#I'd need a full rewatch of blindspot to write more fic because I forget everything

[ladyriot]

This is the closest to humour I ever get. Snippet from a Blindspot fic, zapatterson, "Triboelectric" after the iconic elevator scene of course. Slightly suggestive.

~~

Tasha needs to learn to listen to her own damn advice. The leather couch in her apartment squeaks in protest as she throws herself down onto it, but she can't be bothered to care. Memories of her morning infect her brain instead. It's karma, really, how she'd pushed Patterson to move on and get back on the horse, then gets called into Reade's office only to hear that he's gotten engaged to Meg. 

Her chances have been swallowed up with the ring on Meg's finger. And it's only exactly what she deserves. She rejected Reade, when he kissed her all those years ago after the hospital. She doesn't get to take it back. Patterson's face had gone all… soft and concerned when she'd said that, told her "things change." Tasha had tried so hard not to spit the next words out, not at Patterson who could never deserve that; "and people get engaged." There's finality in that, at least the suggestion of permanence.

Her body is heavy and aching, like the air full of pressure before a storm. She wonders if that's what a body feels like when you refuse to let it feel all its feelings, hold back the tears and suck in breath after breath only never to exhale. How do you breathe again when you know you'll be alone forever, when the only person in years to want you, to think the two of you <em>just make sense</em>, finds somebody better, somebody not afraid of themselves, not too afraid of loss to commit to anything?

Her doorbell rings, startling her. But it's Patterson, with a six pack of Tasha's favourite beer.

"Thought you could use this," Patterson says, holding out the case. "I can stay or I can leave you alone, no offence taken."

"Stay," Tasha says. "Thanks for…" She takes the six pack in her hand. "Sit down, I'll get ice."

Patterson nods and goes. Tasha walks into the kitchen, fills a bowl with ice in contemplative silence and mindlessly sticks some beers in it to cool. She turns and opens her fridge, grabbing her last already cold beer to start with and wishes Patterson were just here to hang out, the morning's events having never happened, never led to her feeling so bitter.

Because, well, Tasha has never taken a more interesting elevator ride in her life. She'd stepped into the elevator of the FBI, greeted by the flustered nod of her friend as she got hit on by the scientist from upstairs. Patterson was delightfully pink, turning a shocked look over to Jack and revealing the tiniest sliver of a smile when he called her magnetic, stuttering out that the charge was actually triboelectric. Tasha had only grinned wider, both at Patterson's awkwardness and just… 

"Tribo," Patterson had explained, waving the errant dryer sheet as she spoke. "The greek term for rubbing"

And oh, Tasha knew and absolutely delighted in the humour of it. Tasha looked down so her laugh wouldn't be obvious in the space of the elevator. To her surprise, Patterson shrugged off the prospect of a date with just about the worst excuse Tasha had ever heard in all her life.

And now Tasha stands barefoot in her kitchen, thinking that talking about that elevator ride would be much more fun had it not ended in Reade's office with a ruined mood, if it didn't leave her in her apartment conjuring alternate endings to that moment before Reade's announcement, endings which would not end in her being upset, thoughts that spark little embers or like sparks on livewire in her stomach.

Tasha shakes it off, closing that box off in her head and marking it with a giant, red letter X. Patterson was, in her own way, incredibly vulnerable right now, untrusting of dating, of connecting. She'd come here as a friend. Tasha asjusts her shoulders and goes to meet Patterson in her living room, passing her the already cool beer while she pops open a lukewarm one and sticks a few ice cubes into it. Common decency or hostess code or something, not chivalry. Not… of course not. 

"Do you wanna talk about it?" Patterson asks carefully.

"What's there to talk about?" Tasha said. "I can't change it. And I don't even think I want to. I want him happy and he is. So." Tasha shrugs. "I'll be fine."

Patterson's face scrunches.  "You will be. Okay, I mean. You'll find someone else," Patterson insists. "I fully believe the right person's out there. Maybe it's just not now."

"Patterson," Tasha says as she raises an eyebrow and inclines her head. "You're the one who's magnetic. Me, not so much. No one's hitting on me in the elevator."

Patterson blushes. And then laughs. 

"Okay okay okay," she says. "Fine. But it's triboelectric. And I'm sure one day someone will hit on you in the elevator."

Tasha snorts through her nose. "Yeah, right."

Then she starts laughing. It just sounds so dirty.

"Stop laughing, no!" Patterson says. "You're worthy of love, you're attractive, funny, it'll happen if that's what you want. Whoever it is will be lucky."

"Thank you. But I'm not laughing because… but, triboelectric?" Tasha lifts an eyebrow suggestively.

Patterson blushes fiercely in response.

"I didn't think you'd fully get what I meant," Tasha leaps. "Did you...? When did you—wait, nevermind. I shouldn't ask that."

"I didn't say it was ever, you know, successful. The.. uh… anatomy has to match up."

"Oh, I know, Patterson," Tasha agrees. 

Patterson seems to stumble, her mouth not knowing what shape to move in. "I…"