Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. More like it's the other way around… I've come to realize that THEY own ME. :)
She felt herself falling asleep sitting up on the couch, leaning against Kurt, and that was totally okay with her. Never mind the fact that it felt very strange to be falling asleep sitting up. Then, when she heard his voice in her ear what felt like seconds later, she couldn't help but smile. It wasn't so much what he was saying – because really, he was saying that they needed to get up off of the couch – just more than he had leaned close to her to say it, and that he remained so close when he had finished saying it.
"We need to add some warm clothes to your bag, and I need to pack some of my own things," he murmured next. Once again, however, he made no attempt to move, and neither did she.
"Mmmm-hmmm," she replied, perfectly happy with the fact that he had yet to try to let go of her. She would be more than okay with it if they stayed right where they were for the rest of the night, even though realistically, she knew that they would be sore if they fell asleep that way.
"Or maybe that can wait til morning. We can get up early and pull things together, then get on the road," he said quietly, thinking out loud. That certainly sounded like a good plan at the moment.
"Okay," she replied, without moving or opening her eyes. Of course, she would have agreed to just about anything just then if it meant that she didn't have to move.
Kurt chuckled at her, at the two of them. He knew she wasn't going to like what he was about to say. "However, we can't sleep like this. We need to get up." It didn't surprise him when she leaned into him just a little harder in protest, frowning stubbornly. Chuckling, he added, "It does seem perfect, but our backs won't forgive us if we try to sleep like this. Besides, we should probably brush our teeth, things like that…"
He felt her sigh in defeat, and he couldn't help but smile. Had it really only been this morning that he'd felt so distant from her, that he'd wondered if things between them would ever stop feeling so awkward? It seemed impossible, based on where he was now, sitting on his couch with his arms securely around her, feeling exactly the opposite of awkward.
He allowed them another minute, and then forced himself to slowly let go – which took all of his willpower. "Come on, let's get up," he said. As much as she wanted to simply just refuse, logically she knew that he was right. Sighing in resignation, she allowed him to pull her to her feet along with him, then, once he had made sure she was steady enough to stand up on her own, he let go of her. She watched him as he walked toward the kitchen with the two coffee cups, taking them to the sink to rinse them out.
While he did that, she walked to her bag, still sitting by the front door, and took out her pajamas and her toothbrush, then ducked into the bathroom to change and brush her teeth. When she emerged a few minutes later, she found the main room of the apartment quiet and dark, all of the lights having been turned out except for those that illuminated a tiny, two foot tall Christmas tree that sat on an end table across the room. She hadn't even noticed it before.
Replacing her clothes and her toothbrush in her bag, and taking out her only sweatshirt to put over her pajamas for extra warmth against the chilly December air, even inside his apartment, she left her bag sitting where it was. Standing in the entry awkwardly, she wondered what she should do. Go back to the couch? Go to the room that had once been Sarah and Sawyer's? Kurt's door was only half closed, and the soft light in his room filtered out from around it. Feeling self-conscious but doing it anyway, she walked slowly towards the open door, all the while wondering if doing so was too… what? She didn't even know. After all, she had no frame of reference for any of it. She was simply drawn toward the room where she knew that he was.
Walking slowly, unsurely, she reached his door, through which she could see him standing in front of his dresser. He was now dressed in blue and grey plaid pajama pants and a grey FBI sweatshirt. He was looking through one of the middle drawers, moving clothes aside and then looking below them, clearly looking for something specific. Not sure what to say, she leaned against the doorframe, just as he'd done at the door to her bedroom back at her safe house, crossing her arms and feeling completely out of place.
She watched as he pulled out a sweater and then half-turned, appearing to look at it appraisingly in the light, and then turned around the rest of the way and laid it on the bed. Standing up again, he looked up and saw her watching him, and smiled.
"I guess I got a second wind," he said. "I was looking through my things for the warmest ones." She nodded, looking between the sweater and him. "The bed in Sarah's old room is made up if you're ready to crash," he told her, but she shook her head.
"Not yet, unless…" she replied, thinking that as tired as she was, she'd rather hang out with him. After all, she spent enough time alone, and all that awaited her when she pretended to sleep were her thoughts. So unless he'd prefer that she didn't, she would much rather hang out in his room.
Smiling at her and nodding, he said, "Well, have a seat then, if you want." There was nowhere in the room to sit except on the bed, but since he wasn't actually sitting on it himself, just walking back and forth beside it, she felt a little less awkward about doing so. Settling herself on the opposite side from where he was laying out clothes in two distinct piles, she watched him quietly. Next, he took a duffle bag out of the bottom of his closet, setting it on the bed and transferring one of the piles of clothes into it, then stood and appeared to be running through a mental checklist.
A chill ran down her spine, and she pulled her thin sweatshirt tighter around her, not giving her actions a second thought. This happened to her all the time at her safe house, too, but she was fine. After all, after what she'd been through, who cared if she was a little bit cold? It was winter. People were supposed to be cold in winter.
Suddenly she felt his eyes focusing on her, and she glanced up to find him looking hard at her. Before she knew it, he'd turned around to his dresser again and had pulled open the second drawer, taking out a dark blue sweatshirt which he then turned around and passed to her. "Here," he said, "this one's probably a lot warmer than the one you're wearing. "One of the first things that Sarah bought me after she and Sawyer moved in." She was surprised to find that the sweatshirt was made of what was perhaps the softest fabric she'd ever felt before, inside and out. The letters NYC were stitched on in large dark gray letters, using an even darker gray thread. For a few seconds she just stared at it in her hands, in disbelief that he'd just handed it to her.
It's just a sweatshirt, not a marriage proposal, the voice in her head said, almost sounding bored. But it wasn't just a sweatshirt, not to Jane. It was his, and she got to wear it. Why did she like that idea so much?
She unzipped and took off the thin sweatshirt she was wearing quickly, both because she felt strangely exposed without it, despite the thin, black long sleeved shirt she wore underneath it, and also because of the cold, slipping his blue one over her head and pulling it down around her. It was much too big, of course, but between the softness of it and the lingering scent of him, when she pulled it down around her, she swore that she had never before worn something that she loved so much.
"Thanks, it's perfect," she said happily, smiling broadly at him.
He nodded, smiling the Just for Jane smile yet again, and she swore she felt her heart beat a little faster, despite her insistence that it should stop doing so. Her heart was apparently not listening to her.
"It looks good on you. Better on you than on me," he told her with a wink.
She just rolled her eyes at him, deciding to change the subject. "Got everything?" she asked.
"I think…" he began slowly, clearly still going through his list, "No, wait… Don't want to forget those." Turning back to his dresser, he opened one of the small top drawers, and then the other, taking out first socks, then what may have been… judging from the drawer's location, she imagined that they were boxers, and her eyes darted around the room quickly, slightly embarrassed to be watching him pack everything.
When he glanced up at her, her face was slightly flushed and she was looking around his room, anywhere but at him. Setting everything into his bag and unable to think of anything he was missing, he smiled at how cute she looked, sitting there flustered. "I'll be right back," he said, and she looked up as he walked out of the room. She heard the bathroom door close, and she looked around once again. It was just as she would expect it to look, really. Very neat, no extra decorative touches, everything simple and organized and utilitarian. Very… Kurt. He obviously hadn't let Sarah have her way in here.
Then in what seemed like no time at all, he was back, carrying her bag on his shoulder, which he set down on the other side of the bed, beside his own bag. Picking up a sweater from the top of the remaining pile, he asked, "You okay with this one?"
"Of course," she replied. "Anything is fine… I just…" She trailed off, not even sure what she was trying to say. She still felt a little funny about needing to borrow clothes from him, though she wasn't going to lie… she didn't hate the idea one bit.
He smiled back at her reassuringly as he set several more things in her bag. Not even looking hard enough to notice what those things were, she was focused simply on him. Kurt, on the other hand, was focused on trying to assure her that none of this was a big deal. "Obviously, it should all be more than big enough, since you're smaller than me," he said, ignoring the fact that she was also much skinnier than she should have been, and that her own clothes were largely loose on her. They would work on that one.
She nodded, smiling gratefully. Once again, she was hit by just how happy she was not to be spending this weekend by herself in her safe house. "I really appreciate all this, you know… if I didn't say it before," she told him quietly. "Not just the clothes… Everything."
Kurt stopped what he was doing and looked at her, and once again he smiled at her warmly. "There's nothing that could have made me happier than the way today has gone," he told her sincerely, and she felt her breath catch in her throat. Though she was smiling, she felt her face twitching slightly, and hoped that she wasn't going to cry against her will from sheer happiness. It had certainly never happened before, but then again, it wasn't as though happiness was exactly a state in which she'd found herself too many times. Just then, however, happy tears seemed like a very distinct possibility.
Wanting to reply and return the sentiment, she was surprised to find that she couldn't – because no words would come out. She was simply overcome with a rush of emotion and had to settle for nodding, looking directly at him and biting her lip to keep herself in check. Even so, her eyes were suspiciously a little bit moist at the corners.
Watching her appear to tear up slightly, he was both happy and concerned at the same time. He knew that they were happy tears, but after everything she'd been through, he wanted to prevent any of her tears. Setting the other things that he'd pulled out for her inside her bag, he opened each of his drawers to look for anything he might have missed, one at a time, before closing each of them again and nodding with satisfaction.
"I think we're set," he said, zipping up both bags and picking them up, then walking out of the room with one in each hand. She imagined that he was putting them near the door for the next morning. She was still sitting there, feeling increasingly awkward, when he walked back in, picked up a remote control from his dresser and pointed it at the small TV that sat opposite the bed. The picture came to life, along with the sound of some commercial for a movie that was coming on later, as he walked back to the switch on the wall by the door. He turned off the light, then walked to the opposite side of the bed and pulled down the blankets, settling in and propping the pillow against the headboard before leaning against it. Feeling increasingly like she shouldn't be there, she watched as he flipped through the channels until he found one of the many late night comedians, and then finally set the remote down beside him.
"I know I should just go to sleep, since I was the one who wanted to leave early," he said with a sheepish grin, "but this guy's so funny."
Jane just shrugged, having no idea who the guy on the TV was, and suddenly feeling very awkward sitting on Kurt's bed, even more so now because he'd just climbed under the covers. "I should probably…" she said nervously, starting to get up.
Kurt just shrugged, his face giving no indication that her presence bothered him. "You can hang out and watch, if you want to," he told her, looking into her eyes sincerely.
You can fall asleep right there if you want to, he said in his head. He knew that it wasn't what was supposed to happen, but damn, would it have been nice…
But Jane yawned just then, and used that as an excuse to stand all the way up.
"The bed in Sarah's old room is guest-ready, if you want it," he told her, "but I'm not kicking you out, I swear." The look on her face was rapidly being filled with panic, and he wondered if she'd taken what he'd just said the wrong way. He had really meant nothing by it whatsoever. If she wanted to sit and watch TV with him, that was fine. If she wanted to go to sleep in Sarah's room, that was fine too. He held no allusions about her wanting to sleep right next to him, because of course she wouldn't want that, but it would have been more than fine with him. He wished there was something he could do to calm her down, but he was at a loss. "Jane?"
Forcing a smile onto her face to try to hide the sudden surge of discomfort that she felt just from being in that room at that moment, she shook her head. "No, you… you were right, earlier… I do need to try to get some sleep. It's been a long day… Or a lot of long days…"
The glow in the room was so warm and comforting, and there was honestly nothing that she wanted to do more than just to lay down right where she'd just been sitting. She felt so safe with Kurt… never mind that she was also currently anxious as hell… but that wasn't because of him. Or… not exactly. That was her mind, she half knew, that was telling her that she needed to get out of the room. Because this… it was just wrong. That morning they had barely been on speaking terms, so she couldn't end the day… sleeping in his bed, no matter how innocently. All the extenuating circumstances in the world didn't matter, that was simply not okay.
Why? she asked herself.
Shut up, she replied. It's just… not.
She could feel her anxiety level continuing to rise, and this feeling only made her more anxious. It was a spiral, and she needed to get out of it.
Though it was clear from her expression that she didn't want to go, she continued to stand awkwardly and insist that she needed to. He thought that it was interesting that she used the excuse of sleep, now knowing that she was still having nightmares. If he recalled correctly, when she'd been having nightmares before, she'd tried to avoid sleep at all costs. He wondered if sleep was simply the excuse she was using to try to get herself out of the room. The question that raised was whether she really felt that uncomfortable… and why?
He looked at her skeptically, but didn't push her. No matter what it took, he was going to prove to her that he could be trusted. As tough as she was, she just seemed so fragile to him just now… even more so than she used to be… This made sense of course, given everything that she'd been through. But then, not surprisingly, she was also that much more skittish because of it.
Despite how strange the whole day had been, he couldn't help but think about the fact that if she'd fallen asleep right there on the other side of his bed, he would have felt better because he could have seen with his own eyes that she was safe. But that was crazy, he knew, and he reminded himself of that. There was no way she'd have allowed it.
They'd seemed to have fallen back into a good rhythm in the past few hours… Things between them felt almost just like they had near the beginning, before the lies had started. When it came down to it, he didn't know what the right thing to do to make her feel better, less anxious, was. He knew he'd been hovering protectively, and he figured that too much of that was bound to drive her crazy, knowing her as he thought he did. This time, he decided, he'd give her a little space, promising himself that he'd go and check on her in a little while.
And he would have done just that, except that he was more tired than he'd thought he was when he'd gotten into bed, and he ended up falling asleep with the TV on. As Jane had said, after all, it had been a long day. Two hours later, he woke up and turned off the TV, then looked at the clock and groaned. 1:35am.
Realizing that he hadn't yet checked on Jane, he pushed himself out of bed and walked quietly to the door. He knew how noises could carry in his apartment when it was silent, so he opened his bedroom door without a sound – a trick that Sarah had never seemed to master, he remembered – and started towards the door to Sarah's old room, across the living room.
He'd only taken three steps, however, when he saw Jane in the dim light of his pathetic, two foot tall Christmas tree. She was laying on the couch, under the throw blanket she had covered herself with earlier, and miraculously, she was asleep. It didn't look like she was sleeping peacefully, however, because there was a frown on her face.
It doesn't necessarily mean anything, he told himself, but he still felt uneasy. No, most people didn't smile in their sleep, anyway. The important thing was that she was asleep.
Turning around without a sound, he tiptoed back to bed, relieved that she'd at least managed to fall asleep, even though she'd ended up on the couch. Why had she decided to sleep there? he wondered. Maybe because it was more familiar? That was the only reason he could think of that made sense with what he knew about Jane. He would ask her in the morning.
It didn't take long before he was drifting off again, now that his room was both dark and quiet. However, it seemed that Kurt was simply not meant to have a good night of sleep that night, because what felt like five minutes later, he sat straight upright in bed. What's wrong? he asked himself. Why am I even awake? He didn't really have trouble sleeping most nights, but he was a light sleeper, and had been for years. He figured that it was just an occupational hazard, since he always needed to be alert and ready. But what had woken him up?
What is it this time? he wondered. Even when he woke up at night, he wasn't usually this awake, this fast… The clock said it was 3:46 am, barely more than two hours since the last time he'd woken up. He was going to be hurting in the morning. Since he was up, he decided to get up and check on Jane again. Because she was sleeping in the living room, he could just peek out his door and make sure she was sleeping peacefully, and didn't have to feel weird about peering into the guest room… It was a very fine distinction, he knew, but a distinction nonetheless, and he'd sleep easier knowing that she was alright.
When he cracked the door open, however, what he saw was not what he expected. There on the couch, with moonlight spilling through the blinds behind her, was Jane – very much not sleeping. In fact, she was sitting up, leaning forward with her elbows leaning heavily against her knees, her head bent forward and resting in her hands so that he couldn't see her face. He could hear her breathing hard, as if she couldn't quite catch her breath, and in a few seconds he was already across the room. He stopped only a few feet away from her, not wanting to startle her by approaching too fast.
"Jane?" he said her name as a question, hesitantly, and then walked the last few steps toward her slowly. He assumed that she had had a nightmare. Instead of sitting down beside her on the couch, he knelt down on the floor in front of her, attempting to find an angle at which he'd be able to make eye contact. However, her head was still bent forward, almost against her chest, and now that he was closer, he could hear that she was not only breathing hard, but that she was crying as well. She was crying so hard, in fact, that she almost wasn't making a sound. Just like that, he felt the now familiar ache in his chest for her and for everything that she continued to go through, so much of it because of his own stupidity.
However, this was not the time to fall victim to his own guilt. He wouldn't be any help to her that way. No, if he was going to be of any use to her at all, he needed to think clearly, which meant he had no time to think about how badly he had messed up. He could do that later.
Just do better from now on, he reminded himself. Starting right now.
Hoping that he was guessing right at the best way to get through to her, he leaned closer to her, though still not touching her, and said her name again. "Jane," he whispered. "It's okay. You're safe." She gave no indication that she could hear him, but he wasn't deterred. Slowly and carefully, the same way he had done earlier, he laid his hands on her arms, just above her elbows. He held on very lightly at first, and then slowly increased the pressure – not to squeeze her arms, simply to get her attention, to get her to come back from wherever she was just then.
Watching her carefully, he saw her brow crease as if she was concentrating on something, and took it as a good sign. He whispered the same words to her again, noticing that she was slowly beginning to catch her breath. She was still crying, though not as hard. He was relieved when she slowly lifted her head to look at him, but the emotion in her eyes was painful. He didn't see them for long before she squeezed them shut again, and a new round of sobbing began.
That was his limit. He was a highly trained FBI agent who had, in the past, withstood physical torture at the hands of criminals that he had pursued, when things had gone badly – though nowhere near as horrible as what had been done to Jane by the CIA, of course – but the one thing in the world that could break him was seeing the woman in front of him cry. It was worse than anything else that could ever have been done to him.
Without further hesitation, he leaned forward, sitting up taller on his knees so that he could reach her better, and put his arms all the way around her tightly once again. In seconds, her face landed against his left shoulder, and he quickly felt her tears soaking his t-shirt. Her arms were slower to follow, but they also wrapped around him. He leaned forward, pulling her to him, and once again, he simply held onto her, rocking slightly. They remained this way for what felt to Kurt like a long time – far too long, of course, because any amount of time during which Jane was this distraught was far too long. The clock was behind him so he didn't know how long it had been, but it didn't matter. After all, he would have stayed there as long as it was necessary to calm her down.
Eventually she did stop crying, though she continued to hang onto him. Finally allowing himself to glance back over his shoulder at the clock, he saw that it was now 4:14 am.
Turning back around towards her, he leaned his left cheek against the side of her head so that he could speak into her left ear. "Hey," he said softly, "come back in my room and lay down." He felt her tense up then, and she shook her head. He couldn't figure out what exactly her hesitation was, so that he could counteract it, because surely it wasn't just the fact that it was his bedroom… Whatever the issue was, they were both exhausted and it was almost morning, so he decided that rather than spend time trying to convince her, he'd try something else.
"No? Are you sure?" he asked, and he felt her nod her head. "Okay," said soothingly. "Will you lie down on the couch?" He felt her sigh heavily against him, and he swore she pulled her arms a little bit tighter around his middle. Chuckling slightly, he tried again, wondering if she was afraid that he was going to get her to lay down and then go back to his room – as if he was going to leave her there by herself in this state. Of course not. "Let me rephrase that," he said with a smile. "If I lie down on the couch, will you join me?"
He waited, but she didn't reply, and after a minute he began to wonder if she was going to. In order to get himself onto the couch, he was going to have to let go of her, and he wasn't sure how that was going to go over, considering how tightly she was holding onto him just then. "Let's just try that, okay?" That was when he felt her nod slightly against his shoulder, and she picked her head up for the first time in a while, her eyes finally coming up to meet his.
It was a trick of the moonlight, maybe, but he swore that her eyes were greener in that moment than they had ever been before. She looked beautiful… beautiful and exhausted and… completely and utterly defeated. He couldn't help but smile at her sadly, reaching back to tuck a loose stand of hair behind her ear. "You're going to let me get up and lay down on the couch, right there, right?" he asked, pointing the just behind where she was sitting, trying to keep him tone light. Things had already been heavy enough.
She nodded her head just a little, and her mouth appeared the form the word "Yes," though he didn't hear any sound actually come out.
He leaned forward and gently kissed her forehead, letting his hands slowly fall from her arms and feeling her hands finally loosen from around him as well. He stood up slowly out of necessity, his knees aching from kneeling on the hard floor for so long, then lowered himself onto the couch beside her, scooted himself back and swung his legs up behind her carefully. Once he'd turned on his left side and moved back against the couch cushions behind him, he said, "Okay, scoot back here."
She turned and looked at him slowly over her left shoulder, almost as if she was set on a slow motion setting, but she didn't move any farther than that. Her face was now expressionless, empty, and once again, he felt his chest ache on her behalf. Pushing himself up to sit again, he moved closer to her once more.
"Jane, come on. You don't have to sleep. Just lay down. I'm not going to let anything or anyone hurt you." The look on her face became even more pained, and he knew what she was thinking – about the CIA – and that she still couldn't quite believe him. She probably wouldn't fully trust him for a very long time. He deserved it, he knew – her distrust – but it still stung.
Just do better from now on, he reminded himself. After all, there was nothing else he could do. He took a deep breath, trying to dislodge the uneasiness inside him.
He sat up all the way again, moving closer to her so that his hands could reach slowly around her waist, leaning forward so that her left shoulder leaned against his chest. As soon as he did, she turned and leaned against him, sighing with what he swore seemed like relief. He'd really expected her to be more stubborn about it, but he certainly wasn't going to complain.
Hoping that this was a good sign, he slowly moved himself back to the corner of the couch where he'd been laying, tugging her gently along with him. This time, she scooted herself willingly back, then laid down in front of him without a word when he did the same. His arms were wound around her securely, and to his surprise, she was actually letting herself lean back against him. She was still tense, he noticed, so even as the minutes ticked by without any sound from her, he could tell that she was still awake, despite the fact that he couldn't see her face. He didn't like that part at all – either one, actually – the tension, or the fact that he couldn't see her face.
"Jane," he whispered quietly. "Was it a nightmare?" Her head nodded yes, but she said nothing. "Do you want to talk about it?" This time he watched as the back of her head shook back and forth. No. "Okay," he said soothingly. Then, after a few minutes of perfect silence, during which he agonized over what he could do for her, he whispered, "Are you okay?"
She shifted then, moving slowly until she was almost on her back, looking at him over her right shoulder. "No," she whispered, her voice barely audible and her head shaking slowly.
"What can I do?" he asked, looking into her eyes and feeling an increasing sense of desperation. There had to be something he could do… he simply couldn't accept the idea that he couldn't help her. He'd stood by helplessly once before when he should have taken action, and she had suffered irreparable damage because of it. He would never let that happen again.
She shook her head with a pained expression, closed her eyes for a second, and then opened them again, looking at him as though she was searching for something. He'd noticed her doing that several times lately, come to think of it… From the look on her face, he guessed that tears were imminent again. "I don't know…" she told him slowly, "Just… this."
Smiling with relief, he nodded. "Anything," he said quietly, feeling his eyelids growing heavy as the long hours and the intense emotions finally caught up with him. He let his head rest against the pillow that lay beneath both of their heads, leaning his slightly forward so that his forehead pressed against her cheek. Her hair fell into his face, tickling his cheek, and as he breathed in slowly, he inhaled the scent of her shampoo. The last thing he remembered was pulling her closer as he surrendered to sleep for the third time that night.
Jane lay awake, still tense, long after she had watched Kurt fall asleep. Her nightmare had been indistinct – dark shapes, noises, whispers of Keaton's voice, the smell of the black site… nothing specific, just everything that she was afraid of all at once. There were other parts that she couldn't quite remember, too. Not that she wanted to…
Slowly, laying there beside Kurt, listening to his breathing, she finally began to relax. She'd sworn fiercely to herself that she was done trusting anyone else. That had been fine for a while, while she and the team had barely been speaking to each other, but now… clearly it wasn't going so well now. She couldn't explain it to herself – there was just something about Kurt, even after the mess they had both made of things, the horrible things they'd done to each other… Somehow she just couldn't let go of the nagging idea that just maybe, he was the exception to that rule that she'd made for herself, despite everything in their past… After all, they'd always been each other's exceptions before, for literally as long as she could remember.
The last time she looked at the clock, she thought to herself that she'd have to be getting up soon, but that didn't matter. Not really. What did matter to her was that by that point she'd almost made it through the rest of the night without another nightmare. That in itself was something of an accomplishment – one that she often failed at. As her eyes finally closed, despite her best efforts to stop them, the faintest trace of a smile appeared on her lips without her even realizing it. Turning back onto her side, she leaned back against Kurt. For once, there was one good thing about the strange reality that she called her life. Him.