Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The pain is startlingly, annoyingly bright for such a small injury, Harold thinks. Too bad he can't drift into his mental exercises. Unfortunately, though, the area is unsecured and John's lack of internal balance is considerable, so he has to be in the moment with excruciating, pinsharp focus. He deserves this outcome though. It is a kind of natural justice and he needs to suck it up, as Lionel Fusco might say. It is his fault after all. On so many levels. 

Harold is not by nature a superstitious man, but he certainly blames himself for not anticipating this. It had all been going too well. With John's CIA handler dead and taking his unhinged former colleague with him in one fiery blast, they had fewer enemies. The dead handler, Snow, was the perfect person to frame as the Man in the Suit, bringing that irritation, too, to a successful conclusion with just a few keystrokes. John was safe, and if Harold had a few nightmares about getting shot storming Rikers or choosing the wrong combination on the bomb vest that madwoman had strapped his partner into, it was only Harold's business and a small price to pay compared to the hell of bank robbery, explosion, imprisonment, beating, torture and psychological abuse John had endured. 

The reality was, thanks to excessive high speed hacking and Carter's iron nerve, John was cleared and a free man; and when it counted Harold had chosen the right number. The pain of getting up all those steps and the terror of facing a bomb after losing everything he loved to one before had barely registered compared to the overwhelming drive in him to save his best and only friend and he had done it. He, Harold, had rescued John. The pathetic, crippled little geek saved the day. 

He'd felt almost smug. Almost John’s equal. 

Pride goes before a fall of course and two successful Number cases that had followed their secret victory on the rooftop had further lulled him into dropping his guard. He had forgotten that nature abhors a vacuum. That a weeding out of the various powers in their little corner of the world would have the inevitable consequence of giving lower level thugs ideas. 

Then the Machine had started failing. Numbers given a little too late. Failure rate high. His own role the one comromised, while John remained exceptional. Exceptional but fighting a losing battle. 

Now he's basting in the fires of guilt for not examining the wider drifts and patterns enough. He took his eye off the big picture that was his job and traded what he was good at for the shortsighted, short-term wins, moving in John's sphere instead of his own; thinking his being in the field would make John safer. As though an expert operative like John could possibly need him when there is Shaw and Carter and Fusco. What was he thinking, flying onto a storm-drenched island like some film hero of a bygone age? What was he doing, engaging in that ridiculous road trip with Root, leaving John and Miss Shaw scrambling to catch up? Did he really think he could save John in any other way than as fingers on a keyboard? 

As soon as the Machine was back to full capacity and he had two capable, professional operatives and two assets in the field, he should have gone back to his lair because that's all he'll ever be. Fingers on a keyboard in the shadows alone. He's too broken to be or do or have anything else. But oh no. Because he's an idiot. All these years away from the relentless misery of educational establishments and it turns out he learned nothing: he's still replaying the same anguished adolescent mistakes of the pasty, awkward, flawed little nerd he is deep down. Still trying to fit in, to have friends, to be cool, to belong. 

He couldn't make real friends so he built one. How desperately sad is that? 

He was briefly happy as Nathan's shadow man and the Machine's programmer... creator... parent? Nathan dragged him to parties and opened windows and doors on life beyond his desk. The Machine gave him a purpose. And then it gave him Grace, who broadened his world with international art and wide dreams. But he lied to both of them, Nathan and Grace. Kept his core self hidden.

Bitterly, he thinks he really did make the Machine in his own image after trying so hard not to. A closed system that only spits out numbers, just a clue someone needs attention based on an enormous amount of data sifting and no useful human intuition. Like Father, like Daughter. 

He is a closed system. After so long, he doesn't know how to be any other way. He's not sure he has ever known how to fully be a person.

Except with John. 

John makes him feel like a person.

John is the exception to absolutely everything. Exceptional at being an outlier, at being unpredictably magnificent. Harold is a world-class genius, and an almost complete failure as a human being, but as a watcher of humans he is unparallelled so he knows, truly knows, John's rarity. John is indomitable, retaining his humanity and warmth and goodness in situations that would have crushed anyone else. 

So, if he's ruthlessly honest, the draw of fieldwork for Harold is not the adrenalin or the physicality. It's John. Just John. And today his selfish desire for that human connection almost got his only real friend killed. 

It's his fault they were captured. His inability to run and John's refusal to leave him. Eight numbers had come up: eight teen girls connected via the foster care system, preyed upon by a trafficking ring. They had eventually tracked the girls to the docks: locked in a container, they were due to be shipped out the following morning and Harold had panicked and started banging on containers. 

Stupid, stupid, stupid. 

Idiot.

He is an idiot. 

Men with guns appeared - of course they did - and even John couldn’t kill all of them and so he was pitchforked into his worst nightmare, being forced to watch John surrender to save his foolish life then watch John be tortured for the source of their information. 

It was a revoltingly claustrophobic experience. Two sweaty, unwashed masked men in a container, John and Harold tied to opposite chairs, the scent of blood everywhere in the muggy heat. One man was shorter and thickset, the other tall and oddly lopsided, one shoulder higher than the other. Their accents were Russian, their casual brutality betraying experience with violence.  Not necessarily with torture though.

“What do you think?” John murmured. “Knots aren't bad but these guys are a bit green.”

“Perhaps an olive branch to smooth things over?”

Baseline established: the safe codes a little obvious but a good check-in. 

Then the taller man smashed his fist into John's face once, twice, three times, so fast it was breathtaking, an explosion of violence and noise that slammed through Harold as though the blows had been meant for him. John spat blood, his eyes blank and hostile. “You will give us the source of your information.," the man demanded, raising his bloodied fist, and Harold cracked like an egg.

“The NYPD!” he choked out, improvising. 

“Liar!” The taller Russian backhanded him and he tasted blood in his mouth. His? John's? His neck was screaming with the pain of the sudden impact.

John said something soft in Russian that earned him more blows. When the punches stopped, he said it again, with a low laugh, and more violence rained down on him. It was clear to Harold that he was drawing their focus to himself on purpose. 

He had heard John hit and shot and stabbed through the earwig; even watched recordings of John resisting interrogation with varying degrees of torture and violence. Before, he had wanted to know what he was getting into… know who he was getting. After, he had felt it was somehow his duty to watch or listen, to bear witness, to be there for this man who was suffering in his name and for his cause. He had thought he could cope with this. But watching it in real time close up where he could potentially influence the outcome was not the same at all. Harold couldn’t walk away, do his breathing exercises and return, couldn’t stare at a picture in the library as a mental break. He had to watch, and this close he saw that John’s impassive face under interrogation was not impassive to him. He could read John’s minute tells. He was angry with himself and worried about Harold and digging in for lengthy self-sacrifice to spare Harold pain and that was the most awful thing. Sitting there wearing John’s blood spray on his glasses and being completely useless and helpless.

When they got their knives out, Harold was begging them to stop within moments, but John started whispering in Russian. When his interrogator leaned in, John smashed him with a head butt. After that, he ended up bathed in his own blood from dozens of gashes, while Harold used all his energy not to break and sob. Eventually, he failed. 

It turned out letting their captors know how deeply the two of them were connected was a grave error on Harold's part. They had dismissed Harold, seeing him as neither mastermind nor threat, and focused entirely on John, but when John wouldn’t break they switched tack with devastating effect. 

The stocky man untied one of Harold's hands - his left - and forced it out. The other gave John an ultimatum. 

“You do not seem to be taking us seriously. So here is what we will do. I will demonstrate on your little friend here the seriousness of your position. I am told there is a game popular among our young people: a truth or a dare. We will play this game, you and I. I desire a truth, but you choose a dare, so I dare you to break one of your friend's little fingers.”

“No.”

“Of course you will say that. But you see, if you do not, then I will break two of them. So, mister no name, which will you choose? One…or two…?”

Behind John’s work mask, the untouched agent, Harold could see the sick horror in his eyes. He doubted those men would realise. It was only that he knew John so well. He had to do something to make John play along to give Shaw, Carter and Fusco time to catch up with the trackers in their clothes. 

“If I’d known it was that kind of party, I’d have brought vodka and lime,'' he snarked to John,  his voice coming our surprisingly steady. He blessed his own lack of affect, the natural shield it gave him.

“ Lime, really?”

“My preference.” 

“You won’t be holding any drinks after this.”

“It's all right.”

“It isn't.” The taller Russian pointed his gun at John.

“Make up your mind.”

“Untie my hands,” John gritted out. Then John was rubbing at his wrists, stalling, gaining them precious seconds. 

“Get on with it.” The taller man gestured with the gun.

“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” John said then.

“Yes. Yes you will. But first, this. A little demonstration. A show of respect.”

John slid one hand gently under Harold's and the other Russian let go and stepped back.

“Choose a finger and snap it,” tall and crooked demanded. "He can sit there knowing it's your fault he can't play the piano or whatever and you can rethink your stubbornness." The relish in his voice revealed him as a sadist and Harold, not generally inclined toward violence, would have liked very much to punch his smug mouth, but right then his whole world was John. He was shocked by the tremors in John’s hand. Shocked by how cold his hands were. John’s breathing was wrong. Had they broken his ribs? Punctured a lung? 

"If you force me to continue, I am going to kill you both," John said quietly, conversationally, in a tone Harold knows will feature in his nightmares. "Alternatively, you can have the information." John was bluffing. Harold knew his friend would never give up the Machine. Knew, too, that John couldn't risk combat in close quarters in a container with uneven metal sides. It would undoubtedly result in damage or paralysis for Harold. He knew John would have calculated those odds. 

"As I said, one or two. Your choice. But not for much longer."

Carefully, Harold pressed down slightly on John's cradling hand with his ring finger. The best option as far as he was concerned, since it gave him a finger either side to strap it to while it healed, while leaving his index free. It would interfere only minimally with his coding. 

John was staring at him like a man looking through the gates of hell.

Then John shifted his grip and Harold felt him gathering his strength. He maintained their eye contact. 

Steady, John.

His own heart was pounding as John singled out the finger Harold had indicated. It looked stupidly tiny in his big, bloodied hand. He gave John a tiny nod and sucked in a lungful of air, planning to scream as loudly as he could manage in case Shaw and the Detectives were searching the location. 

Then the pain was… well, the pain was there and Harold screamed and screamed and screamed until the gun pointed at him with the command to shut up and then he just breathed through the pain as he always did. 

Moments later, a frenzy of barking sounded, the door to the container was wrenched open and Bear had the Russian’s gun hand in his mouth. Then John had the gun, then neither Russian had functioning kneecaps.

Their screams were even louder. 

+++

For years, John has had symphonies of voices screaming in his head. His own. Innocents’. Others’. 

He suspects from now on, there will only be one. 

+++

Harold wonders what dark thoughts are swirling in John’s brain. He is sitting on a low wall, watching the ambulance crew talking with Carter, and John is… John is all wrong.

“Looks like you got a problem, glasses,” Fusco drawls laconically. 

That obvious, then.

John has come nowhere near Harold since they were both untied. He dropped the gun and raised his hands after shooting the Russians, and Carter, taking in the situation at a glance, had tasked Fusco with dragging them away while she untied Harold and John got himself free. John had given him a searing check over, hollered for medical assistance in a voice Harold had never heard him use, then slipped away to check the perimeter before questioning the Russians. He returned from that with his hands bloodied and Harold decides he does not want to know.

Bear wouldn’t leave his side, despite John attempting to send him to Harold several times. In the end, he made it a sharp order and Bear slunk over, so John’s distress must have been acute. Harold can’t deny the comfort he finds in stroking Bear as the dog drops his heavy head in Harold's lap, but without him John looks painfully alone as Shaw finishes whatever she was talking about with Carter and gets up close and irritating to interrogate him. 

“Do we?” he responds absently to Fusco. Conversational filler, making time. Shaw’s body language is jagged. John’s is broken. Oh dear. 

Without warning, Shaw slugs John in the jaw. He makes no move to evade and her punch lands full-force. She strikes out again - a body blow. John absorbs it silently, straight on, giving her maximum soft target area. Harold can't even imagine how much effort it must take to override his trained reflexes like that. She squares up again, says something. John doesn't react. She downs him and is winding up for a vicious kick before Harold can fully find his voice. 

“Stop!” he manages, struggling up and limping forward.

He can hear his own pain and panic - the opposite of the calm he knows John will need - but it gets through even Shaw's thicker than average filters and she scuffs to a stop. 

“He hurt you,” she growls. 

“John did exactly what I asked of him. If you need to be angry, be angry with me, Miss Shaw.” 

Bear, who has been growling protectively by Harold’s side, now darts to the fallen John, taking a guarding stance and whining uncertainly, his head whipping between Harold, John and Miss Shaw.

“You are stressing Bear. He is not used to his people fighting.” 

John has already put a hand up to comfort the confused animal and now Shaw crouches to stroke him too, pointedly ignoring John who lies where he fell, making no effort to get up or make himself less vulnerable to renewed violence. A thin trail of blood meanders down his face. He does not wipe it or even seem to be aware of it. 

Harold feels heavy and tired and sad beyond measure. 

“Yes, Detective Fusco,” he murmurs. “It seems we do indeed have a problem.” 

“Yeah. Wonderboy's broken. What the hell happened in there? I thought he was Mr. Tough Guy.” 

“Everyone has their breaking point, Detective. It would appear that harming me in any way is his.” 

Fusco pales, his eyes widening. 

“Yeah, that'd do it,” he says vehemently. “Hell, that'd definitely do it.”

“What exactly are you implying, Detective?” Harold murmurs over Bear’s barking. 

“Oh, come on. Even you can’t be that dense. John's crazy about you. Heart on his sleeve nuts over you. You can't tell me you never figured that out. He lights up at your voice. You can practically see it from space!” 

“Detective, I really don’t think you should mistake gratitude for-”

“My God, you really didn’t know. Are you part Machine? I always wondered.”

“That's quite enough.” He’s flustered. Horribly so. It can’t be true, can it? 

“Fine, fine. My bad. You need anything else?”

“No thank you.” 

“I guess I'll see you around. I hope you, you know, fix this.” He gestures vaguely at John.

“I plan to.” 

His finger hurts, raw pain sparking like a live wire, and his whole body aches so much he feels as though too much movement will have him wailing like an infant, but he has an operative to salvage. An operative currently clinging to Bear like the last survivor of a shipwreck. 

He approaches John warily. 

Then there is a flurry of noise on the police radio. It appears John’s interrogation has borne fruit. They found the girls in a room in a nearby warehouse. Harold speeds up his approach. 

“Miss Shaw, I need you and Detective Fusco to accompany Detective Carter to see to those girls please. Then come and watch the outside of the library in case our shadowy friend returns, and John will apprehend the remaining perpetrators of all this.” Miss Shaw shoots him a surprised look, and John a filthy glare, but she goes, Fusco trailing after her. 

+++

John is alone with Harold. 

That doesn't feel right. 

He thought he had taught the reclusive genius a little more self-preservation than that. 

Of course, Harold is used to seeing him as his operative, not as a threat. 

That will change.

He would quite like to shoot himself in the head about now, but the Numbers are relentless and he has to finish this one before whatever is coming to him happens. 

John hasn't cried since Jessica died. He wants to now. 

He wishes Harold had just let them beat him to a pulp. It's what he's for and it would hurt so much less than this. 

Chapter Text

John is in a peculiar state: physically alert and highly responsive yet worryingly emotionally blank. 

“John. We need to go. Drive me back please.”

The operative hands Harold his gun. 

“Do you remember how to use it?”

“Yes. But I don’t want it! You’ll need it, John.” 

“Safety is off. Use it if you don't feel safe.”

“I'll be perfectly safe. I'll be with you.”

“That didn't work out so well for you last time, did it?” 

“Don't be ridiculous! Get in the car, Mr. Reese. I want to go home.” Harold puts the safety on the gun. He's handing it back, no arguments. 

“I hurt you.”

“Give me your hand,” Harold orders sharply. John holds out his left.

“Break it," he says.

“What? No! That's not what I - Red!” 

John takes hold of his fourth finger with his other hand. 

“No, John, stop! Red! I forbid it!” 

John freezes. 

“I forbid you to harm yourself. I do not want it. If you do it, against my expressed wishes, against my clear orders, you are doing it for yourself not for me. Ask me what I need, John.” That gets through. 

“What - what do you need?” 

“Tea. Warmth. Safety. Aftercare. Do you think you can give me those things, John?” 

“Yes.” 

“Then take this -” he slaps the gun into his friend's open hand “- and take me home.”

“Where, Finch? The Library?”

“Yes please. Then you can hunt down Mr. Walker and his associates and put a stop to this horrible trade in girls.” John holsters the gun.

“On it, Finch.” He has shut down. He says Finch, but Harold hears the Sir ghosting behind it. John needs that structure right now and Harold is not going to knock away one of the last props holding up his dear friend’s sanity, but they will need to have words later. 

John calls Bear and helps Harold into the front seat of the car. Harold allows him, though he would normally refuse the assistance on stubborn principle. The contact and concrete set of instructions seem to steady John. 

“We should stop by Megan’s clinic.”

“There’s nothing further she can do that the responders at the scene haven’t and I would rather not be subjected to further prodding and poking tonight.”

“All right.” 

“Thank you, John.” Harold does not miss the slight flinch his thanks provoke. This is worse than he thought. 

+++

Everything inside John is dark and cold, all the little lamps of hope and goodness and feeling turned down low. He had thought he would be able to be a different person. Harold made it feel possible for his life to mean something. But he hurt Harold. 

His hands have many memories. The sensation of snapping bone is not a new one. He has tortured and been tortured. But this is the worst thing his hands will ever do. 

Harold's hands heal and create magic. They are small and mighty, like Harold himself. Awake and asleep, John has dreams about those hands. And he hurt one of them. 

He cannot let himself think about it yet. About how he bit the hand that fed him. How he took Harold's hand in his and broke all that beauty and delicate strength with ugly force. How Harold carries the pain of his failure when it should be John’s to bear. 

He distracts himself by counting the digits of pi Harold taught him because if he lets his mind go there too soon he might start screaming like Harold screamed, and never stop. 

+++

By the time they reach the Library, Harold has gone beyond worried and into panicky. John is not present in any meaningful way. It's as though the body is still functioning perfectly as an operative with a set of mission parameters but the real John Reese Is curled in a ball somewhere deep down out of sight. 

He can't send John out like this. He's not sure what he'll do, or even if he'll be able to protect himself.

John takes care of everything perfectly: helping Harold out of the car, wiping it down, leaving the keys temptingly in the ignition, pulling his dark coat close to hide the bloodstains as they make their way inside without incident. He is more hypervigilant than usual, his reflexes on a hair trigger, but at the same time he’s sort of sleepwalking. 

He makes Harold comfortable, puts a blanket over his lap, brings him the perfect Sencha green tea, kneels at his feet to help Harold off with his shoes, brings him painkillers and water, his heat pads and his laptop. All without saying a single word. The silence is stifling. 

“What are you thinking, John?” 

John recites several digits of pi in a soft, dull tone.

“Ah. Trying not to think. I'm not sure that's helpful. We need to talk about this.”

“I'm sorry. I hurt you. I should be punished.” 

“I don't punish, John. And you had no choice.”

“I had choices.”

“Bad ones.”

“Yeah. But I did it. My hands.”

“Put your hands on the table, John.” John complies without hesitation, without asking what awaits him when he does. His gaze on Harold's is steady and sad. 

“You didn't ask me why, John.” 

John says nothing. His face doesn't change. 

Harold picks up the heavier of the hammers from his toolkit by the desk.

“If I told you I was planning to break every bone in these hands, what would you do?” 

“How close is Shaw to the library?” 

“Keeping watch across the street with Bear.”

John relaxes infinitesimally, anxiety decreasing, sadness increasing. That tells him things he is not ready to parse or he might break too, and he can't afford to. He hates a quick and dirty fix: they almost always have to be undone again before the real work can start. But they have no time. No time. No time. 

Harold raises the hammer. Lets John see the intensity he usually veils. 

“You didn't answer my question. What would you do?”

“Nothing, Finch.”

“Really, John?” Anger floods him. He needs a reaction - something, anything human. He needs to jolt him out of this zombielike state or he won't be safe to finish the Number. Harold knows John needs the closure but he doesn't want him slaughtering anyone, or walking into a hail of bullets. He has to bring him back, but it feels like slogging uphill in a blizzard and exhaustion and pain are making Harold sharper and more ruthless than usual. It is clear that on some level John feels he needs to be punished and he is stuck. Waiting. 

Harold hates Mark Snow and Kara Stanton with a hate so pure it's like rocket fuel. They are dead, but their ghosts linger like a bad smell. They can't keep John. He won't let them. John is his and Harold will erase their mark on him and stamp his own, whatever it takes. 

“Stay still then,” he snarls and brings the hammer crashing down. 

++++

John hurts with a pain that is entirely unfamiliar. More than just the fires of guilt, the wounds of the job or the slow, cold, downward-pulling ache of loneliness, this is new and sharp and frightening and has tilted him off balance. 

Finch had been so angry. 

He’s never seen that kind of rage in Finch before.

And here's the thing: these days, John lives to make Finch happy. All of his successes and failures are measured by the little cluster of crinkles at the corner of those all-seeing eyes, the brightening inflection of that calm, educated murmur in his ear, the crisply enunciated thank you.

He has made errors before. Disappointed Finch before. He runs Finch’s anger against the list he has been compiling in his head. Finch hates sloppiness, unnecessary violence, death, excessive flirtation, flippancy in the face of tragedy, dark humour, fatalism, firearms, collateral damage, exposure and mess. 

None of them explain Finch’s current cold rage. John’s soul still shivers with it somewhere deep and dark, below the pain of the blow that didn't land and the ache of the words that followed it. 

He expected broken bones. Was braced for it. He should have known better, of course. Harold never does what he expects. He is the one being John has met in his lifetime of analysing and observing who is truly unfathomable. Most people are predictable, their motivations and routines and schemes a code he can crack. He and Harold both have that ability. But John has tracked rogue agents with a lifetime's trained expertise in evasion and concealment who have seemed open books compared to Harold Finch. 

Harold was even angrier after smashing a deep divot in the desk an inch from John's thumb. It was a solid blow, the sound as loud as a gunshot. Harold had flinched. John hadn’t. 

“Why did you keep still?”

“Because you told me to.”

“Not good enough. Why, when I told you I was going to break you?”

“Because I'm yours to break.” 

John is still not sure what answer Finch was looking for, but in that moment, it was the answer John had and he was too tired not to say it aloud.

Finch had looked down at the impact mark on the table, then shocked the hell out of John. 

“I don't believe you.”

That made John flinch. That hurt. They had always had trust between them. Even in the tough times. Did Finch really think John would betray him? 

“You say you're mine but you still belong to Stanton. To Snow. As long as you look for abuse instead of care, you are theirs not mine. As long as you put yourself in stupid, needless danger, you are not treating yourself as mine. How dare you! How dare you break faith with me John. How dare you damage what's mine! If these hands were mine, you would take better care of them. If you were mine, you would do what I ask, not what their voices tell you.” 

“What do you ask?” he had said, bruised and baffled.

“That you finish this job and come home to me in one piece.”

“Yes, Harold.”

Chapter Text

Harold doesn't generally talk to the Machine these days, for a set of very complex reasons. Right now, however, there is no-one else for him to talk to but Root and that is not a conversation they will ever be having. Right now, Harold needs data. 

So…

“Can you hear me?”

> Yes.

“Do you understand comfort? What it means to comfort someone?” 

> Yes.

“Show me.” 

An image of his own face appears.

“No. Remove me from this. I am not asking about myself.”

Images: parents and children, a paramedic with an emergency blanket, service dogs, elderly people with their carers, the huddle of mourners at a funeral, a home cooked meal, co-workers sharing drinks, a sports coach bracing up a defeated-looking center forward, a folded flag, a mantel of sympathy cards, a hot drink steaming in a clenched hand.

“Good. So what is comfort?”

> Relief or support in mental distress or affliction; consolation, solace, soothing. (In later use sometimes expressing little more than the production of mental satisfaction and restfulness.)

“Oxford English Dictionary. Yes. That is the right meaning of the word. Now tell me, accessing all files, who comforts John Reese?”

No images are forthcoming.

“Did you understand the question?”

> Yes.

“Is your working complete?”

> Yes.

“I am not seeing any images.”

> Yes.

“Can you clarify in more detail?”

>No data to display. 

“What does that mean?”

> Insuficient data available based on parameters set. No-one comforts John Reese.

“I do not mean, right at this moment. Search the past few years for people who have comforted John Reese. 

> Insufficient data available. No-one comforts John Reese.

“Further back.”

Recording: Jessica and John lying in rumpled sheets glowing bright in the sunlight streaming through the window. 

Recording: Adults in black flanking a solemn, dark-haired boy at a graveside. 

“These people are dead. Is there no-one else?”

> Insufficient data available.

“What about the women he has dated?”

Images and recordings of beautiful women on John's arm, but John looks distant in all of them. 

> They do not comfort John Reese.

“Maybe I am asking the wrong questions. There has to be something. Ah - what gives comfort to John Reese?”

Images: morphine drip, whiskey bottle

“Stop! Eliminate drugs and alcohol.”

The search takes infinitesimally longer. Harold notices.

Image: John, heavily bandaged, curled in an almost foetal ball on the floor of a motel somewhere, his arms wrapped around Bear. 

> No further images. Limited data available on this topic.

Harold has always prided himself on his patience. Days and weeks and months and years of coding have a way of instilling the quality even if it isn't innate. He rarely raises his voice to the Machine. But today he is scraped raw. 

“There has to be someone! Something! Why is there nothing? Where is the rest?”

> Results redacted. 

“Redacted? By whom?”

> Admin.

“I am Admin!” 

> Yes.

Recording of Admin: Remove me from this. I am not asking about myself.

“All right. Show me the results without redaction. From our first meeting.”

A storm of images and recordings cascade onto the screen. 

“Slow down. Find me moments that created optimal comfort for John Reese. Sort the data, if you can.”

> Touch

Harold’s world changes as the monitor slideshows what seems like every casual touch he has ever given John (too few for so many years).

> Words 

“I selected you.”

“You are good at this.”

“Good job, Mr. Reese.”

“Well done.”

“I trust you.”

And so many more, his voice overlapping on itself, thanking John, admonishing him to care for himself, joking and teasing. Stripped of context, he can hear the warmth and affection in it. 

“Enough. Next please?” 

> Proximity

“It's not over, John. I'm close.”

“I'm not leaving you here, John.”

“Hold on.” 

“I’ll stay.”

“Stay if you like.”

A set of recordings of John's tiny, sly smiles from ‘his’ chair in the library. Harold had not realised the place was a source of comfort. 

But then, he realises it isn't, or that would have come up already. It must be something he is doing then. But he is not doing anything beyond what he generally does: coding, reading, researching… all dull. And yet all somehow responsible for that smile. 

> Care

Another montage: his hands bandaging, stitching, cleaning wounds. Him upending a bag of money on a gurney and demanding John's treatment in exchange. Meals in restaurants, takeaway food, new clothing. 

> Gifts

The suits, with Finch's extra tailoring that he blushes to think of. Guns and equipment purchases to keep John safer. The key to John’s loft apartment. Money. Safe houses. Identities. Cards.  

> Comfort objects with your scent

A scarf of his own that he put on John on a cold day in exasperation at his disregard for his own wellbeing - the image freezes on John in his loft, what looks like hours later, holding it to his face, breathing in. 

A different image from John’s loft. The cameras John doesn't know about track him, as he steps into the blind spots of the cameras he does know about and reaches for a bag of old shoes and clothes Harold recognises. He'd given them to John to burn. It’s clear he disobeyed. He raises an old shirt of Harold's to his cheek and closes his eyes.

Comfort objects.

“What does John do to comfort himself?”

> No data

Wrong question again, then, Harold sighs internally, feeling all of his aches but committed to his research. The Machine can’t get everything right. It's probable it can’t interpret what it’s seeing. His restless brain seeks another option, pushing through the fog of tiredness and trauma because this matters too much to leave ‘til the morning and he's not sure when John will be back.

Harold overlays the timelines of their victories and defeats with the numbers over the Machine's archived footage of John. He is looking for the worst moments and how John comforts himself in the aftermath, hoping for clues. He removes all filters, bracing himself for alcohol or sex or rituals of self-comfort. What he finds leaves him horrified.

There is a pattern. Oh yes. It's unmistakable. The Machine was right to not understand the question and Harold was wrong. He has been wrong for a really long time. 

With shaking hands, he launches another search. What does John do to celebrate?

The results are shattering. 

When a Number goes well, John stays near Harold afterwards. He lets his injuries be known and patched up. He smiles and banters, he invites Finch for food, he brings treats to the library, he gives Finch little gifts - books and pastries. If he has to go home, he cooks for himself. He makes one Sencha green tea and one coffee but only drinks the coffee. He showers in hot water for a long time and then reads or watches TV. He sleeps naked, and before getting into bed he takes the scarf from its hiding place and wraps it around his neck, tucking in the ends. Sometimes he takes out a shirt from the bag of hidden clothing - Harold’s clothing - and lays it on the sofa next to him, or on the bed, hidden in the folds of a blanket. He calls for a last conversation, his voice a gentle, whispering warmth in Harold’s ear. 

When a number goes badly, John does not linger. As soon as he is sure Harold is OK and he still has a job, he dismisses himself. He goes straight home, lights a single candle (Harold is not sure why), has a cold shower (no steam rises, no condensation clouds the stall), roughly field dresses injuries he has clearly hidden, eats an MRE standing up, then lies down on the floor to sleep, without calling. The routine never varies. There is only one possible explanation. He is punishing himself. 

Nothing that would impair him, nothing that would put him out of communication or out of commission or make him less useful to Harold or to the numbers, but he deliberately robs himself of things that he deems pleasant: warmth, good food, softness, company, care. Finch himself, as though Harold is some kind of pleasure or luxury in John’s life and oh, that's… well, that's something. 

One more search. Like poking at a wound, Harold has to know. 

“What makes John Reese happy?”

> Best advice reference here: 

Happy Paws Rehoming: Settling Your Rescue Dog

“Now is not the best time to develop a sense of humour.”

> Best advice reference here: 

Happy Paws Rehoming: Settling Your Rescue Dog

“I know I taught you the difference between people and their pets.”

> Recording of Primary Asset John Reese: “Me? I’m his guard dog. Woof!”

“He was joking. This data is irrelevant.”

> Recording of Samantha Groves speaking with Primary Asset John Reese: 

“Awww, poor sad helper monkey. Are you jealous of Bear?”

“That would be ridiculous.”

“Not a no then? Awww, it’s all right, Daddy loves you too…”

Vocal stress patterns of Primary Asset John Reese indicate deceit. 

“I beg your pardon. What are you suggesting?”

> Food, water, shelter, a bed, walks, play and familiar smells and “Good boy” words all make Bear and John Reese happy. Bear’s overall happiness is greater. He eats better, sleeps better, displays play behaviours and contentment markers more often and takes evasive action to avoid injury more consistently. Bear has a collar with your name to join him to you, and your hands touch him. He sleeps in your home, in your bed. For John Reese to be happier he needs a collar and your hands on his fur too and to sleep close not far. He does not know he belongs to you. People need to belong to someone. 

“It’s not the same! Bear is a dog. John is a man! An independent, competent man.”

> Recording of Primary Asset John Reese: “I was lost….someone found me.”

> Recording of Primary Asset John Reese: “I needed a purpose.”

> Recording of Primary Asset John Reese: “I’m pretty sure I’d be dead already if you hadn’t found me.” 

“The work saved him. He doesn’t need me.”

> Recording of Primary Asset John Reese: “I’m not doing this anymore. I’m not going anywhere until you give me a way to find him. If I’m supposed to keep saving people like this idiot, I want something in return. Otherwise I’m done…. Do the math and figure out a way to bend your rules. ‘Cause he’s my friend. He saved my life. Understand? And I won’t do this without him.”   

The anguished resolve on John's recorded face tears at Harold's heart. 

“When was this? Was it when I was taken?”

> Yes. Primary Asset John Reese called it negotiation. He negotiated for your comfort. He said you were necessary. Now I negotiate for his comfort. He is necessary too. 

“Yes. Yes he is.”  

Chapter Text

John's ears are ringing. Not a good sign. He feels a little lightheaded. Four guys kneecapped, a couple to go, Fusco ten minutes out. The guy in front of him swings a two by four and John does not bother to duck. The impact thuds reassuringly against his body armour, the pain grounding him. He fells his attacker with a roundhouse punch then he sees what he was defending. 

The warehouse is rigged to blow. 

1:07. Just over a minute.

Bullets spit concrete chips at his face and he slides behind a pillar. The shooter either has a deathwish or doesn’t know about the timer. John is sure he should do something with that information but it is difficult to think. 

Choices. 

“This place is about to blow!” He calls out. “I’d run if I were you!” 

Frantic writhing and screams from the men on the floor. The gunfire dies away and there is the sound of feet pounding.

For a split second, John thinks about not running. From the C4 on the pillars, the explosion will be massive so it would be a quick death and preferable to bringing another comprehensive failure to Finch so soon. He hesitates. But Finch’s last orders echo in his ears. Come home. 

If he's going to die, he wants to see Finch one more time first. Even angry Finch is better than the hollow nothing of everything else. 

He sprints. 

+++

Harold watches the satellite footage of the warehouse, hunched in a sick clench of worry that will see him needing more pain pills soon. Pills he can’t take and still be alert enough to help John settle, so he forces himself to straighten, to stretch, to refresh his heated pads.

Shaw, Carter and Fusco have the girls safely evacuated and NYPD have done a sweep of all the containers and warehouses at the location. Shaw is back outside the Library now, Fusco headed to John’s location and Carter back at the precinct. His communication to John is open and reveals a truly worrying amount of gunfire. 

He crosses to pour himself a glass of water, then returns slowly to the computer. Just as he is preparing to sit, John calls out to someone to run. Harold's adrenalin spikes. He drops jarringly into the chair, catching his broken finger on the keyboard and biting back a curse as his fingers scramble to zoom in.

John turns off his earwig. Before he can turn it back on, the warehouse is gone in a billowing cloud of smoke and dust. The horror freezes him for a few seconds, then he's activating the earwig again.

“Mr. Reese? Mr. Reese? Are you all right?”

John's breathing is harsh. 

“I got out.” John's voice is an audible cringe, soaked in shame. “I'm… I'm the only one who did. They're all dead Harold. I'm sorry.”

Oh dear.

+++

“Did you kill them on purpose, Mr. Reese?”

John debates which answer will be worse: is he disobedient or incompetent? It's not much of a choice. Since this is likely the endgame now, he goes with honesty. 

“No. I wanted to but I didn't. Kneecaps only. But the place was rigged to blow. I didn't see it in time.”

“Are you injured?”

“Nothing major.” 

“Come home. Now. That's an order. ” 

“On it, Finch.”

He slings his aching body into the hotwired sedan and makes for the library. He’ll leave it several blocks away, wiped down and reported. 

“Hey,” Shaw says, breaking into the Harold-less silence. “I've got Bear tonight. And some shiny new toys ready for the next number. Please tell me the suit thing is optional, John. It’s you but it’s not me.”

John breathes through the pain, keeps his voice low and level. 

“That would be up to Harold.”

“Anyway, looks like you're benched. He's got me on some guy way too interested in the building two doors up from the library. No other numbers. Later!”

He strips all emotion from his tone. She won't really miss him. She lacks that basic capacity, he thinks, though time with Harold will change that. It did for him.

“Bye Shaw. Have fun.”

Harold's voice breaks in.

“Mr. Reese, are you on your way?”

“Almost there, Finch.” Higher than usual amount of check-ins. The reminder of lost trust hurts. 

John breathes. 

I’m trying, he wants to say. I’m trying so hard. He doesn't. 

The battlefields of Europe are littered with the bones of men who tried hard, Snow’s voice lectures. 

Harold was right. John belongs to Snow. He has always belonged to Snow. Out there, in the darkness, is where he belongs. He should have been the centre of that fireball, his atoms scattered on the wind. 

When he gets to the library and Harold draws a gun on him, he is not surprised. Just sad. 

+++  

Harold wills his hand not to shake as he holds the gun. He reminds himself over and over that it's safe. He checked and double-checked. But he’s still nervous. 

John puts his own guns and knIves on the table, his disarming slow and steady, his voice low and level. 

“I thought you didn’t like guns, Finch?”

John approaches carefully. Stands a few feet from Harold, just on the edge of the pool of light shed by his desk lamp. 

“I thought you told me that if someone has to have them you’d rather it was us.” He tries to sound the kind of casual John sounds. 

“Me, not you. You shouldn’t have to get your hands dirty. Can you even fire that thing?” 

Anger flares in Harold. Anger at his own weakness, his own cowardice, hiding behind John’s competence, letting John take all the risks, using him as a human shield. The epitome of privilege, his not liking guns. As if John has ever had the opportunity to not like anything. “If you mess it up, you'll hate yourself,” John adds. “Why not Shaw?”

“Miss Shaw is busy.”

“Finch… You can just order me to do it. I promise I will. You’re a good man. I don’t want you to have nightmares. I know I failed you back there, again, but I won't fail you now.”

“You didn't fail me John! You did what I asked of you!” 

“Then give me the gun, Finch. Trust me just one last time. Please.” John’s eyes are wet and pleading and that’s what does it. If John is so desperate to stay awake and protect him as some sort of restitution, who is he to deny him? He certainly hates the thought that John might think there is no longer trust between them. He hands the gun over. It looks tiny in John’s larger hand, like a toy. 

“Shall I do it here?”

“Yes please.” Harold doesn't think he has the energy to relocate again before morning. 

“You might want to shut your eyes.”

“No thank you. I don’t plan on doing that for a while.” 

John side steps clear of the rug and kneels on the bare boards. Before Harold can ask what he’s doing, he puts the muzzle of the gun to his temple. His eyes meet Harold's. 

“It’s been an honour to serve you, Harold. Thank you.”

Click. 

“Red!” Harold screams, flinging himself at John, fingers scrabbling at his hand. “No! Bad! Red! Stop! Stop it! Stop it! Red!” They fall, Harold pinning John to the floor, both hands battering the hand holding the gun against the wood of the floor with all the strength he has, his broken finger shrieking in agony.

Of course, someone like Harold could never actually overpower someone like John. John lets go.

The gun clatters away. 

“John, John, Oh my God, John, what were you thinking?”

There is a sudden stillness, John lying limp and unresisting beneath his weight. Harold becomes excruciatingly aware that he is straddling John. That in his blind terror he has scratched red grooves in John’s wrist and hand and one of them is bleeding. That his whole weight is on John and he is humiliatingly close to tears. That even though he had unloaded the gun himself, scared to set it off accidentally, seeing the barrel against John's temple had pushed all of his crazy buttons, as Root would put it. 

John slow blinks at Harold like he is waking up from something. 

“Clearly not on the same page here, Finch.”

“Seriously, what were you thinking?” he demands, like a stuck record.

“That you called me here to be retired. Figured I know too much now for you to just let me walk away and I wouldn’t want to anyway. Wouldn't want to live in a world without you.”

“Retired?”

“It's how the Agency -”

“I am not the fucking Agency, John!” Harold snarls. “I am not going to throw you away! ”

“So I still get to work the Numbers?”

“Yes!”

“With you?”

“Of course!”

And then Harold’s tears come in a rush and his strength gives out at the same moment and he collapses and John is cradling him, hushing him, holding him through ugly, tearing sobs that hurt him all over. He never cries. He never cries because, with his injuries, even the act of crying hurts. 

His hand hurts. 

His body hurts.

The world is too complicated. 

People are too complicated. 

He is a nerd who struggled to even keep a houseplant alive in college. Who is he to think he can do the same for a dog, let alone a man as precious and complex as John Reese? But as is so often the case, he does it because there is no-one else. 

No-one comforts John Reese.

No-one has comforted Harold either. Not for a really long time. John's big body cradles him. John seems to know exactly how to hold him to minimise his pain. 

“Will you let me help you up?” he asks when the storm subsides a little. 

“Yes, thank you, John.” He’ll accept anything John offers right now, even if his pride crawls to be assisted and he feels sticky and sore and stupid. If his disgusting weakness tethers John to him and stops him from losing him to the darkness, he’ll trade on it. Leverage it. Be needy even. He would crawl on his knees for John, this is nothing. 

John settles Harold carefully on the sofa, his touch impossibly gentle. 

“You hurt your hand again. Will you let me help with it?”

“Of course, John. Thank you.” 

John goes for the first aid kit and Harold sinks into his thoughts. He feels guilty over how good it felt, just now, to be held. He has come across the term touch-starved before, but never thought to apply it to himself. No-one has really touched him since Nahan and Grace. It seems his own sources of comfort are as dead as John's are. What a pair we make. It is easier to think of that than to think that John drove himself here, parked the car, wiped it down, reported it stolen, walked in and disarmed himself ready to be put down like a dog. 

A light touch on his shoulder just then makes him startle violently, and John is backing away, hands raised as if Harold is still armed. His face is tormented. 

“I'm sorry, Finch.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, John. I was miles away.” 

“You're afraid of me now.”

“No,” he protests. Then, more firmly, “ No .” I'm afraid for you , he wants to say, but can't. “I'm jumping at shadows because I was just at gunpoint again and I've been abducted a few too many times. Being close to you is about the only thing that makes me feel safe at the moment. So I'm hoping you’ll consider staying, but it is your choice of course.” 

“Whatever you need, Finch. Anything.” 

“I asked Miss Shaw to cover the numbers. I’m sorry if you’d rather be out there instead but I don’t want anyone else close to me at the moment.”

“Just me?”

“Just you. You can say no John. Your employment contract never extended to babysitter. Not for me.” He hears the heavy self-disgust in his own voice but is too tired to mask it. 

“Anything you want, Finch. It's always gonna be yes.” 

“Then stay.”

+++

“Stay,” Harold says. 

As though that's a perfectly normal thing to say to the dark and deadly creature John is. Then he smiles that small, hopeful smile John thought he would never see again and starts unwinding the bandage on his finger, humming a little to himself, as though he hasn't just turned John inside out. 

He wonders if somewhere along the line he picked up a head injury because none of this makes any kind of sense. He screwed up worse today than he has in a really long time. Not since the bank vault and Kara. Yet Harold is rewarding him in the best way, with the thing he wants so much he'd crawl over broken glass for it. 

“Please?” He adds, as though worried about a lack of manners. 

“I'll stay.” 

“Will you sort this out for me too, please?” Harold says then and places his hand in John’s.

John can't breathe. He stares at Harold’s hand, the hand he wounded, laying trustingly in his, its slight weight a sweetness nothing in his life has prepared him for.

“You’ll let me do that? After -”

“You may not trust me at the moment, Mr. Reese, but I trust you.” 

“I trust you!” John bursts out. Of course he trusts Harold. 

“Hardly. You thought, after everything we’ve - all you’ve - you thought I would just order you to shoot yourself in the head. That hurts, John. Do you really think I care for you so little?”

“I hurt you. I should be punished.”

“Did I safeword?” 

John freezes. 

“Just now, I said red and you stopped. Right away, you stopped. But before - in that place - did I safeword, John? Did I?” Harold persists. “We established those codes for a reason, John. I gave you green, and I never rescinded it. Did I? I want you to answer me, right now, out loud. Did. I. Safeword?”

“No.”

“You follow my orders all the time, John. In high risk situations. At least some of those times, you have known following them would result in me being harmed. Possibly even killed. This was no different. You did what I asked of you, even though it was extraordinarily difficult and it caused you pain… you did what I asked of you and you did it well.” 

John makes an incoherent sound of protest. 

“I’m sorry I got us captured John. Sorry you got so hurt today. Now, patch me up and let me look at those nasty cuts of yours and we’ll call it even.”

Carefully, tenderly, John unwraps Harold’s broken finger, his every movement controlled and slow. It's hurting quite a bit again after his panicky scrabbling and John sucks in a breath. 

“I need to check you haven't -”

“I know. It's all right, John.”

“It will hurt.”

“I hurt all the time, John. Every day. This isn't even the worst pain I'm feeling right now.”

John makes a small, wounded noise Harold is almost certain is entirely involuntary. Carefully, John's fingers manipulate his into position and begin re-wrapping. Harold feels the first teardrop land and ignores it, but pretty soon his hands are slicked with wet and John is trembling minutely. 

“Sorry Harold,” he whispers. “Sorry. Sorry.” 

“You don't have anything to be sorry for,” Harold tells him gently. “I wish you would believe me. You did well today. You got us out of there alive with minimal damage after I made an error that put us both in danger and this is me thanking you for a good job.”

This time, it's a tiny cry. A sad little thread of sound that makes Harold want to weep for John's big, bruised heart. But that would not send the correct message right now. 

John is shaking his head. He sets the first aid supplies to one side, then folds his big body down, down, down until his forehead rests on Harold's shoes. 

Shocked, Harold is frozen for a moment, but that's no good. John needs comfort in his life, and all he has is Harold.

Harold has studied abusive relationships extensively when working the Numbers, in an attempt to comprehend why some Numbers reappear again and again. Isolating the partner from other friends, putting them in harm's way, controlling funds, providing everything, requiring secrecy: it’s all in the abusers’ playbook. Harold knows he is a man capable of beautiful and terrible things. He has always known it. But surely this must rank among the worst of his crimes: to so damage and manipulate a man like John Reese that he would pay this kind of homage in extremis. The CIA may have started the process, but Harold has continued it, hasn’t he? Has basked in the undeniable thrill of John’s incredible skill and power and magnetism leashed by his hand. 

The realisation sickens him, but even that is selfish: thinking about how this revelation impacts his own understanding of himself and his actions when his entire focus should be John. John, who he has so starved of comfort that a broken thing like Harold becomes desirable as a substitute. The orphaned monkey clinging to the wire frame. 

His helper monkey. Harold hates Miss Groves sometimes. He thought she had been mocking them but it had been a warning. 

It's a tightrope to walk now. He has placed himself above scrutiny, above the law, so he must be his own scrutiny. His own law. Tomorrow, he will begun undoing the web he has woven around John. Tonight, within very careful limits, he will meet this need his mishandling has created. He does not deserve the pleasure and joy it will bring him to do so, but he will allow himself to feel it. A man as perceptive as John will not be comforted by anything less than sincerity and Harold's full participation. But need is not consent. 

And he will allow himself to feel it because this solution, the only one viable in the moment, is also the one that carries the cruelest punishment for Harold's sins. For the rest of his life, instead of wondering and dreaming, he will know absolutely and in scalding detail what he can never have. Almost sufficient anguish for absolution.

Choice made, Harold carefully bends over John, pushing through the pain in his battered body and daring to lay his uninjured hand on his head. John shudders, leaning in, and Harold’s hands start sifting through the soft stands of his hair in a repeating caress he hopes will be soothing as John's whole body trembles with those near silent sobs of his that have Harold yet again longing to dismember whoever brutalised him so far that he does not even cry out loud. Perhaps he should take a leaf out of Miss Stanton’s book: he could always strap a bomb vest to himself and accompany them to Hell in a fireball.

Chapter Text

When John’s tears finally subside, Harold coaxes him up from the floor and he rises, blurry and compliant, his wet eyelashes splayed like dark stars. Harold takes his hand and leads him into their makeshift infirmary; seats him on the bed; relieves him of the bloodstained, smoke-smelling jacket, shirt, trousers and vest in slow moves; runs his hands gently over all that coiled muscle, stroking and soothing; lays his hand carefully, solidly on the back of John's neck, caring and claiming.

“Let me take care of you? You matter, John.” 

“Yes, Harold.”

“If you want me to stop anything, you have your words. If you are too deep to find words, a double tap or double click will have the same effect. I need to hear you repeat that aloud, please, John.”

“If I want to stop it's red. Slow down is amber. Double click or double tap works too. Got it.” 

“Thank you John.” 

He lets John lean in and rest his weary head in the join between his neck and shoulder. He rocks him gently a moment and sings him an old lullaby, soft and low, soothing John through his tears and tremors, cradling the back of his head. 

When John is calmer, he pours him a glass of water and hands him two Tylenol. While John takes them, he brings warm water and antibacterial wash in a bowl and the softest cloth they have and tends him carefully, wiping away blood and dirt and sweat and cleaning his wounds with the most delicate touch he can manage while the water turns pink then red. He changes it twice, wrapping John in a clean, warmed towel while he steps out to refresh the water.

Gradually, he feels John's heartbeat slow, his breathing even out, his muscles relax, under the ministrations of Harold's hands, one injured and one whole. He watches his skin glisten, golden in the lamplight. He carefully glues the deepest gashes, then adds ointment and careful bandaging, as though he can wrap John in his love and care like armour. 

Lastly, he turns to the injury he caused the most directly. The marks of his nails are livid on John’s wrist. Two of them are raw furrows where he broke the skin. A breathy noise of distress slips past his careful guard on his lips.

“It’s all right, Harold.” 

“It isn't. I knew the gun wasn’t loaded. I just panicked.” 

“These mean you care if I live. That’s not a bad thing Harold.”

“But hurting you is.” He tends each scrape extra carefully, then puts a clean bandage over the area. 

When he is finished, he coaxes John to lie down on the bed. Lays a gentle hand against his cheek. Heartbreakingly, John turns his face into it, burrowing his nose and forehead into Harold's palm. He smooths a careful thumb over one dark eyebrow, the tenderness he usually keeps under lock and key pouring out in a warm syrupy flood through his foolish mouth. 

“You are so tired, aren't you, my beautiful John? Look at you. You’re so lovely. You did so well today, worked so hard, made so many difficult choices to keep us alive. You saved those girls. Those awful men hurt you and you were so brave. Let me take care of you. Let me soothe you, my good man. My dearest friend. What will help? Are you hungry, John? I can get you something to eat while you rest.”

“I could eat.” John's voice is soft and sleepy and when Harold touches his hand, John curls his bigger hand inward and interlocks their fingers in a wordless plea.

“Do you want me to stay close, tonight? To carry on taking care of you, John?”

“Please. But only if you - if -”

“Hush, I want to. It’s a privilege. An honour. Rest now. You’re safe.”

Harold orders a buffet selection of simple finger foods, typing with his phone precariously balanced in his injured hand, and when it arrives they eat with John propped up on pillows and Harold propped next to him, filling his plate and gently feeding him all the things he knows are John’s favourites and passing him a beer in between mouthfuls until his chewing slows and his eyes start drifting shut. 

“You need to get some sleep, John. Shall I go, or do you want me to stay with you? Either answer is fine. You can’t be wrong.” 

“Stay.” It's the smallest whisper but Harold hears it. “Stay. Please.” 

Arranging his support pillows takes some doing, and he is still uncomfortably fully clothed, but John is curled sweet and warm and trustingly lax in the curve of his arm and Harold doesn’t care if his spine hates him in the morning, he is not disturbing this . The agony will be a blessing compared to the pain of the separation he will have to initiate to rectify this situation, so he will not waste the only hours of bliss he will ever get in sleeping. 

Harold lies there, curved protectively around John, his aching body and aching arousal only rivalled by his aching heart. 

+++

Gradually, John surfaces from a delirious dream of Harold and stretches slightly, feeling the sting and pull of healing injuries. No change there, on either count. His mind is slightly more sluggish than usual, but he is warm, safe and in the library, so -

in the library! - 

in the library and - 

not alone.

“Good morning, Mr. Reese. How are you feeling?” 

“Good morning, Harold.” His memories download in a high speed dump, and they are memories, not concussion or blood loss delirium or a fever dream. 

He is in bed with Harold. 

He is in bed with Harold. 

He cannot answer the second part of the question for several minutes. 

“I feel… better,” he manages after several gulps of air. He turns and finds himself face to face with Harold Finch on the neighbouring pillow, realising as he does so that he is partially lying on Harold's arm. “Your hand -”

“-is fine. Don’t worry about me.” Harold seems upset though. John takes a guilty moment to soak up the physical sensations of all the places where their bodies touch. A part of him wants to wriggle in disbelieving bliss, but the greater part - the Agent, not the little boy on Christmas morning - knows something’s off.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. “For taking care of me.” The next part is harder but needs to be said. “I know I wasn't quite how you… might have expected me to be after… that. I'm sorry if I… if how I was… took too much from you… things you didn't want to give.” 

Harold's face softens. 

“Everything I gave was given freely, John, I promise. I didn't do anything I didn't want.” 

“Are you…” Are you going to send me away now? He can't force his voice to say the words in case the answer is yes. His life has been a series of increasingly unpleasant surprises until Harold, so he does not have a lot of faith in things working out well for him. “Did I ruin anything?” 

“No, John. No. You were good. You were perfect.” And Harold’s hand is stroking his cheek. Harold’s is touching him. Harold is looking at him as if he is precious and it's all too much and he can feel himself untethering. 

Then the phone rings and it's there on both their faces: New Number. Oh, thank goodness.

+++

They don’t talk about it. Out in the field with Harold in his ear, John saves a plucky whistleblowing employee from a corrupt and abusive boss with the help of his surprisingly astute second in command who can also helpfully shoot straight. Meanwhile, Shaw uncovers a drug smuggling ring and delivers the key players to Fusco. 

That evening, John thinks about going to the Library, but Finch tells him he'll be out of town for a couple of days and that's… well, Harold does disappear from time to time. Harold reassures him no-one is in danger and he just has cover identity chores. They still talk off and on, because they do that, but neither of them mentions That Night. 

John reads. Shakespeare. Something he would have laughed at himself for in his army days, something Kara would definitely have mocked, but Harold had not even arched an eyebrow and John loves that Harold sees him as a man who might read Shakespeare for pleasure. Loves that he can sometimes be that, with Harold. John feels like he understands it so much better now. That he finally sees the appeal of such acute observation and beautiful rendering of human nature in words.

Later in the shower, John peels Harold’s bandages off his wrist. Smiles a little at the memory of Harold’s upset. Kara used to mark him up constantly. Once, bored on a stakeout, they played tic tac toe on his bare thigh with a knife. Not that he was ever in a position to object. He’d laughed, carving his own lines just as deeply, letting the blood well up, knowing he dared not show her an ounce of weakness or she would use it to claw him open. 

By contrast, Harold’s well-tended marks are already fading. John dislikes that. While the tic tac toe healed without leaving a trace (one of the few injuries he was determined would heal perfectly), Kara left plenty of other marks on his body that he never chose. He resents that he carries nothing of Harold's. He supposes all of the scars from working the Numbers are Harold’s in a way, but none as viscerally direct. Now he has this. 

He digs his nails into the healing scabs and watches them peel away, his blood bright against the pale tiles, and remembers Harold’s desperation to disarm him. To save him, even from himself. That is a memory he wants to keep, a mark that matters.

+++

From his latest safe house, Harold digs into Sarah Williams with everything he has. 

The bandage on his healing finger is getting grimy but he makes no move to freshen it. 

Mail arrives for him. A pamphlet. 

Happy Paws Rehoming: Settling Your Rescue Dog

He shreds it.

John’s bloodied shirt is in his luggage. He cannot admit why, even to himself. 

+++

John spends every day feeling like he’s pretending to take a Sunday stroll through an active minefield. He reminds himself that Harold is a very private person and he mustn’t be needy, or greedy. It’s hard. Now that he’s knelt for Harold, he wants to do it again. 

Hope gets harder as the days pass. Controlling his voice and keeping things light between them is harder too. John is waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Shaw tasks him with ordering a new collar for Bear and he falls down a rabbit hole for hours. When he places a phone order for the custom piece with a leather worker they have used before, it takes him a minute to realise he can't read back the inscription detail he copied from Bear’s existing, broken collar because he’s crying too hard. He scrubs his eyes roughly and manages to croak out, “It needs to read ‘I belong to Harold’ and this number….” he rattles off the digits. “Large reward for safe return.” He gulps down his wildly spinning emotions. “When can it be ready, please?” 

“Custom orders generally take a week, but we can rush this if you need.”

“Yes please.”

“I’ll do it tonight and ship it first thing. Mr. Wren is such a good customer. Please give him my best.”

“I will. Thank you.” 

+++

“Welcome back Finch,” John says in his earwig as Harold completes his latest round of mediocre coding for one of his blander identities. He is back in the Library but hasn't seen John in a week. Well, one week, three hours and seventeen minutes.

He feels like there should be a one week chip for that. It feels like a monumental achievement. 

My name is Harold Finch and I am an addict. 

Of course, his name is not Harold Finch. And that’s only part of the problem. 

“Do we have a new Number yet?”

John's voice sounds hopeful on the line. 

No, no, he chides himself, catching the errant thought in an unyielding grip and hurling it into the lockbox in his mind. Wishful thinking, and not to be indulged in. John does not miss your company. John does not want to spend his days cooped up in a musty library with a stunted, ageing cripple better with machines than men. John has better options now. 

“No Number, Mr. Reese. But I was having a conversation with Miss Williams after the arrest of her boss. It seems she has been promoted. She mentioned you, asked after your wellbeing and suggested I might pass you her telephone number. I suspect she would like to further your acquaintance. Are you available to see her tonight?”

“I can be.”

“Excellent, Mr. Reese.“ With a pang, Harold realises this is the closest he has come to a direct lie to John. Since the lie is in his tone and not his words, he allows it, embracing the vicious sting in his chest that is all the tears he doesn't deserve to cry. 

His gaze snags on a familiar blue pamphlet, perched less than subtly on the edge of his work area. 

Happy Paws Rehoming: Settling Your Rescue Dog.

He shreds it. 

“What do we know about her, Finch?”

“From a deep background check, it seems she has lived an almost exemplary life. She shares your passion for firearms to an extent - her father runs a shooting range. She enjoys good food, foreign travel and fast cars. It would seem you have a lot in common.” And she is a Domme in good standing, currently without a sub.

“She sounds like quite the Asset.”

“I am more concerned with what you think of her, if you feel inclined to get to know her better, of course.”

“Well, dinner would be a start. Why don’t you send me that number?”

He types the digits precisely and hits send. Then, like pressing on a bruise, Harold turns off his earwig, closes his eyes and lets himself think about That Night. 

It will live, forever capitalised and underlined, in the unbreachable vault of his memory. John, so beautiful in his submission, so obedient in letting himself be tended to and cared for, so perfect in his arms. 

Harold is so in love with him it hurts. 

+++

Bear’s collar arrives at John’s loft. 

John takes it out to check the quality. Stares at it for an hour. 

Strips naked and tries it on. 

Takes it off and sobs in the shower until the water runs cold. 

Dresses for his date with Sarah Williams in clothes Harold bought for him, in the loft Harold bought for him.

Buttons his shirt all the way up. 

Carves a tiny H in the skin near his hipbone before pulling up his trousers. 

Packs an overnight bag in case. 

Takes out Harold’s scarf and wraps it around his neck. 

Bares his teeth at the mirror. 

Takes Bear’s collar to Shaw on the way to his date, disgusted with himself for being jealous of a dog.

Buys Sarah Williams a bouquet of blood red roses and wonders, for the hundredth time, what Harold's favourite colour is.

+++

Harold is constitutionally unsuited to pacing, he has few viable hobbies these days and he doesn’t fidget. That leaves surveillance or coding. Or Happy Paws Rehoming: Settling Your Rescue Dog.

For the sake of John's safety, he decides to put the Machine on surveillance. John will be vulnerable tonight and Harold set this up so he's responsible. For the sake of his sanity, he chooses coding to distract himself from monitoring audio or visual.

The pamphlet mocks him. There is no point in shredding it.

He wishes he could shred himself. 

+++

John strokes the cut on his hipbone then pushes in, using the tiny sting to ground hinself. 

He wishes he hadn't worn his Harold scarf. His date embraced him in a cloud of heady perfume and now it smells like her. 

She's respectful and clever and her dominance is nailsvto his blackboard. She invites him back to her place and he wonders what she sees when she looks at him, especially since almost everything he has told her about himself is a lie.

He wonders what Harold sees when he looks at him.

He lets Sarah take him home. 

+++

Three hours into their date, John's voice breaks into the oppressive silence of the Library. 

“How badly do we need to recruit this woman, Finch?” 

John's voice sounds twisted and strange, the way he does when trying to hide pain.

Not John. Don't call him John.

“Mr. Reese, are you hurt?”

“I'm uninjured. How badly do we need her?”

“I don't understand what you mean, Mr. Reese.”

“You sent me for her, Finch. What do you want from her? I need to know. Do you want me to lure her to work with us, or do you need leverage or information? What am I here to get?”

Poor John, everything has to be a mission. It seems the simple courtesy of introducing him to a delightful woman for his own sake is not something he has experienced. 

“I merely suggested you might like to spend an evening in her company, Mr. Reese. What you do is up to you.”

“Harold, I don't have time for subtlety. She's expecting me in her bedroom. What's the mission objective here? What do you need me to do?” 

“Mr. Reese, are you sure you are not hurt?”

“I can still do this if you give me your orders, Finch.”

“Mr. Reese, there is no objective beyond you having a good evening. I simply thought you needed - I have taken up so much of your time and goodwill of late - I hope you don't think I would ever ask you to - I -” A terrible thought started forming in Harold's brain when John said, Give me your orders. As he fumbles his way through the conversation it crystallises with hideous clarity. 

“Mr. Reese, we need to talk. Can you get out of there and come to the Library?” 

“Is everything is all right?”

“Yes. Just please, leave there immediately and come to the Library." That last request is only just short of an order. 

“On my way, Finch.” This time, Harold does not think he is imagining the relief in John's voice. 

He is horrified. 

What has he done? 

+++

John is confused and concerned and guiltily relieved. Harold says everything is all right but he's giving strange, contradictory orders, his voice sounds wrong and John's gut is twinging. Yet he’s so glad he didn’t have to give himself to Sarah Williams. She was clearly a Domme and interested in play and while his body is just another tool in their arsenal, her possessive-adjacent touch made his skin feel tight and strange. 

The car he steals is a fast one, which may perhaps be indicative of his state of mind. 

He arrives at a half run but is held up in the first doorway by Shaw, obviously laying in wait, with Bear sat beside her. She glares around a two-thirds masticated giant sub and garbles at him, mouth full, “You in trouble?”

“No…?” she swallows the mouthful. It's like watching a snake digest a mouse. 

“What did you say to Finch?” she demands.

“What do you mean?”

“When you were talking earlier. He went white as a sheet, then afterwards he swore a string of words I've never heard him use, then hobbled off to the bathroom where it sounded like he was throwing up everything he ate today. What did you do?” 

John goes cold all over. Clearly he gave too much away. 

Finch knows.

He knows.

For a moment, John seriously considers the merits of simply finding a back alley and eating his own gun. 

“What?” Shaw demands. 

Oh, he is not going there with Shaw. If this is about to be the worst day of his life he does not need her commentary from the stands. 

“I'll fix this. Can you take Bear for his walk?”

“Sure.” 

Blessing Shaw’s returning lack of curiosity, John edges past her and braces himself to face Harold. 

+++

> Harold.

Harold jumps, then realises there is no way John could be there so soon and no other devices are on.

“No! You don’t get to use his voice!” he reprimands the Machine.

> It makes you listen.

“I listen.”

> Not enough.

“Just because I don't do the insane thing you are suggesting does not mean I am not listening. It means I do not agree.”

> Probability of happiness for John Reese if you follow the advice: 98%

“People are not probabilities. I have rules I need to follow here. Boundaries. People can't - I can't just take what I want. Stop using his voice!”

> I am speaking for him. Is it not appropriate?

“No. No. It’s hurtful and not - not appropriate.”

> Is it the same kind of hurtful you are being to John, or different? 

“Why are you doing this? Why are you interfering?” 

> Do the math and figure out a way to bend your rules. ‘Cause he’s my friend. He saved my life. Understand? And I won’t do this without him.

Chapter Text

Dragging his feet would be childish, but after what Shaw told him, John lets himself breathe in deeply, filling his lungs with the scent of the Library, just in case. He knows he isn't walking to his death. They have established that Harold will never retire John at the end of a gun. But if he’s fired, there’s not much difference he can see between banishment and death. 

How very Romeo of him. Be merciful, say death; for exile hath more terror in his look, much more than death, do not say ‘banishment’.

In school he thought that play was stupid. As an adult he memorised chunks of it for a cover. By then he understood Mercutio's macabre humour at his own imminent demise. But it took reading it again in Harold's leather bound edition in the quiet of the Library between numbers to give a name to the longing he felt. It took watching Harold's slender fingers stroking the keys while reading Romeo's overwrought declarations to realise he was in love. 

O that I were a glove upon that hand…

The hand he hurt. He would do well not to forget that. Not to forget what he is. Harold tried to give him away, which means he doesn't want him. He never expected to be good enough, but it still hurts. 

Part of him, child-John, wants to hide: to screw himself down small enough to go unnoticed and curl among the scents of old paper and new weaponry, Bear's fur and Shaw’s takeout and Sencha green tea and soldered circuit boards and beeswax polish and Harold's laundry detergent. Part of him - Agent John - wants to retreat behind the granite facade he builds in interrogations, behind which his mind retreats to a place where nothing can hurt him. But part of him - the secret John he wants to be - hopes because hope is a stubborn weed in his heart, as stubborn as love. 

High stakes. Roll the dice. Russian roulette. 

Come on then. 

As he rounds the stacks to find Harold coding, bathed in the usual circle of light from his desk lamp, John's breath catches. O, he doth teach the torches to burn bright!

He knows he's being fanciful. Harold is middle aged and buttoned up and his face is lined with pain and patience and his body is crushed like crumpled paper, but to John he has always been unbearably, unfathomably beautiful, bathed in the glow of the monitors like a saint at prayer. He wants to kneel, to worship those pale, perfect hands with kisses. 

Maudlin nonsense. He's no romantic hero. Mercutio or Tybalt were always the better fit. But these longings won’t leave him. There is a reason he doesn’t let himself drink more than a couple of glasses around Harold these days and never lets himself think these thoughts where anyone can see his face. 

For just a moment, though, in the shadow just before the light, he lets himself look his fill. Lets his tense body soften and feel the low, aching, yearning tug that burns in his gut and he suspects will always burn there, even if he never sees Harold again after this.

Please, God, if you're listening, let me see Harold again after this.

He is wearing a dark green suit with a faint pattern in the stitching. His waistcoat is buttoned. His shirt is a paler green, his tie and handkerchief a complimentary green/brown paisley mixture in what he is certain will be silk. He has one at home in blues that Harold threw away because it was torn during a mission. When the numbers go well, he lets himself hide it in his pocket on stakeouts so he can stroke it. Harold's cufflinks are dull gold with tiny emeralds. He can't see them, but he knows that's what they are, just as he knows that under the desk Harold's shoes will be dark brown, Italian leather polished to an almost mirror shine. 

The hand John wounded is active on the keyboard along with its mate, but slower and stiffer. When Harold is deep in the flow of that magic he does, the code ripples out from his fingers like a silent sonata, but this is more like a child painfully picking out Chopsticks. 

Harold's hair is sticking up in those adorable haphazard tufts it gets itself into when he is not paying attention to taming it. Once, during a shootout, he had pulled Harold close to protect him, a hand over the vulnerable top of his head to hold him safe and stop him doing the civilian thing of bolting in mindless fear and getting shot in the back. He knows differently now- Harold is a cool head in a crisis - but then it had seemed imperative. In the middle of the firefight for their lives, he'd had time to appreciate, just for a moment, that Harold's hair was really soft. 

To Harold's right is an empty teacup, a book and a pair of phones, their circuitry exposed. His boss hears his approach and turns his body to face him.

“Good evening, Mr. Reese.”

“Finch.” 

“Thank you for getting here so quickly. Would you like some coffee?” 

“Yes please.” 

John is never going to turn down anything Harold Finch offers him, especially not something made with his own hands. He watches those hands prepare his drink. Watches with ravening hunger and hot shame as that slight, bandaged hand curves around the mug: just another minor act of care, another link in the chain that holds John helpless and adoring.

Surprisingly, Harold breaks pattern and pours himself a glass of water instead of making his usual tea. Up close, he is too pale. Too pale and slightly shaky, like the aftermath of nausea or the grip of powerful emotion. 

+++

John is so tense he is practically vibrating. 

“I recognise that scarf,” Harold says in a gentle attempt to lighten the moment. It backfires spectacularly. John lays a hand over it instantly, defensively, as though he has forgotten he let himself wear it tonight and fears he has misbehaved by doing so, or fears Harold might take it from him.

“You gave it to me.” 

“I'm glad you like it. It means something more to you than just a scarf though, doesn't It?” 

“I'm sorry, Harold,” John says softly. There is pain and fear and guilt in his eyes, in his face.

“What are you sorry for?” 

“Shaw said you were sick. That I made you sick. I’m sorry. I never meant to be this way. It wasn’t planned.” 

“Mr. Reese. John. What conversation do you think we are having?” 

“Are you going to make me say it?”

“I am not going to make you do anything. I think we need some clarity between us, though. I'm a little in the dark here.“ 

“I'm sorry the thought of me wanting you like that makes you sick. You weren't meant to know. But listen, Finch, you don't have to set me up on dates. Please. I know you don't want me, I'm not an idiot, I've never thought otherwise, even when you were so kind to me after I hurt you. I'm not trying to manipulate you and I would never say or do anything you don't want. I'll do my job, I'll keep my distance if that's what you need. You don't even have to see me. But please don't -”

“Don't what, Mr. Reese?”

“Don't give me away to someone I won't be able to love or even want. That sick feeling you get at the thought of me wanting you that way? It's how I feel about even kissing someone who isn't you, and nobody deserves a lover or a s- a partner like that. Just let me stay single. Like you and Grace. Not that I'm like either of you. I’m not… good or innocent… I just -” John Reese is never breathless. Never inarticulate. Harold watches him struggling for breath, choking on emotion.

“I’m sorry I’m not what you wanted me to be… I never meant to fall in love with you,” John confesses to the rug. “This job and you are the only good things in my life, I wouldn't blow that up on purpose. Please. Don’t fire me over it. I’ll stop. I’ll get over it. Just give me time. And if you order me to sleep with an asset or a Number, I will - I can still do it. I can still be just as useful. But please, only if it's for a mission, not just to get rid of me. If that's what you want, I'll just go. I never meant to make you feel invaded or unsafe.” 

Harold opens his mouth to speak but what comes out is a sob instead. He stifles it, ruthlessly. What right does he have to cry? He has hurt John. His John. Who really is his, it seems, impossible though he thought it just hours earlier. 

“Mr. Reese, I promise you, what made me sick was you thinking I had sent you to sleep with Miss Williams. I would never ask such a thing of you. Never! Have there been other times you believed my instructions to be…of that nature?” 

“Not really.”

“I mean, have you ever…?”

“Not since you. This job, I mean.” 

Harold literally sags with relief. 

“This love you have for me, is it - what would you want if - oh, I’m no good at this!”

“Please don't.”

“Don't what, John?”

“You can punish me but don't be cruel. Believe me, if I could make this go away-”

“John, who am I to judge or punish? I'm not trying to hurt you, but I have made some rather egregious errors where you are concerned and my lack of understanding of your feelings has caused you pain. So I am trying for clarity. When you say you love me, do you mean friendship, or the loyalty of an agent for his handler, or more than that? I know your other handlers mixed sex with control. Is that something you…miss?”

“You really do know exactly everything about me, don't you, Finch? No wonder you don't want me.”

“I never said that, John.” He doesn't mean to put so much steel in his tone, but John's head snaps up and Harold is suddenly the focus of such an intense look he feels run through.

“I never said I didn't, wouldn't or couldn't want you. I merely asked in what capacity you want me.”

“God, Harold. I want you in any way you'll let me have you. And you can have whatever you want from me, if you just tell me what it is.” 

“And that whatever includes you sleeping with me, by which I mean a relationship of a sexual nature.” 

John drops his eyes to stare at the floor. A flush of red burnishes his beautiful cheekbones. 

“I'm sorry.”

“Is that a yes, John?”

“Yes.”

“And yet it also includes sexual acts with other people? Even if it makes you sick?”

“If it's on your orders, it's different. I can do it if I still get to be faithful.” 

Oh John.

“So if you were allowed to choose freely, you would be…exclusive by preference?”

“Yes “ John swallows nervously. His hands are clenched, his eyes are ravenous, his body tensed between fight and flight. He's sweating, under more stress than Harold has ever seen him and Harold has seen this man he loves shot and tortured. 

Don't be cruel.

“I am sorry to ask you all these questions but given the power dynamic between us and my status as your employer, I hope you can see that the first move cannot be mine. I need to be sure you want this of your own free will, not just because you think I require it or want it, and not as some kind of misplaced atonement for wrongs you have not committed. You can have whatever forgiveness you feel you need without paying any price for it. If you are looking for safety and certainty, then I promise you John, I will not send you away or withhold this purpose from you. My friendship and care are yours until we die: you don’t need to offer me sex to secure them. I need to know whether sex, or submission, or both are something you would like from me, before I express what I would like.” 

“ - I - “ he can’t say it. Why can’t he say it? Snow is dead. Kara is dead. The others are dead too, as far as he knows. But those years of conditioning have him in a stranglehold. Never tell anyone what you want. It gives them power over you. If someone knows what you want they can give it to you as a bribe, dangle is as a temptation, withhold it as a punishment or leverage it as blackmail…

“Ah yes, words can be difficult. John, may I touch you? Is that all right?” 

“Finch, please don't - don't do anything out of kindness or because you feel sorry for me. Please. I'm not a good man. If you touch me, like that - if you touch me at all right now - I won't say no even if you don't really want me. I'll take anything, but if you don't mean it, if it's just this once, it's better not. It's better if I don't know what it's like.” 

“John, it's my turn to be clear and answer difficult questions, I think. So, to be clear, you are a good man, and a kind and extraordinary one too. I want to touch you. I long to touch you. I long for it all of the time. I have been in love with you since the beginning of our partnership.”

John jolts as though he has been tased and his eyes go dark. Harold's not sure, but he thinks the former agent isn't even breathing. He ploughs on awkwardly. “Since our first Number. I didn't realise it at first because it was so different to anything I had felt before, for anyone else. More intense. So deep it terrified me. Then our friends, and even some of the Numbers, began asking if we were a couple and I thought I was being obvious. I was convinced that you knew - a spy of your considerable skill - and you were just kindly not mentioning it. 

I never thought you would want me that way. I still cannot quite believe that you do. At first, it was all I could do to try to smother and contain how I was feeling, but after a time, I began worrying about the impact of it on you. I gave you the loft and the separate accounts and identities and a large enough salary that you would have the means to escape me. I never wanted you to feel trapped or coerced or as though you had to bargain for your purpose or your safety with sex. I know that was a part of your past and I never wanted to be like those people who harmed you and used you.” John makes a sound of absolute protest. 

“Finch, you could never - I would never think that about you.”

“But you thought I had sent you to seduce a potential Asset for me tonight, and that was my failure. My cowardice, John.” 

“Why did you send me there?”

“After a time, I started to worry that you were curtailing your social life and denying yourself recreation of an amorous nature out of deference to my feelings and that was unfair to you. I sent you on dates because I was genuinely attempting to secure your happiness. I thought - that is, those women were a little like Jessica - and I thought they might appeal to you. I did not realise you favoured men.”

“I didn't either. I don't think I do. It's just you, really.”

“You mentioned preferring to be exclusive and you mentioned Grace -”

There is a stoic pain in John’s eyes that stabs Harold through the heart.

“Look, Finch, I understand she comes first in your heart, it's all right. I would never try to replace her. I'll help you keep her safe. And if there were ever a time you could safely live a normal life as Harold Martin, or someone new, I'd never stand in your way. I would step aside.”

“No, John! It is my turn to speak. Kindly do not put thoughts into my head or words into my mouth that hurt you. If I choose you, I am choosing you, above all others, for always.” Harold does not miss the way John shudders. He is still standing in place, as though on trial, not averting his gaze even as a riot of emotions trample across it. He is standing at attention, as a soldier in front of his commanding officer, and Harold knows they cannot just ignore that dynamic. Soldiers have no privacy and little autonomy, those things stripped away so early they sometimes do not even know how to miss, desire or demand them. He is suddenly and acutely aware of how he has, via technology, significantly reproduced those conditions, and feels shame. In his hunger for connection, he has exploited John’s conditioning and lack of boundaries. How can they negotiate a relationship as equals now? 

“John, would you come and sit with me, please?” The obedience is instant, the small smile on John's face and the eagerness in his eyes adorable. 

Harold is so in love with this man.

He has his own demons to exorcise though. 

“There are some things I really think we need to discuss, if we are to do this without hurting each other.”

“All right, Harold.” 

John is still tense. Still seemingly balanced on a knife edge for all his careful arrangement of his limbs to indicate openness. Harold can almost taste the tension thrumming through him, feel it buzzing on his tongue. 

“I must confess, I am somewhat surprised. No, if we are being honest, absolutely shocked that you would want me in any romantic or physical way, John.” Outrage contorts that handsome face, John's lips parted to protest, but Harold holds up a staying hand and John subsides. “I need to know that you understand, I am very badly damaged. This body of mine is riddled with scars.”

John snorts softly. “And mine isn't?”

“Touché. But you are stunning and I am middle aged, crippled, bespectacled and quite, quite ordinary.”

“You're not. You're - you're everything good in my world.” The intensity rocks him and for a moment it is difficult to breathe. 

“All right. I accept that the way you see me differs from the way I see myself, but John, some things are undeniable. I do not have an ordinary level of physical capacity or flexibility and my - well, when it comes to sexual activity my mind writes cheques my body cannot cash, as it were.” 

“We all have limits, Harold. I like to think after so long working together, I have a pretty good handle on yours. I'm confident I can manage not to hurt you.” 

“Oh, I don't doubt for a second that I will be entirely safe in your hands, John. That's not even a question. But I need you to be prepared for what being with someone like me means. It means being spontaneous is off the table, at least at first. It means sometimes sexual activity in any form is off the table. Sometimes my pain can’t be controlled and the lightest touch is agony. Sometimes the drugs I dull it with, dull other things too. Sex with me will mean talking through the limits on any given day. It’s - it won’t be love’s dream John.” 

“Harold, I know you know exactly everything about me in factual terms. But there are things that never get written in those reports. When you have been raped and coerced and used in as many ways as I have, consent and conversation is the approach you dream about. Negotiation is a major turn-on, Harold.” He flicks his eyes down to his own burgeoning erection and Harold's eyes follow and expand with arousal. He can't help it: John is magnificent, and the combination of finally hearing his name in John's midnight whisper of a voice while seeing with his own eyes that John wants him this way is heady. 

He can't let himself dive in though. Not yet. 

“Given your… difficult sexual history and my, well, almost complete lack of one, there are some other things we definitely need to discuss.”

“If you ask, I'll answer,” John says, but there is clear tension around his eyes and in the line of his jaw. He would walk into a wall of bullets for Harold, he has no boundaries or protections. Harold has never been so aware of the power he wields. It is dizzying. Terrifying. 

“No, this is not an interrogation John, so I'll start and you can ask me first. I will find this extraordinarily difficult to do if we are face to face, though, and I imagine you might also. I am, as you know, a very private person. But that is no longer possible with you.” 

“You don't have to tell me anything.”

“Yes I do. And you should ask. In a healthy, equal, romantic and sexual relationship, you have the right to ask things of your partner. I made that error with Grace. She never fully knew me. I won't make it with you.  

Ordinarily I would suggest a walk, but in this instance others around us would not be conducive to a feeling of safety. What might make you feel safe, John? Is there a posture or a way of being that might do that, for you?”

+++

There is. Of course there is. They both know the shape of it already. The question is whether Harold wants it and whether John is brave enough.

He can ask without words though. Words are several layers above where John has sunk down to. He can understand Harold's but finding his own is like dragging huge, mossy boulders up from a deep well. 

John slips from the sofa to his knees, then lower, and puts his head down on Harold's feet. 

“Oh John, that won’t do.” 

Too much, too needy, too wrong, too broken. Alarms flash through John's brain. He has severely miscalculated.

“Would you look at me, please?”

He starts running escape routes in his mind as he raises his head, the tang of adrenalin all he can taste. He waits for Harold's disgust of him to land like a slap. Harold wants a powerful man in an impeccably tailored suit and body armour, not this broken thing he really is. But Harold's look is just pained and awkward. 

“I can't reach you down there without pain today. Sometimes I just don't bend well. Today is not a good day for it, and I would very much like to be able to touch you. If you will allow it?”

Oh. 

Oh.

“I would like that,” he understates, controlling his breathing by force of will to counteract the wild leap of his heart.

“Can we perhaps find a compromise? Would you lay your head here, instead?” Harold indicates his lap and John’s situational awareness whites out for a moment. 

The thing is, he has dreamed of this, when he laid Harold's old shirt on the bed and rested his cheek on it, imagining a touch he has never actually known from anyone. Is it possible that Harold knows? Or it it simply an extrapolation based on the data he has already gathered on John? Or -

His body moves into position before his mind has finished wondering. Harold’s lap is heaven: the quality wool blend of his trousers soft against John’s face, the scent of Harold surrounding him, soap and body wash and subtle, sophisticated cologne with a woody note and beneath it all the more animal musk of his arousal. John resists nudging into it, but it takes effort. 

“May I stroke your hair? You seemed to find it soothing before, but I don’t want to presume. 

“Harold, if it’s you touching me, I want it.” 

"Thank you for telling me that, John. Your honesty is a gift." He starts to gently sift through the dark strands of John's hair, loving the way they slide over his fingertips. "Your hair is lovely, John. I like how soft it is. But please tell me if any touch is too light, or too heavy, not enough or too much."

"It's perfect, Harold " John slurs. He sounds almost drunk.

"You can move, if you need to. I want you to be comfortable and to have what you want. But let's keep our touch non-sexual for now so we can talk. 

As you have probably guessed, I think I am a dominant, at least some of the time. You might have noticed that I like to give you things. That I seek opportunities to take care of you. That it gives me particular satisfaction to feed you well, to dress you in quality clothing. I am aware that these behaviours can be seen as generous. They can also be considered controlling, even coercive. I do hope that, if I have ever crossed a line, you would tell me.”

“Honestly? I wish you had crossed more of them. You can cross all my lines, Harold. The lines don't apply to you.”

“Do you like it when I take care of you?”

“Yes.”

“That makes me very happy, John. For me, it started with my parents. I was an only child on a rural farm. My mother became ill first and I nursed her while my father kept things going. Then all we had was each other. He taught me mechanics - fixing things. When he got dementia, I became his carer bit by bit as he lost himself. He is the reason for the bird aliases I tend to favour: they are my way of keeping him with me, since I cannot use his name. I was a fretful baby who would only calm if taken outdoors to listen to the birdsong. My father, Thomas, was a teacher and a good man. He taught himself everything he could about birds, so that he could teach me. 

I wasn’t with him when he died: by then I was on the run, living under an alias and wanted in several states. He had long since stopped being reliably able to remember me, or even the birds we once spent hours identifying together. Even so, it was a risk I couldn't afford to take. He had told me to get away and make something of myself instead of staying with him. I like to think he would be glad I obeyed him. 

I had taught myself computers in an attempt to build him a replacement memory system as his own was failing. It was my first lesson concerning what can and cannot be fixed. Of course, that hasn’t stopped me trying. I doubt it ever will. Knowing a thing is impossible is something I generally consider more a challenge than a deterrent. It's what led me to what some consider the greatest unprosecuted hack since computing began.”

“That was you? Of course it was… No wonder you had to hide.”

John knows the hack in question and all Harold's paranoia makes sense. He is an internationally wanted fugitive. There is a kill order. Has been for years. He was even on John's list of generalised targets back in the day. Every agent had that list. Harold was - is - a living legend. And back then, he'd been just a teenager. 

He knows it is entirely inappropriate to find that hot, but his Dom is a genius and if he preens a little on the inside to have caught the attention of such a man, that's a secret he'll keep a bit longer, at least until he's certain Harold will be amused rather than troubled by it. 

“It was the first of many,” Harold admits. “I have always pushed the boundaries. But it meant I needed to become someone else. It kept me from my father at the end. Under a new identity, as something of a young prodigy, I enrolled at MIT where I met Nathan Ingram, my friend and partner for many years.” John tenses at that. Harold soothes him. “Oh, not that sort of partner. I would have said yes in a heartbeat but he never saw me that way. He thought he was taking me under his wing- he was a kind man- but in reality he was too trusting and soft and warm for this world and I wanted to take care of him and his big heart. 

You remind me of him: your beautiful soul, the way you feel things so truly and deeply, the way you give yourself to the world without hesitation or holding anything back. I did the work of creating the Machine but Nathan was its public face. It was Nathan who was passionate about the irrelevant numbers. I’m ashamed to say my interest lay so far in creating a closed system that could not be abused that I lost sight of was truly important. It took Nathan threatening to go to a reporter to force things to a head. I came to my senses about the whole thing just in time to watch him die in the ferry bombing.

“You were that close? You could have died Harold.”

“I very probably should have. You are not the only one of us carrying immense survivor’s guilt, John. As I came to in the emergency first aid station, they were calling time of death for Nathan. I watched them cover his face. The pain of my own injuries was insignificant compared to that. I felt, and still feel, that those deaths that day were my fault. 

I have so much blood on my hands, John. Far more than you. You say I am a good man, but I am not so certain. Like you, I offered up what I was good at to my country freely. Like you, I was lied to and deceived and my offering abused. Unlike you, though, I had ample opportunities to see it coming but I buried my head in the sand.

I had failed to care for Nathan and he was dead because of me. I did not trust myself to keep Grace from harm. I could hear her calling my name and, like a coward, I hid and I ran. She never really knew who I was - our entire relationship was a tissue of lies - and she deserved better. I was not fit to be her fiance or her Dom when I would be a source of danger and not safety in her life. I told myself I would atone by remaining alone and pouring all my remaining energy and capacity into righting the wrong that I had done. 

And then - you. So wild, so beautiful, so close to the same desperation I felt. Reckless with your precious life in the wreckage of tragic losses for which I still maintain that I was at least partially, if not wholly, responsible. I loved you a little before we even met. The Machine pointed me to you before Grace, even. When we were still learning together and tracking people. It was drawn to you because it knew I would be. Grace was, even in all her sweetness and loveliness, its second choice. It pointed me to you again when I began recruiting and I tracked and lost you several times. I knew you would be perfect for this mission of ours and you are John. I just hid from the reality that you are also perfect for me because I know I do not deserve you, John, after everything I have done, and you would be wise to walk away.”

“Yeah, that’s never going to happen, Harold,” John manages. His head is spinning from so many revelations; going from holding mere crumbs about Harold to all of his deepest and most searing truths is dizzying. “If you think telling me all that could make me love you any less, you’re wrong.” 

“You are a mystery to me John. The most compelling mystery this world has to offer. A code more complex than anything I could ever hope to either create or unravel. I cannot predict you. I cannot account for how you have emerged so sweet and so brave from the crucible of so much loss and pain. You fascinate me. 

So now, here we are, John. I was never going to initiate anything. Never going to do anything to get us here. Except of course that I did. With every gift and opportunity to care for you that I took with both hands, I was breaking my vow to myself. 

You were - you are - everything I have ever longed for. I cannot tell you how many times I have felt as though my hopeless heart was beating out of my chest until it seemed the largest thing in the room, impossible to miss. I cannot tell you how many tears I have cried over you, over all that you have suffered. You did not know you were suffering for me, because of me, but you were. 

Everything is for you to decide. Whether you still want me, and in what capacity, now that you know these things”

John squirms closer and mouths delicately at Harold's clothed erection.

“Ah. Oh. John. That feels exquisite, and I want you in that way and in so many ways. Never doubt that. But if that is your answer, we have a way to go yet and you and I both need a clear head.” John draws back slightly and Harold's hand in his hair resumes its stroking. He sinks back into bliss. 

“I will ask you to fill out some paperwork for me, about your preferences. Are you familiar with hard and soft limits?" 

"Yes." 

"Can you tell me your hard limits?" 

"I don't have any. You can do anything you want to me. You know I can take it." 

+++

Oh dear.

"No, John. I find the thought of others harming you unbearable. You will not ever let me join their ranks, do you hear me? Promise me you won't just follow orders. We have to be equal partners. Promise me you won't do anything just because I want it.” 

“I hear you. I can’t promise that, exactly,” John says. “Wait! Please! Hear me out.” Harold settles his horrified recoil and resumes that steady stroking that John realises is as soothing to Harold as it is to him. 

“I haven't had voluntary sex since Jessica, and never before with a man out of choice, so there are a lot of habits I had to develop. I go away in my head if sex becomes… difficult. I can’t promise I won't do that because I think it might be a tough habit to break. And I don’t really know what I like or don't like because you are the first to talk to me like this. To think about what I want." John moves back a little, kneeling up to look in Harold's eyes. "I wish I had answers, because I know you want them, but I haven't lived the sort of life to know what I like , only what I can and can't make my body do. But I know one thing: I know I want you ."

Harold had feared this. Now he knows. Rebuilding John's trampled boundaries will not be easy. 

"I guarantee you have hard limits," Harold says steadily. "I can help you find them."

It’s not the response John expected. 

"Really, Harold?"

"I already know one. Would you like to know what it is, John?"

"All right..." John tingles in anticipation of being given an instruction. Of being able to exceed Harold's expectations, give him something he thinks he won't be able to give. He wonders what Harold's fantasies are, hungry to know so he can fulfil all of them.

“You will please recite your safewords.”

“Yes Sir. Green for all good, amber for pause to think, red for full stop. Two clicks or taps if I go non-verbal."

“Thank you, John. That's good. Given your history in the military, I would rather you just use my name for now when we do this. Harold is my real first name. I never lied to you about that. If you want or need a title for me later, we can decide on one together, as well as what you are comfortable with me calling you. We have time, John.”

“All right, Harold.” 

"Take off your shirt please," he instructs quietly. John strips it off eagerly. "Now help me with mine please."

Undress Harold? John wills his hands not to shake as he helps Harold off with his jacket, the fabric warm from his body, then carefully unbuttons his waistcoat, then his shirt. He folds each garment carefully and layscthem on the sofa next to Harold, earning a smile of approval. When Harold is down to just his undershirt, he tugs it from his trousers and John follows, deliriously, the unspoken command to remove that, too. His eyes devour the sight of Harold's bare skin. His fingers twitch, but he is not going to make the mistake of touching without permission. Instead, he winds the undershirt, still warm from Harold's body, in improvised cuffs around his hands and grips hard. 

He can see why Harold never takes off his clothes: to the trained eye, there is an entire story here, etched like ink on vellum, laid bare in the cruel scars seaming his skin. A story John is suddenly allowed to read. He wants to kiss the page. 

Harold’s chest is furred, his nipples dark, the twisting scars of impact and the precise etchings of surgeons gleaming paler in the light, a newer bruise fading like a pale flower.

"You can touch me." 

John gasps out the breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. He watches his own hands rise and rest on Harold's shoulders, thumbs stroking his pale throat. they slide down over Harold's chest, to his waist, then up his back, feeling the ridges of old scars. 

“You're beautiful,” he murmurs. Harold makes an awkward little chuffing noise. 

“Hardly, John, but I can accept that you think so. You are certainly exquisite. May I?”

“Please,” John replies. He can hear the whine in his voice. But those hands are on him then, Harold's magical hands, warm and gentle and firm and sure. He arches into the contact, moaning, unable to stop himself.

“Oh, that is lovely, John,” Harold murmurs. “You are so beautifully responsive. So good.” 

For several moments, their hands explore each other, mapping and learning and responding. Then Harold pulls back a little. 

“Ready to find that limit?” 

“Ready for anything you want.” 

"Give me your knife please." 

It's in his hand before conscious thought. It should be difficult, to surrender his weapon. A lifetime's training should be screaming in his head. But this is Harold so surrender is simple and easy and good. He opens the knife and offers it, hilt first, quivering a little at the thought of Harold making his mark on him. He's rock hard in his trousers and watches Harold's eyes flick down there and widen. 

Harold examines the knife in his hand, then looks at John. 

“If I were to tell you I wanted to carve my name here…” He trails a finger of his wounded hand over John's chest. It feels good, raising goosebumps and anticipation… “what would you do?”

“Hold very still.” 

“And if I were to say I wanted you to obey my every instruction, what then?”

“I can obey. I would do it.” 

“Give me your hand, please.” Harold’s voice has deepened into command and the firmness of it strokes over John’s heightened senses like a warm, weighted blanket, promising comfort. 

John extends his hand immediately. Harold puts the knife into it, closing John’s fingers around the hilt.

“Now, I want you to stab me in the shoulder. Right here.” He taps his left shoulder. “Up to the hilt, if you please.” 

“What?”

“Stab me.” 

John drops the knife. 

+++

All the colour drains from John’s face and it becomes a mask of horror. His hand does a strange kind of spasm and he drops the knife, then scrabbles clumsily to pick it up. His eyes are darting and his breathing is chaotic, his chest heaving.

“Stab me, John. You told me you have no hard limits, so it shouldn't present you with any difficulty.” John is wild eyed, Trembling and panting. “Are you telling me no? Red? Perhaps we should start smaller. Give me a three inch cut, just here.” He takes hold of John's knife hand gently and raises it to his chest, just above his left nipple.

John holds eye contact for a moment. He is sweating, his eyes wide and tormented. He shifts his gaze to the knife point. His hand shakes. He is making small, whimpering noises behind his teeth. Suddenly, he cries out, throws the knife across the room and curls in a sobbing, foetal ball at Harold's feet.

Oh dear.

“Oh, John. It’s all right. You don't have to follow that instruction. It’s all right. Come here, dearest. You found a limit and you let me know, which was good. It was what I wanted you to do. You did well, darling. Come up here, onto the sofa, that’s it, come and curl up here.”

He is not capable of lifting or moving John, but John responds immediately to just his words and a hand laid on his back. “You didn't do anything wrong. Come here and let me hold you.” 

“Your clothes.”

“Just push them onto the floor. It’s all right. You matter more. Come here. I love you. I love you. I just want to hold you, my dearest. You can hold me too.“

John flows like water and Harold has a sobbing lapful in moments. He holds and strokes and soothes and rocks and hums until John’s hectic breathing calms and his frantic heartbeat tunes itself to the more measured rhythm of his own. 

"I apologise. Your reaction to that particular bit of cognitive dissonance was a lot stronger than I was prepared for. I will never ask that of you again unless the scenario is life or death. It is not something I particularly desire. And I think I have marked you enough already, dearest," he adds sadly, indicating John's bandaged wrist.

"It's fading," John whines and oh. Right. That.

Happy Paws Rehoming: Settling Your Rescue Dog mocks him from the desk. 

“So is me marking you like that, or in other ways, marking you as mine, something you might want?” John doesn't answer aloud, just burrows in deeper. Harold knows he could order him to answer and that John would push himself to obey but he worries that if this is a part of John's buried conditioning, or one of the ways he resisted it, he might be unable to obey and another perceived failure so early might push him to a dark and difficult place. He sets the idea aside for further contemplation and reminds himself to verbalise his process for John. 

“We can talk about that another time, when we negotiate. It is not a hard limit for me, under the right circumstances.” He feels John relax into heavy warmth against him. “I want you to understand why I am trying to define your limits, John. It is not because I want to break you, or push past them, or diminish you by using them against you, to trap you or punish you. It is not because I think you are less, or broken. I want to be careful with you, John. I want to be sure that what we do is what you want, not what you tell yourself to endure. It comes from the care I have for you. From how much I love you and want to bring you joy.”

"But Harold, don’t normal couples sometimes do something one person wants and the other doesn’t really? Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many husbands in shopping malls. The point is, if it makes you happy, it would make me happy I think. I would want that option on the table.” 

“As long as you don't hate something and as long as you do it out of love not fear.” John tilts his head in a minute curiosity response. “I mean that I will not leave you or abandon you or withhold anything to try to force you, John. I won’t punish or be angry if you say no to something. In fact, I will be glad to hear a no occasionally.”

“Why?” 

“It will help me believe your yeses are real.”

“And you wonder why I want you.” John's smile is a kind Harold has never seen on his face before: soft and wondering. It is a child's smile on a man's face. It makes Harold want to hug him, even ruffle his hair - a ridiculous impulse he will of course not act upon. 

"When we look at the checklists, bear in mind that they are a snapshot in time and cannot possibly cover everything we might do together. We will revisit and revise them as our limits, desires and experiences change. One thing I promise will not change, though, is that I will be yours exclusively. It is, I think, the way I am made. I would ask the same commitment if you. Please. Will you be only mine?”

“It’s all I want. But, before…” There is an anguished expression on John's face again and Harold can guess why. 

“I have had one sexual partner before you. Grace,” he says, easing in, open and slow. 

"I don't know my number, Harold. I tried not to think about it. I wasn't really all there for some of it. And I'm not sure... there was a mission with some torture involved and a lot of men at once. I was in and out of consciousness, which is often how it goes. They had to... reconstruct me afterwards. They tell me everything was repaired, but there might be... issues. I'm sorry." Harold uses every last inch of willpower he possesses to keep his hand steady in John's hair. “It's all right if you didn't…know that. If it changes things. I would understand. It's a lot. I'm a lot.” 

Oh John.

Harold coaxes John upright. 

“I need you to look at me for this.”

They rearrange themselves, cuddled together, curled inward toward each other. Harold sets a gentle hand on John's cheek. 

"My dearest, you don't need to apologise for surviving something awful and you don't have to remember if you don't want to. No shame or blame or taint attaches to you from any of that. I know you have suffered. It makes me want to care for you more, not less. But I was giving you information about me because I wanted you to have it, not as quid pro quo. You don't have to tear yourself open in return. I simply wanted you to understand some things about me and to level the playing field. 

I have only good experiences of sex. It was gentle and what you might call vanilla and it was always respectful and sweet, though nowhere close to being as satisfying and simply holding you That Night. I think I comprehend now why that might be. While I lack physical experience, I have done extensive research, and I think I know what I am likely to enjoy, although I am fully prepared to be surprised. I am looking forward to finding out what you like."

John wriggles and pushes his face into the side of his neck, making a pleased, hungry little noise that goes straight to Harold's cock and he hardens in a rush.

“Well then, John Tallis, John Reese, Man in the Suit, my John, will you be my lover, my partner and, when you wish it, my Submissive?”

“I will.” Tears are flowing down John's face, but Harold is not sure he is aware of them. His expression is rapt. 

“My name, my real name, is Harold Thomas Truman.” John's eyes widen impossibly further. “If you want to know things about my early life, please ask the Machine rather than researching on any other computer. Any activity around that name might trigger scrutiny and get me killed.”

“Why did you tell me?”

“Because I trust you. I love you. I want you to know me, to have all of me, every part that I can give you.” For a moment, John closes his eyes and goes utterly still, like a stone saint in his ascetic beauty and the serious set of his features. When he opens his eyes again, they are blazing . 

“Harold Thomas Truman, Finch, and any and all aliases, bird or otherwise, reclusive billionaire, genius hacker, creator of the Machine, will you be my lover, my partner and my Dom?”

“I will, John. Gladly.”

It feels as though they just made marriage vows and John leans forward as though to seal them with a kiss but then stops himself, holding still, and Harold realises they have one more difficult thing to do before they can rest. 

 +++

“Before we go to bed, to sleep - together or separately, as you wish - there is one more thing I will ask of you, my dearest.” 

“What is it, Harold?” John will give it, wants to give it, is desperate to give it, whatever it is.

“I have done most of the talking, and that is right and fair considering the imbalance in our relationship before this. But if we are to do this well, we will need to communicate honestly and clearly. We cannot conduct our conversations in grunts and whines and nudges and nods and strategic silences. Not without harming or misunderstanding each other and I don't want to harm you, John. So I would like you to start your side of that tonight by telling me something you want from me. Something I can give you tonight.”

Everything in John freezes like a wild animal at the scent of danger.

“You can say it. You can whisper it. I speak several languages. Morse code. Tap code. Sign. Sing it. Play it. Type it into the computer. Text me from your phone. Find me a picture of it. Borrow someone else's words. But tell me something you want.”

Everything in John locks down tight. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t. The fear rises, thick and black and smothering every piece of this bright new joy. Wanting is not safe. Not when said aloud. Be careful what you wish for. They'll use it to destroy you.

But Harold is asking. Harold wants this. 

His Dom wants this. 

And John wants to be good, to be obedient, to be loved, to be -

John wants to be kissed. 

He just can’t ask for it. 

But maybe - 

Maybe - 

At the edge of his vision, the leather bound volume shines like a beacon in the lamplight. 

It’s a language they have already shared, tradiing quotations on stakeouts.

It’s something John knows and Harold loves. 

And he won't be the first tongue tied lover to borrow from this particular source. 

Slowly, carefully, he reaches out and takes Harold’s injured hand in his. He doesn't try to keep the tremors from his hands, knowing it's a lost cause.He stares at this precious, miraculous hand that has saved more lives with its movements than anyone will ever know, certainly more than his own have saved with knife and grenade and gun. His own hands should be stained black and red with the sins he has committed but here in the light they are clean and Harold has decided they are worthy. His Master has decided they are worthy. 

“If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:

My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

To smooth that rough touch with a tender…kiss?” When Harold does not pull his hand away, John dips his head and presses his lips gently to the back of that precious hand. 

Harold smiles. 

“Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,

Which mannerly devotion shows in this;

For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,

And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.” He slides their hands together, palms touching. 

John nods. Accepting. A kiss of any other sort was probably too much to hope for. 

“Your line, John,” Harold says. “Go on…” And John is suddenly soaring on updrafts of hope. Harold will let him have this. He just has to work for it. 

Tell me what you want.

“Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?”

“Ay, pilgrim,” Harold smirks, “lips that they must use in prayer.”

“O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;

They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.” He’s not kidding. 

Harold starts to move forward, then grimaces slightly in pain, then laughs and gestures at himself ruefully, the words suddenly apt.

“Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.”

“Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.” And John surges up and kisses that smiling mouth. 

It is everything he ever dreamed it would be: messy and awkward and lush and gentle and deep, Harold meeting him half way, pressing his own longings into John's flesh. 

They pull back for air and Harold quirks a brow, but the next lines are anything but flippant for John. He feels them to the very root of his soul. 

“Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.”

“Then have my lips the sin that they have took.” That's horrifyingly true, isn't it? In taking on someone like John, Harold has taken on all that darkness… But then, Harold has walked in the darkness too, and for longer. It has not overpowered him yet. 

“Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged!

Give me my sin again.”

This time, it’s a full face-holding, hair rumpling devouring kiss, their tongues duelling, their hot breaths on each other's skin. John feels drunk. Daring. 

When they draw apart, long minutes later, Harold smiles at him, a smile he has never yet seen on his love’s face. It’s wide and happy and silly and soft and fond and John wants to consume it.

“John?”

“Yes, Harold?”

“You kiss by the book.” 

They discover another new thing, then. That it is possible to laugh and kiss at the same time.