First attempt at writing Blindspot, so hopefully haven't butchered it too much.
Tag to Episode 4x05 that I couldn't get out of my head. Wrote this out pretty quickly so may have some mistakes.
I own nothing.
Enjoy!
Opening the door to his apartment, he noticed once again that the flap to his security was down and had the distinct feeling he was not alone. He scanned the room, finding the source of the disturbance watching him from the furthest corner of his couch, sitting cross-legged and looking smaller than usual.
"What do you want now Tasha?" he asked, his gun trained on her as he slowly made his way closer, casing his apartment to see if she had her friend with her again.
"I'm alone." She spoke quietly, placing her hands up as to show she wasn't a threat.
"I should call this in." He lowered his gun slightly, just enough that it wasn't trained on her but enough that he could defend himself if she wasn't in fact alone.
"You won't." Her words sounding more like the Tasha he knew than the one he had heard all day.
"How can you be so sure?" He asked, making his way around his apartment, thoroughly checking that her partner wasn't anywhere to be found.
"Same way I know that deal you offered me was real." She answered, her head tilted upwards with the slightest hint of a smile.
"Is that why you're here? To take the deal?" He sat on the opposite side of the couch, finally convinced she was alone, leaving the lights off as if turning them on would make the situation more real, more against his agency.
"No." Her response coming quickly and assuredly as she turned to face him.
"Then why?" Reade sighed, watching her reaction in hope to gauge some sort of an answer. He watched the way she looked away for a moment, before glancing back at him with less certainty than before.
He realised that his words had hit closer to home than he had first thought, not only was she in way over her head and terrified, but whatever it was that she had gotten herself into, she had no idea how to get out.
"What have you gotten yourself into Tash?" He pressed further, he had spent more time that day worrying about her than about himself, and that was only continuing.
"It doesn't matter." She shook her head, focusing her attention to the bike on his wall, to the chair across from her, anything that wasn't him.
"Bullshit it doesn't! I have half the FBI out looking for you." He exclaimed, a hint of guilt rising in him as he remembered he had good agents working hard to find the person sitting next to him.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have come." She stated, making no move to leave.
"Then why did you?" He repeated once again as if he expected an answer, something they both knew she didn't have.
"I know I shouldn't have, I just needed to make sure you were okay." Tasha tried to explain, she hadn't understood fully why she had risked coming back, but she just needed to see her best friend, complications or not.
"You tied me to a chair and forced me to give you access to the FBI and now you wanted to make sure I was okay?!" Reade fired back, anger clouding his tone.
"If I didn't, she would have hurt you." She tried to reason, the whole day she had been terrified of what would happen to him if he wouldn't give her the information and if it come down to it, how far she would have to go to pick a side.
"You hurt me Tasha." He threw back, rubbing his hand across his brow in frustration with the circles they seemed to be going in.
She hated that she knew he was right and that as much as she tried to ignore what she had been doing to her friends, to her family, she had known the time would come that what she was doing with Madeline would force her to cross lines she didn't want to.
"I know I have no right to, but when you asked if it was real, that hurt." Her quiet words breaking through the silence that had taken over the apartment.
"Damn right you have no right, you slept with me and then ran off to Blake Crawford without even a word." Her sentence threw him for a moment, making his response harsher than he had meant.
"And what, that offsets everything we have been through?" She fired back even though she knew full well that he had every right to be annoyed at her.
She had tried to stay away that night, tried to simply ignore her feelings, but she hadn't been strong enough; breaking and showing up at his door barely an hour after she had gotten home that night. The next morning, she had woken with the knowledge that she had just made things so much worse for them both, but the thing that had hit her the most was the lack of regret.
"You threw it in my face." He continued with anger, everything that had happened today draining him more than he wanted to admit.
"You made me." She responded, eyebrows raised in defiance.
Her statement made him realise that for all the information that she had manipulated to try and gain the password from him, she had not brought up their feelings for each other, hadn't used it against him until he brought it up and even then he had seen how much of a struggle it had been for her. At the time he had put it down to her not wanting her masked friend to know, but now he was realising it was too much for her to use it against him.
"Let me help you." He spoke softer than before, as he near pleaded with her.
"I don't need help." Her shaky voice not fooling either of them.
"Yes, you do." He told her sternly, wishing that she would listen to him, that she would let him have her back again.
"Do you trust me at all still?" Her question came out as if she feared the answer, she knew that she was losing her best friend due to her own actions, but it still stung.
"I'm not sure." He sighed after a moment, giving her the most honest answer that he could, he trusted her enough not to call her location in, but he wasn't sure if he trusted her past his own safety.
"Okay, that's fair." She blinked back a tear that threatened to fall. "Can you at least try and trust me for just a while longer?"
"Do you still love me?" he asked after a pause, the question throwing her as he turned to face her, watching her closely as the words sunk in.
"Yes." She whispered out, similarly to the way she had admitted earlier when he had questioned if it was real.
He leant forward, ignoring the voice at the back of his mind reminding him that she was the enemy; that it was a bad idea, as he traced his hand down her face, wiping away the lone tear that had betrayed her and fallen. He watched her hesitation at his touch and he understood she was worried about his reaction and hurting him more than she would let on.
Closing the gap between them, he kissed her gently, the action causing her to push past the voices in her head and to ignore the reasons why not to, bringing her arms around his neck to draw him as close as possible. As he pulled her up into a standing position, she growled at the height difference, allowing him to direct them to towards his bed without any hint of hesitation.
The soft buzz of her phone brought her out of her light sleep, sitting up she threaded her arms through one of Reade's shirt off the floor and made her way over to her phone. Picking it up she hated the fear that ran through her veins the moment she saw it was from Madeline but read the instructions for their way out of the country anyway.
Making her way back to the bed, she couldn't help but smile as she caught Reade's eye, a lightness had taken over the apartment, giving them a chance to pretend that all the complications from the day and their jobs didn't exist.
"What are you doing?" He asked tiredly, watching her curiously.
"Setting an alarm." Tasha told him, smirking at the mundane task as she played with the phone in her hand before placing it on the bedside table.
She slid back under the warm covers, curling in to his side in a very un-Zapata way, bringing a smile to his face for what felt like the first time in a long time. He wrapped his arm around her to bring her even closer, right now she needed to feel safe and he needed to know she was safe.
"How's the team?" She broke the comfortable silence that had fallen around them.
"Missing a member, but otherwise doing well. Jane's taking it well but she's seemed off lately, I guess knowing you're dying changes your prospective on everything." He continued to speak freely, giving her a run down on all that she had missed and how her old team was going. The load on his shoulders feeling lighter and lighter with every word, knowing that he had his best friend back for at least the night was enough to make him forget about his usual stressors.
She watched as the bright light from her phone lit up the dark apartment, she was used to waking up before her alarm goes off, but for the first time in a while she didn't want to, for the first time in a while she actually felt like she was refreshed and the last thing she wanted to do was step back into the reality that she had created for herself.
The sound of her alarm had half woken him, but the sound of his shower running woke him fully, a part of him was surprised that she hadn't snuck out while she had had the chance. He couldn't help but feel that even though she was still in his apartment that he had already lost his best friend again and a small voice at the back of his mind was questioning if this could be the time he loses her for good.
"Morning." She greeted him with a sad smile, putting her stuff into the small duffle bag she had left sitting next to his couch the night before.
"Not sure that it is morning yet." He pointed out, trying to joke but the humour was missing from his tone.
"I've got to get going." Tasha explained as she stood at the end of the bed, watching the man in front of her, she felt sadness but also a hint of hope; hope that he could still forgive her actions and maybe by the end of it all, she might still have something to come back to.
"Call me if you need anything." He albeit demanded, standing up and making his way over to her, he pulled her in closely for a hug. "I mean it Tasha."
Pulling back, she hated and loved that she knew the truth behind his words. Moving toward the door to put some distance between them, even if only for a moment, as she was reminded of the fact that she was about to have to leave her best friend once again. She thought about telling him the truth, if only for moment, but the fear of putting him in even more danger quickly diminished that thought.
"Good-bye Reade." She repeated her words from the day earlier, leaning upwards she kissed him gently before slipping out the door quickly, not giving herself a chance to second guess her entire plan.
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