black hair was cut short, just beneath her chin, and its frazzled state hinted at the confusion and fear one could see peeking out from the tense lines visible between her eyebrows. Her green eyes stared straight into the camera, but they appeared clouded, tortured by something—a past trauma perhaps, the news anchors speculated, nodding sagely.
"Surprised they showed your bird," the bearded man commented, as the newscasters zoomed in on another picture of the woman, a side view now, which featured a tattoo on the left side of her neck of what appeared to be some sort of crow or songbird. Its wings were spread wide across the skin of her neck to give the illusion of flight. "Never liked her with that short hair," the bearded man continued, shaking his head as he bit at one thumbnail. "I still don't get why the makeover was needed beforehand. Or at all." He turned to the man with the ring, "Come on, you have to agree with me here, she doesn't look any good with—"
"Please stop talking."
They were the first words the man with the ring had said in hours, and they made the bearded man fall silent more out of shock than anything else. It wasn't often he obeyed orders the other man gave him.
For a minute or two, they listened to the news segment on the naked woman without saying a word. There wasn't much more the anchors could add to the story, but still, the man with the ring hung onto their every word, as if he knew nothing more than what they were telling him. Whenever they flashed the lost woman's picture on screen, he leaned forward in his seat. He didn't notice the way the bearded man at his side frowned with every movement.
"She looks scared," the bearded man said finally when, as the story was wrapping up, the news channel filled the screen once more with her close-up photo. "We shouldn't have let her go naked. It was freezing outside this morning, not to mention all the people who saw her—"
"She wanted it like that," the man with the ring replied, his eyes tracing over her blank features on screen, and the hotline number flashing in yellow along the bottom of the image. "She was very particular."
"When is she not very particular?" the bearded man muttered. He shook his head as the number on the screen flashed red, and the news anchors implored anyone who recognized this woman to please call the hotline immediately to come meet with authorities in order to come and claim her.
"We should've overruled." The bearded man turned to the man with the ring, his voice rising with something akin to excitement. "We could've done it! You and I, we could've convinced her together. We could've gone to her and said—"
The man with the ring shook his head, his eyes not leaving the TV. "The time for overruling things passed months ago. It's time to stick to the plan now as it was set then. It's useless dwelling on what could've been changed."
The bearded man fell back in his seat again, snorting quietly as he faced forward once more. "Yeah, you don't need to be the one to tell me about dwelling on things, Oscar."
"Excuse me?" the man with the ring demanded, finally tearing his eyes from the screen to glare at his comrade beside him. "Is there something you would like to say to me?"
The bearded man held up his hands, silently surrendering in the face of the other man's anger.
"That's what I thought," the man with the ring muttered, turning back to the TV. The last twenty minutes of the newscast continued without another mention of the woman abandoned naked in Times Square, but just before the hour was up, her picture flashed across the screen once more, with the accompanying hotline number. The man with the ring grabbed the remote, and paused the screen before it could disappear again.
The bearded man did not say anything to this, but the way he crossed his arms and sighed through his nose was enough indication of his disapproval. The man with the ring pretended not to notice these things—or perhaps he was so lost in the face on the screen that he honestly did not notice. He stared at the woman onscreen as if she were really staring back at him, as if they were alone together.
The bearded man allowed this to continue in silence for half a minute before he glanced at his watch. "Danny and Paul dropped her off at half past two. It's just after seven now. You think they're done interrogating her?"
"I don't know," the man with the ring replied, not taking his eyes off the face on the screen. He was holding the ring up to his lips now, and his words came out partially muffled against the diamonds.
"You think they've brought Weller to her yet?"
"I don't know."
"What about her DNA? You think they'd try to test it so soon?"
"I don't know."
The bearded man thought for a moment, and then frowned. "Marci said the food there sucks. You think she's had something to eat?"
"I don't know."
The bearded man sighed sharply at the repeated response, and rubbed the side of his face with a hand. He glanced over at the man with the ring, but he was still on the edge of his seat, staring at the screen. His lips were moving silently against the ring, and though the bearded man tried to make out the words he was mouthing, he couldn't make sense of a single syllable. He gave up trying a lot sooner than he gave up most challenges.
"Hey, look, sitting here staring isn't doing anything good for either of us," the bearded man said, taking care to soften his voice, the same way he did whenever he spoke to children. "You wanna go for a drive, maybe check on some of the caches?"
"The caches are fine," the man with the ring replied without looking over.
"Okay, you want to inventory the armory again? Kim mentioned the count might be off from last week. It'd be good for us to check, while we still have a bit of downtime."
"The armory is fine."
The bearded man blew out a breath. "All right… You want me to beat you over the head with the TV remote, then?"
"The TV is f—"
The bearded man grinned when his comrade broke off, triumphant at catching him up. Such a thing did not happen often. The man with the ring shook his head without amusement, closing his eyes briefly.
"I don't know why in the hell I put up with you," he muttered darkly, returning his eyes to the television once more.
The smile fell off the bearded man's face. It was quiet for a moment as he, too, stared at the dark-haired woman immortalized by a thousand different pixels on the screen.
"Because she asked you to," he said simply.
x x x
A half-hour later, and still neither man had left the room, or turned off the TV. The abandoned woman with the bird on her neck was still staring at them, with that crease in between her eyes that betrayed her fear frozen onscreen for all to see. The man with the ring did not look away from her all the while, hardly even blinked, and he kept the ring pressed against his lips. He had stopped mouthing his secret words, though every once in a while when the bearded man looked over, he caught his lips moving for a second or two against the diamonds. He did not bother asking what this was about. He knew there were private things between those two, just as there were private things between him and her—or at least, him and who she used to be.
The bearded man yawned, long and loud, stretching against the back of the couch, and spreading his arms as he reclined. The man with the ring glanced over briefly with a frown.
"You don't need to babysit me, you know," he said. "If you're tired, you can go and sleep. I don't need a watchdog."
The bearded man made a low noise of disapproval, and then covered a whispered, "Bullshit," with a bad fake cough.
The other man's face twitched, his nostrils flaring in momentary fury. "What was that?" he demanded sharply.
The bearded man shrugged, folding his hands in his lap calmly. "It was me calling bullshit," he replied easily, not bothering to pussyfoot around anymore. He turned to the man sitting on the other side of the couch with a knowing look. "You asked me to do this, remember. You asked me to be here with you."
The man with the ring shook his head angrily, his eyes returning to the TV. "I was being overly cautious when I made that request. You can go. I'm fine."
"No, you were being the exact right amount of cautious," the bearded man replied. He peered at his comrade, but the man didn't take his eyes off the woman's picture onscreen, nor did he stop running his fingertips over the curve of the diamond ring in his hand. "You didn't trust yourself back then not to call that number onscreen—rightfully so—and I don't trust you now." He pointed at the TV. "You're not sabotaging everything we've worked all these years for just so you can play out your little Romeo and Juliet fantasy. It's over, done, finished between you and her, and you have to accept that, all right? You have to get it through your thick head, and—"
"I am accepting it!" the man with the ring shouted, finally wrenching his eyes from the screen. "What the fuck do you think I'm doing right now? Just having a good old time watching the goddamn morning news? No, I'm—"
"You're sulking," the bearded man cut in loudly. "You're lingering on the past, and you're wanting it to be the future, and—"
"—and so what if I am?" the man with the ring cried, jumping to his feet. "What does it matter what I'm doing, or what I want? My fiancée just fucking murdered herself, for all intents and purposes, and you're looking at me like I'm not allowed to grieve! Like I can't mourn, just because I'm me!"
"No, that's not what I meant," the bearded man replied, struggling to stay calm now as he hadn't had to before. He had known this particular plan was a bad decision. They always set each other off like this; this is why they never got along. Why they were never destined to be the good buddies she had always wanted them to be. "You're allowed to grieve; you're allowed to mourn. But not if it puts the mission at risk. I won't have you pining after her so badly that you lose your head."
"I'm not losing my head," the man with the ring replied through gritted teeth, but it was obvious from the strain that trying to speak normally was having on him that the words were half a lie, at best.
"Give me the ring then," the bearded man proposed softly. He watched the other man's eyes go wide, watched his second hand fly up to hold the ring, as if the bearded man had just threatened to steal it. "Give to me," he repeated quietly, "and prove to me that you won't go berserk the second it's no longer in your possession." He tipped his head towards it. "I'm not stupid, man. I know that's your emblem of her. I know you won't stop touching it because it's the only thing keeping you sane right now; it's the only piece of evidence you have that the two of you even existed, and—"
"You cannot even begin to understand what this ring means to me, to us," the other man spat out. He pointed a furious finger at the screen. "You cannot imagine what it was like to watch her go, to watch her leave like this—"
"Hey," the bearded man cut in harshly, rising to his feet as well, "I lost her too! And you're not the only one who loved her; I did, too. So don't act like this is somehow harder for you than it is for me!"
The man with the ring laughed shortly, turning away. But the bearded man reached out a hand, and grabbed onto his shoulder roughly to spin him back around.
"I've had enough of your superior bullshit, Oscar. You don't get to act like your feelings about her are more important than mine just because you have a ring. That isn't how this works."
"That is how it works, actually," Oscar, the man with the ring, replied. "And our referee isn't around anymore to keep me in line, so I'll act how I like with you, thank you very much. And right now I'm telling you to fuck off, because you don't know what I'm going through. I don't care how long you've known her, I don't care what you've been through—it's not the same."
The bearded man's eyes narrowed dangerously as he pointed at the other man. "Watch yourself. You're turning into a real asshole, Oscar, and we've got a long road ahead of us."
"So are you," the other man snapped. He held up the ring, still on the chain, and shoved it in the other man's face. The other charms on the necklace—the metal pieces, embossed with his name and hers—fell forward with it, as did the bearded man's widening eyes, but the man with the ring hardly seemed to notice now. "You want to take this from me, like it's a test, like it means nothing? Where the fuck do you get off? What authority do you have to even suggest that? What right? Only one other person besides me gets to hold this ring, and guess what, that person isn't you! So I don't give a shit what you say about it, or about me, or how you want me to prove my loyalty. My loyalty is to her first, always.
"And I get that you've never liked us together, all right, I get that you'd prefer if I wasn't around. Fine. That's old news. We've been through that. But remember, I'm a part of this team, too, and I have my stake in this plan as much as any of you. I got kicked out of the Marines for this; I lost my fiancée for this—and no matter how much I want to, I am not pissing away our one chance at success just to see her. I wouldn't do that; I wouldn't betray what she—and all of us—have worked so long for like that. So fine, don't trust me. Don't respect me. Don't like me. But respect that she did all of those things, all the way to the very end, and let that have some sort of meaning for you."
He turned around then, heading for the door, only to stop when the bearded man called out to him.
"Oscar."
The man with a ring laid his hand on the door, bracing himself against it. His hand closed into a white-knuckled fist, and then he drew a deep breath, and marshaled himself. When he finally spoke, his voice was surprisingly quiet, all the fury from earlier disappeared. "What?"
"How long have you had her tag on that chain you wear? With yours and the ring?"
The bearded man watched the back of the man at the door, watched as it stiffened and straightened at the question. And then relaxed. He didn't ask when the bearded man had seen it; he did not rant about invasions of privacy.
"She gave it to me just before she left to go under," he answered. He paused only a second before asking quietly, "And you? When did she give you her other copy?"
"Same time," the bearded man answered, his voice a whisper. His hand automatically went to his right pocket. "When we said goodbye, just before I erased her, she put it in my hand and told me—"
"—told you to keep it safe for her while she was gone, yeah," Oscar finished for him, turning around, nodding along. He caught the bearded man's eye. "Looks like we got the same line." The bearded man nodded, and then the man with the ring laughed shortly, and shook his head a little. "So is this the part where you tell me you guys have been sleeping together behind my back this whole time?"
The bearded man managed to crack a bit of a smile. "Caught me," he joked.
The humor didn't last more than a second. Oscar looked away, and then focused back on the ring again. He held it loosely between his fingers now, staring at it as if he hadn't seen it before, and didn't know why it was chained around his neck with the dog tags.
The bearded man bit on the inside of his cheek as he watched, knowing this was not the time to talk, nor would it ever be. There were certain parts of this plan they never discussed aloud. Certain parts that were between him and her only—and, soon, if things went according to plan, Weller, too. The bearded man let his eyes linger on his comrade, recognizing now that, truly, their situations were different. They were both being abandoned, they were both losing someone they loved, but only one of them was being betrayed—even if no one ever, ever used that word. Even if she had ended things with him preemptively, to avoid any use of that word.
"Oscar."
The other man did not look up at the sound of his name, and the bearded man had to repeat it twice until finally the man heard, and jumped. "What?" he asked quickly, trying to cover his distraction by tucking the ring and the dog tags back underneath his shirt.
"I just…" The bearded man's voice had turned soft again. "Are you sure you still want to do this?" He didn't go further than that—didn't mention the memory loss, or the late night meetings that would happen, or Weller. He just asked again, even softer than before, "Are you sure you're up for it?"
Oscar didn't look away from the screen, or the picture of the woman frozen there. "I promised her I would be there for her," he said, and the bearded man nodded, letting that be the end of the conversation. No doubt he had circled this drain with her a hundred times before.
Not for the first time, the bearded man wondered what it had been like, when she'd given him the ring back. And not for the first time, he was very glad he did not know any of the specifics.
"Have you seen any sign of Cade recently?"
The bearded man blinked at the question, momentarily blindsided by the change in conversation, before cautiously shaking his head. "No…," he replied slowly. He stared nervously at the man across the room, and then glanced over his shoulder at the picture of the woman on TV, and the phone number attached to her. His heart picked up despite his training. "Wait, you don't think he'd... We changed the drop date because of him!"
"He threatened to kill her the last time I saw him," Oscar replied, his eyes back on the TV, too. "I don't put anything past that guy. He'd claim her just to torture her. And he has enough to build on, too, after our time together. He'd be able to convince the feds he knew her. He can describe the placements of the other tattoos accurately, and he knows her blood type."
The bearded man nodded resolutely. "Okay. I'll make some calls to our people at the Bureau and make sure no one's made a good case for her yet."
Oscar nodded, and stepped to the side of the door to let him out. "Thanks."
The bearded man passed by him on the way to the door, and was about to reach for the knob when he thought better of it. The man with the ring was only a foot away. He reached out a hand and laid it on his shoulder gently, squeezing hard once.
"And hey. I'll ask how she's holding up."
The man with the ring nodded, meeting his eyes only briefly. "Thank you," he whispered. Then he swallowed and looked away, back to the television and the woman still staring out at them from it. He felt a flash of guilt at the feel of her eyes on him, however simulated, and glanced back to the bearded man. "Look, man, I'm sorry for being so—"
"It's fine," the bearded man interrupted quietly. "You're right that it's different for you, losing her. I'm sorry I was trying to act like…" He shook his head, breaking off. "I'm just sorry, is all." He tipped his chin at the door of the apartment and reached for the knob. "I'm gonna make some calls, and then I'll be in the back room monitoring things, okay, if you need anything."
The man with the ring nodded, and moved to sit back down on the couch. As the bearded man stepped into the hallway, and pulled the door shut behind him, the newscast could be heard starting up from the beginning of her segment again.
A woman was found naked and alone in Times Square early this morning…
x x x
A/N: Thank you for reading! :)