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The first time is an honest accident.
Their number’s bodyguard keeps coming at him, and the floor of the restaurant is slippery with whatever was in the bottle they knocked over in the fight. When at last John puts the guy through the window, he slips and stumbles halfway after him, yanked by the momentum of his falling body. He regains his balance quickly enough, but his arm drags along the edge of broken glass. It slices his shirt open, and the skin beneath.
Back at the library, he rolls his sleeve back to assess the damage. The dried blood has made the cotton stick to the wound like a bandaid and he grimaces as he peels it off, but underneath, the injury is nothing to worry about, just a long, shallow gash along his forearm.
He’s aware of Harold watching him from the doorway, the small noise of disapproval Harold makes at his show of discomfort. But it takes him by surprise when Harold says:
“That would heal better with a few stitches. May I?”
It only makes sense to let him.
John cleans his arm, with water, with the antiseptic wipes Harold gives him, and sits down at the table in the chair Harold pulls out for him. Harold puts one hand on his wrist to steady him, and John lets out a long breath.
Harold’s touch is firm, competent. He takes such care with his work, with John.
It’s odd, that sensation. Being handled as though it matters that he shouldn’t break.
After a few stitches, Harold stops, looks up at him.
“Mr. Reese, are you all right?” he asks. “Do you require additional analgesics?”
Harold has already smeared his skin with local anesthetic, handed him ibuprofen and watched him down them; John is feeling no pain at all where the needle pierces his skin. But he can hear himself breathing; rapid, shallow breaths in the silence between them. His heart is beating overtime, pulse pounding quick beneath Harold’s hand on his wrist. His mouth is too dry.
“I’m good, Finch,” he says. Makes himself relax. “Just get on with it, would you?”
That night, back in the apartment Harold gave him, lying in bed, the room striped with the streetlight falling through the half-open blinds, he lets his fingers wander to the bandaged wound. Pressing down, he can feel the individual stitches beneath the gauze—small, evenly spaced, Harold’s meticulous attention to detail sewn into his skin. It makes him feel warm inside. Safe. He falls asleep with his hand still curled around his arm.
The second time is an accident, too.
The thugs who have him captured believe in the kind of interrogation that requires exposed skin, and so he’s half-naked, if still unharmed, when he manages to break free, knock out the guards in the room with him, and jump out the window. His hands are tied and the distance to the ground is greater than he would like—he lands badly, bare shoulder to the gravel driveway when he falls, dragging across the ground before he can break the momentum and push to his feet. When he finds his car and has time to pull on a t-shirt from the bag of spare clothes he keeps in the trunk for emergencies, the soft weight of the cotton hurts enough to tell him the scrape definitely broke through skin, but it’s a minor inconvenience in the scheme of things. He needs to focus on getting back downtown before their number carries out his plan.
It’s 2 a.m. before it’s all played out, before he’s sitting across from Harold in the library, finishing the sandwich Harold put in front of him that is the first food he’s had all day. He washes the last bite down with a swig from his bottle of water, wincing a little as the movement makes his shirt catch against the abrasions.
Harold tilts his head, watching him. He looks crisp in his buttoned-up suit despite the late hour, alert behind his glasses.
“Did you manage to tend to your shoulder?” he asks. “That fall looked quite bad, watching through the security camera.”
“It’s nothing,” John says, automatically. And it is nothing—it doesn’t in any way affect his fitness for combat. “Just a scrape.”
“Take off your shirt,” Finch says, getting to his feat. “I’ll help you clean it up.”
John’s muscles tense.
“You really don’t have to.”
Harold is already by the cabinet where he keeps the med kit, doesn’t pause in getting the supplies out.
“No,” he says, “but I would like to. I much prefer knowing you’ve been adequately patched up.” He turns back around, limps the few steps to the table and puts down the things he’s grabbed. Looks at John. “Mr. Reese, if you don’t mind.”
It’s phrased as a courteous request, but it feels like an order.
John obeys, pulls his shirt over his head and drops it in his lap. Places his palms flat on the table.
“Good,” Harold says, stepping behind him.
John’s head falls forward between his shoulders, exposing his back. He feels calm, suddenly. His body is tired and his mind is content with a job well done, and Harold is touching him. One hand steady on his good shoulder—balance, connection—the other washing the scrapes clean. Slowly, carefully, the sting of antiseptic wiping away the lingering traces of dirt and gravel, of dried blood. It hurts, but the pain is soothing, the burn of Harold’s attention seeping sharp through the cracks in his skin. He feels himself arc into it, curving his spine towards Harold’s hands. Harold squeezes his shoulder in response.
“Almost done,” he says, but there’s a stretch of stillness before he lets go, a moment when his hands are just holding. John keeps his eyes closed, keeps breathing.
For the next week or so, there’s a moment every morning when he wakes up and turns onto his back, when his healing shoulder touches the sheets and the sting of it shoots through him, when all he can think about is the warmth of Harold’s hands. It’s such a bright sensation, it leaves no room for the shadows of his nightmares to cling.
The third time isn’t exactly on purpose.
When the would-be robbers tie him up, it’s all part of the plan. It lets them believe the information he’s given them is genuine, extracted by means of the gun they pressed to his temple, let’s them trust John is an accountant in the number’s firm who has just told them how to access her millions. Letting them restrain him helps steer them straight into the devious trap Finch has created, where Carter is waiting to arrest them as soon as they make their move. John doesn’t like being kept away from the action, unable to intervene if something should go wrong, but he isn’t in any danger, or even in much discomfort.
“Mr. Reese,” Harold says in his ear almost the second John hears the bad guys’ car drive off. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Finch,” he says. “Don’t worry about me, just focus on catching these creeps.”
Harold makes a soft, scoffing noise that sounds entirely unimpressed. In the background, John hears the familiar rapid clicking of his fingers moving on a keyboard.
“I can multitask, Mr. Reese. It will be at least an hour until I can get down there and untie you, though. Will you be safe for that long in your current position? Blood flow and breathing unrestricted?”
“Yes, Harold,” John says, rolling his eyes. ”I can wiggle all my fingers and toes.” His tone is sarcastic, but even as he speaks, he catches himself checking, all the same, moving his feet, rolling his wrists, testing the tightness and give in the bonds.
“If you had any reasonable care for your own safety, Mr. Reese,” Harold says, “I would be far more reassured by you making light of it.” There is a pause, not even the sound of the keyboard coming through the comms. Then: “Our number has arrived at the bank. Time for me to do my part. I’ll be with you in about an hour.”
“Good luck,” John says. In his ear, the radio link is quiet.
He shifts in his seat again, feeling out his range of motion.
He’s sitting in the center of a darkened room, his ankles tied to the legs of the chair, his hands secured behind his back. The rope is thin, synthetic and rough, more like cheap twine, really. He made a show at first, when he let himself be restrained, of resisting; his wrists are sore where he pulled against the ties. The knots aren’t too tight, he wasn’t lying about his circulation being fine, but there might be bruises there, marks, from that initial struggle. It occurs to him that Harold might see them, when he cuts him loose. Harold asked about his physical state—he might want to check him for damage.
He’s twisting his wrists against the rope before he is aware of doing it, grinding against the coarse fibers. Seeking out the burn. He only realizes when the pain gets sharp enough that he must be cutting through skin.
He goes still then, settles in to wait.
The pain in his wrists feels like reassurance.
Harold shows up at the promised time, bringing news that their number is safe and the criminals arrested, and sheers to cut John’s ropes. When they fall away, Harold makes a soft noise John can’t interpret, but he says nothing, just shifts around the chair and kneels stiffly down to cut John’s legs free. In the car, he hands John a bottle of water, watches him drink before he puts the key in the ignition. They drive back to the library in silence.
There’s something tingling under John’s skin as he follows Finch up the stairs, something strangely like nervousness, a jittery anticipation.
They’re barely inside when Finch stops and turns to face him, tells him:
“Show me your wrists, please, Mr. Reese.”
It feels awkward, holding his hands out to Harold, palms turned up between them, presenting vulnerable points of his body, the insides of his wrists where blood flows, nerves run just beneath the thinnest skin, exposed. But he knows, despite the wording, that Harold isn’t asking—he recognizes the command by the instinctiveness of his own response.
Below the rolled-up cuffs of his shirt, his wrists are red, abraded. In a thin line across the juts of bone on the sides, stretching over the pulse points, the outer layer of skin is flayed away. The wounds aren’t deep, but they look ugly, raw.
Out of the blue, he has a flashing memory of Kara, the kind of mocking words she would have for an injury like this, how it would make her want to hurt him more. Press his wrists into the bed, riding him, dig her nails into his torn flesh. Maybe place her own restraints over the burns from the ropes, tight enough to cut into the wounds, a sharper layer of fresh pain to grind like sandpaper across the old.
Harold takes a step forward, closer.
John swallows, keeps still.
Harold takes his hands, grasps them from below, John’s fists held in the cups of his palms. His head is bent, looking down at John’s injuries. The last afternoon sunlight through the window catches in his spiky hair, gilding it. John has an impulse to touch it, feel how soft it is, a thought quashed as soon as it appears. It’s moot, anyway—he won’t move until Harold tells him to.
Harold strokes his thumbs over John’s wrists, just below the rope burns, along the heels of John’s hands. The touch is infinitely gentle, brushing warm and light across his bruises, tracing the lines of the abrasions but carefully avoiding the broken skin.
“Oh, John,” Harold says. His voice is as soft as the brush of his fingers.
John can’t find any words, and Harold doesn’t seem to expect them. For a long moment, he simply stands there and let’s himself feel Harold’s hands on his skin. Feels them soothe the pain away.
Then Harold straightens and steps back.
“Go and sit down,” he says. Another order. “I’ll get the first aid kit and bandage you up.”
John obeys.
In his own bathroom hours later, getting ready for bed, having done his best to wash himself off without getting his bandages wet, he looks up and sees himself in the mirror above the sink. He’s wearing nothing but those bandages, wrapped stark white around his wrists, secure around the hurt beneath.
It strikes him that in a way these are Harold’s bonds tied directly on top of the cuts in his skin. Not another layer of pain to burn brighter than the first, not that at all. But blotting out all other marks, like Kara used to do, leaving nothing but his own.
It makes the ground shift under John’s feet, that realization, a change in perception that has him grabbing at the edge of the sink for support, his head swimming.
It never occurred to him that you could be branded with something that isn’t pain. With the negation of pain.
It blurs his vision, how much he wants that brand to stay.
The next time is, more or less, on purpose. And the next. And the one after that.
A cut to the face he could have avoided, if he’d ducked as fast as he normally does. A baseball bat that catches him hard in the ribs, as if he didn’t know to twist away and take the blow at a better angle. A punch he doesn’t pull in time, though he can clearly see that follow-through will scrape his knuckles raw.
Letting Finch take his hand, hold it still to wash the blood away. Lifting his arms to give Finch access as he tapes his ribs, wraps him up tight enough not to break. Tilting his head back, neck stretched out, exposed, gazing up into Finch’s face, his look of concentration when he stitches up the gash in John’s eyebrow.
He doesn’t put himself in danger, doesn’t go out of his way to invite injuries that couldn’t just as easily have happened in the normal course of his work. Doesn’t allow himself to get seriously hurt. But he does let injury happen, instead of using his skill to turn it away. Minor cuts and bruises, nothing that could impair his performance in the field, but just enough that Harold will order him to stay after the mission is over, will tend to his wounds in that careful, unhesitating way, turning John’s body as he sees fit.
He loses track of how many times he does it, but he doesn’t think it’s too often, doesn’t think it’s too much.
Just often enough that it doesn’t fade, his awareness of Harold’s touch, that dizzying sense of his attention that keeps his heart beating steady in the dark. He is careful.
But of course, if anything has a pattern, sooner or later, Harold Finch will see it.
John should have been expecting sooner.
This time, it’s a knife fight in a hotel stairwell. The suddenly violent climax of two dull days spent posing as participants in a conference on solar power technology, John hurtling down the steps after the hired assassin they’ve exposed, when at the bottom she realizes the exit is blocked and turns on him.
“Look out, she has a knife!” Finch says in his ear a fraction of a second before he sees the blade glint, slashing through the air.
He’s slowed down just in time that he has the balance to jump back up a step without falling, move clear of the blade. But the assassin is striking from lower ground, off-center and unsteady in her desperate change of course; there is no possibility of her thrust having enough force to cause any real harm. John stays where he is.
The knife catches him in the thigh, a brightness of pain there and gone again, quickly forgotten as he counter-attacks, twisting the blade from her hand. In the flurry of motion, he isn’t sure if he imagines Finch’s indrawn breath over the comms at the moment her cut finds his skin.
Afterwards, he hands her over to Fusco in the side street behind the hotel, along with the thumb drive of evidence Finch has downloaded against her and the oil company executive who hired her. An easy, high profile collar for the NYPD. He checks in with Harold as he steps back into the lobby.
“That’s Ms. Danzig and her employer taken care of. Everything good on your end?”
“I’m just about to escort Dr Kim to deliver their speech to the conference, now that they are safe from anyone trying to prevent them from sharing their discoveries. I would invite you to join us, Mr. Reese, but judging from the security feeds, you look somewhat too disheveled to avoid attention. Why don’t you freshen up and I will see you upstairs after this.”
John looks down at himself, at the long tear in the wool of his pants and the blood staining the frayed edges of the fabric, smearing his skin visible through the gap.
“You have a point,” he concedes. “Wish Dr Kim good luck from me.”
Kim’s address should take at least an hour, and John wouldn’t put it past Finch to stick around for the Q and A afterward to hear the inevitable technical discussions of the invention they’re presenting. He’ll be a while. John might as well use the time as suggested.
Upstairs in the room Harold set him up in as part of the conference attendee cover—next door to Harold’s own—he strips off his ruined suit and steps in the shower. The hot water stings a little when it hits the cut on his thigh, but the knick is shallow beneath the dried blood that washes away into the drain and the bleeding doesn’t start up again. John bends his head under the spray and lets the water pound the tension of the chase out of his muscles.
He’s still drying himself off when there’s a knock on his door. Checking his watch on the way as he crosses the room, his feet damp on the carpet, reveals it hasn’t even been half an hour. He tucks his towel around his waist and makes sure he knows the fastest route to his gun on the nightstand before he looks through the peephole, but it is only Finch after all. John opens the door.
“Not that interested in revolutionary developments in solar technology, then?” he says, a soft tease by way of greeting, stepping aside to let Finch in.
Harold looks at him, a sharp flick of his eyes down and up again, taking in John’s state of undress, before he steps past him, into the room.
John swallows, closes the door behind him.
“I had somewhere else to be,” Finch says.
He has a small, compact medkit in his hand. John supposes he must have packed it in his luggage for the hotel stay. Anticipating probable scenarios.
“I’ll go put some clothes on,” John offers. It seems a normal thing to say, to do.
“It would seem more efficient for me to look at that cut on your leg first,” Finch says. He’s put the medkit down on the desk, is zipping it open.
“It’s all right,” John says. “You don’t have to do that.”
It’s been some time since John said that, tried to shrug off Harold’s offer of care as if he doesn’t crave it, as if he’s indifferent—he isn’t sure why he does it tonight. Except that something feels different, a tension, maybe, in the always stiff line of Harold’s back, something closed off about the tone of his voice. It occurs to John that this might be too intimate, the setting, the places on his body Finch would have to touch to bandage the cut. That somehow a line is being crossed.
Harold turns to face him.
“No,” he says. “I don’t have to.” He smiles, a thin, rueful smile that John can’t quite read. “But you know, of course, that I will. Why don’t you sit down on the bed.”
John does as he’s told.
Harold takes his jacket off, folds it over the back of the desk chair. He’s still wearing his tie, and the brown waistcoat of his three-piece suit remains buttoned almost all the way up to the perfect Windsor knot at his collar, but by the standards of Harold Finch, it feels significantly less clothed. Deliberately so, as if he wants to put John at ease in his naked skin by peeling off one of his own layers. Evening their playing field.
The interesting thing is that it works, John does feel less self-conscious when Harold steps over and sits down next to him on the bed.
He tries not to dwell on the idea of Harold undressing in his bedroom.
“I take it you cleaned it yourself in the shower?” Harold asks.
“Yeah, it really is only a scratch, my pants took most of the hit.”
“Good. Let me see.”
John pulls the towel up and aside, to expose the upper part of his left thigh. He keeps his eyes trained on the injury, not looking at Harold’s face, but that means he sees Harold reach out and trace his thumb along the line of the cut, sees how close his hand is to the towel that covers John’s groin. His skin tingles in the wake of Harold’s touch.
“You’re right,” Harold says, “it doesn’t need stitches. I’m just going to put a bandage over it to keep it clean.”
John nods, wets his dry lips.
Harold brought the necessary supplies over to the bed. When he bends closer to tape a compress over the long tear in his thigh, John feels his breath on his skin, warm and steady. He is aware of the closeness of their bodies, all along his side.
It’s over quickly, and Harold’s hands don’t linger, not like they sometimes do.
“All done,” Harold says, and gathers up the scissors and the roll of medical tape as he gets to his feet.
“Thanks.” John isn’t sure what happens next. If Harold is about to leave; if John should get dressed and go find dinner; if they should just pack up and go home, job done. He realizes that a part of his mind is half expecting Harold to order them room service—Harold often makes sure he eats and drinks when he’s injured, as though that’s part and parcel with bandaging him up. It’s weird that he’s taking that for granted. Unsafe.
At the desk, Harold packs the medical kit back up. He doesn’t put his jacket on again, though, doesn’t turn around towards John. For a long, silent moment he just stands there, hands gripping the back of the desk chair.
“Harold?”
“There’s something here I think we need to talk about,” Harold says.
John’s pulse picks up speed. His hand in his lap curls tight around the flannel of the towel. He makes his fingers let go, pulls the towel down over the bandaged wound.
“Yeah?” he says. Tries to sound casual. “What’s that?”
Harold does turn then, leans back against the desk.
“Lately, in the past several months, there has been a significant increase in the number of injuries you sustain while doing your job. This concerns me, Mr. Reese, and I’ve put a great deal of thought into discerning the reason behind it. I’ve arrived at four possible causes.”
“Finch—” John says, a warning. Harold keeps right on talking.
“One: There has been a corresponding marked increase in the difficulty of your missions. Now, admittedly, you are mostly the person dealing with the physical challenges, but I’ve been actively engaged in some capacity in all these missions myself, and though the level of danger always varies quite a bit from case to case, I can’t say that I’ve been able to discern an overall trend of heightened risk. Correct me if I’m wrong.”
John shakes his head.
“I didn’t think so.The second possibility, then, is that these minor injuries are a symptom of an underlying physical cause. A more serious injury or condition that is impairing your ability to keep yourself safe in the field. Apart from the fact that you keep getting injured, I haven’t picked up on any signs that you might be unwell, but, John, if there is anything—”
There is such concern in Harold’s face. Worry. The idea that he’s been scared for even a moment that something could actually be seriously wrong with John, because of this— John can’t bear to hear him talk about it, have to imagine it.
“I’m not sick, Harold,” he blurts out, interrupting. He feels awkward, as soon as he’s said it. He hadn’t meant to say anything, he doesn’t know how to have this conversation, doesn’t want to. He looks down at the floor, at Harold’s well-polished shoes. “I’m not in any worse shape than I have been, since you’ve known me.”
“I’m glad,” Harold says.
There’s a pause, as if he wants to give those words time to sink in. Maybe give John time to catch up to the fact that they are talking about this. The silence is warm, steady, filled with the gentleness of Harold’s words; John takes a deep breath, breathes it in.
“The third explanation I’ve considered,” Harold says, “is that you are distracted. That there’s something on your mind that is keeping you from giving your full attention to the task at hand. I have no expectation that you should tell me everything that goes on in your life, but I hope you know that I’m always ready to listen if that would be of help. And if you need to take time away to deal with a personal matter, you need only say the word. That said. If anything, these past months, I’ve thought you more focused. Centered, I suppose is a word for it. Balanced in a new way. But of course I may have read you wrong.”
John thinks about the calm that comes over him when Harold is treating his injuries. The stillness inside, afterward, that lets him sleep at night as though nothing could harm him. The steadiness that lingers for days, making everything feel easier, less fraught and complicated.
“No,” he says. “I haven’t been distracted.”
“No,” Harold agrees. He sniffs—that indrawn breath that comes with a characteristic twitch of his face, a tell for tension, or heightened emotion—and shifts his weight, puts more of it on his bad leg. It occurs to John that perhaps he doesn’t want to have this conversation either, that he’s using the structured points of his argument to force himself, not just John, toward his conclusion, leaving no room for retreat. The idea is oddly reassuring. “Which leads us to the final possibility: that you are deliberately letting yourself get hurt.”
It’s not quite a question. John doesn’t answer it, though Harold leaves a pause where he could. He doesn’t have the words, and his silence is admission enough. He feels caught out, cornered. The part of his brain drilled in threat response until it became instinct is trying to remind him where the exits are, where his gun is, showing him every object in the room that could be a weapon. As if Harold would harm him. He clenches his teeth, makes his mind be quiet. He knows better than that.
Harold could stop, though. Harold could make John stop getting injured, could stop the thing that happens between them when he does.
Well, John knew it couldn’t last.
“All right,” Harold says, nodding as if something has been decided. “I can think of a couple of reasons why you would do that.” He shifts again, readjusts his glasses. “A: You do it for the sake of the pain. In which case, I would like to emphasize that there are safer, more controlled ways of receiving pain, if you want it. Unless the risk is part of what you’re after, in which case—”
Jesus.
“It’s not the pain.” Or— He thinks of Kara, of her hands pressing into the most sensitive parts of his body, flaying everything away but that too-bright sensation; thinks of others, men whose names he can’t remember, who liked to see him bleed and shake; thinks of Jessica, who gave him, sometimes, in the dark, precise instructions on what to do to please her, but who could never have conceived of asking for his blood, or for how long he could stay silent with salt poured into an open wound; thinks of walking home, two weeks ago, with Harold’s bandages wrapped tight around his chest, a flare of pain on every indrawn breath, his bruised ribs expanding, again and again, against the solidity of Harold's care, his world lit up with it. There’s a dishonesty in giving only half the answer—he finds he wants to tell the truth. “It could be,” he adds. “But it isn’t.”
“Ah,” Harold tilts his head, watching John. Carefully filing away whatever it is he’s seeing. “Understood.” Perhaps it really is; John’s skin prickles at the idea. “That brings us, then, to option B. What comes after the pain. The part where I tend to your injuries. John, do you let yourself get hurt because I take care of you afterwards?”
It’s the first direct question Harold has asked; they’re far past the point where John could lie in the face of it. He could dissemble, or avoid, refuse the question altogether. He has the exit points mapped out—he could get up and leave. His heart is beating faster than it did during the knife fight, before.
“Yes,” he says.
Harold lets out a breath, as though he’s been holding it in, some of the tension draining from his posture.
“Thank you,” he says. “I know that was hard to admit.”
He runs his hand through his hair, then unbuttons the top button on his collar, loosens his tie, just a little.The skin is pale at the hollow of his throat beneath.
John cuts his eyes away.
Harold pulls out the desk chair, turns it around to face the bed, and sits down. In the small hotel room, that brings them closer together.
“It’s special to me, too,” Harold says. “When you let me patch you up. How vulnerable you allow yourself to be with me, the way you submit to my care. It gives me a quite embarrassing degree of satisfaction. But not if it comes at the price of you deliberately harming yourself, John. That’s not acceptable.”
“Okay,” John says. His voice sounds flat. Hollow.
“No, John,” Harold says, “it’s not. You’re...in my service, is one way of putting it. It’s only right that I care for you in return. That I provide for your needs. But you don’t have to be injured for me to do that. I apologize if I ever made you think so.”
John looks up sharply, meeting Harold’s gaze.
“Harold, you haven’t done anything wrong.” The idea is absurd, John is the one who’s been out there, getting beaten up on purpose. All Harold’s done is be good to him.
“I let you get hurt unnecessarily, of course that was wrong. But, John, I believe I can do better, if you’ll let me.”
John shakes his head.
“I don’t expect you to do anything.”
Harold blinks, a too-long beat of silence.
“No, you wouldn’t,” he says at last. His tone is soft, regretful. “Who ever gave you any reason to think you could count on the people for whom you put yourself in the line of fire to provide anything you need? But I think we can agree that there were things you enjoyed and wanted more of here, responses you wanted from me that I kept repeating, or you wouldn’t have kept getting hurt to provoke them. And I don’t think it was just the medical attention itself?”
John shakes his head again. He feels unmoored, adrift in the current of Harold’s reasoning, unable to predict with any certainty where he will end up. Except that his skin is tingling with something like anticipation, as though there’s a promise here of something he could have, if he wants it, something he can’t quite make out the shape of.
Harold leans forward a little, leans closer. When he goes on talking, John can see his throat work in the open v of his unbuttoned collar, skin as naked as his own. He wonders if Harold feels the anticipation, too, if he knows what it means.
“You seemed to also like when I brought you food and drink,” Harold says, “when I made sure that you were fed and watered, as it were. That’s the key point, isn’t it? Of me tending your injuries, as well? That I took charge of your physical well-being. Anything else?”
John swallows. He’s leaned in closer, too, he realizes, elbows on his knees, as if drawn. He clasps his hands together, looks down at them, down at the floor. Around his feet, the carpet is stained darker with water from the shower, droplets transferred from his skin.
“I liked that you touched me,” he says. “How you touched me.”
Harold shifts in his chair, a rustle of fabric, the wood creaking.
“Skin to skin, or that I moved you as I wanted?”
John shuts his eyes.
“Both.”
Silence again. He can feel Harold hover at the edge of it, outside his firewalls, looking for the point to breach. Or maybe just deciding if he should.
John would tell him, if he knew.
Harold takes a breath, loud in the quiet between them. The long inhale before a plunge. John waits, makes himself wait; a still, clear surface. Doesn’t think of what Harold might find at the bottom.
“John,” Harold says. “Forgive me if this is out of line, but— One way in which I could care for you, instead of what we have been doing, is sexually.”
John leans back, away. It’s the opposite of what he wants to do, but what he wants to do—the sudden sharp impulse to sink to his knees, press his forehead to Harold’s lap, and beg—is terrifying.
He smiles, a lopsided twist of his lips that he recognizes as cynical. Bitter.
“Finch, are you offering to sleep with me so that I’ll stop getting hurt?”
Harold draws a breath in through his nose, a noise like a scoff, dismissive. But his voice is still gentle.
“No. I’m asking if you would allow me to take care of your sexual needs, to control that aspect of your physical well-being. I’m asking because I want you, John, and because I want to give you pleasure. I want to handle you with the care you deserve and have gone to unconscionable lengths to receive. You can tell me no, but if you do, I hope it’s in reply to the question I’m actually posing.”
“I—” He stops, wets his lips, tries to start again. He feels paralyzed, caught in the headlights of his own wants, everything he’s afraid of, everything Harold has never done. Everything Harold has done, and could do. John’s hands are unsteady with it, with shallow breaths coming too fast. Harold is watching him, waiting; head cocked, myopic and birdlike and seeing right through him. Seeing him. There is only one possible answer. “I’m not gonna turn that down.”
Harold is on his feet, then, one quick, jerky motion getting him up from the chair, and he takes the single step forward necessary to bring him to John, takes one unwavering step more.
John parts his legs to let him in, let him close. Harold standing between his open thighs, the towel he’s wearing slipping undone, the fine wool of Harold’s pants just brushing his skin. Harold lays his hand against John’s cheek, the pad of his thumb beneath his jawbone, and tilts his head up. The lightest pressure, but confident, expecting John to bare his jugular with no resistance, as a matter of course. When John does, it’s a weight falling from him, his shoulders sinking, back straightening, body opening up towards Harold, and it’s easy, so easy. Lips parting, and Harold lays his thumb there, traces the shape of John’s mouth.
“Good,” he says. “You’re so good.”
John moans, a small, eager noise he can’t contain, and, god, the expression on Harold’s face, the hunger.
Harold leans forward, touches his lips to John’s cheekbone. Soft kisses, along the arc of it, brushes to John’s temple, skimming his skin like a promise.
“All I want is to be good to you,” Harold says, words soft in his ear.
John shivers.
“Please.” It’s strangled, barely audible, but Harold’s mouth is at his earlobe, tongue tracing the shape of it, his free hand on John’s shoulder, stroking the edge of his collar bone, and whatever it is he’s pleading for, it’s already here, already being done to him. All he has to do is allow it.
He opens his mouth wider, tongues at the tip of Harold’s thumb where it rests against his lower lip. Harold gasps, his grip on John’s shoulder tightening for just a second, as if he needs the support to stay standing. Then he lets go completely and steps back.
“Lie back on the bed,” he says. “Head on the pillow. You can leave the towel on the floor.”
John moves to obey.
He feels self-conscious, letting the towel fall, settling naked on top of the sheets. But Harold isn’t really watching him. Instead he’s unfastening his cufflinks, laying them down on the nightstand.
“Place your hands above your head,” he instructs, folding his sleeve back, rolling it neatly up to the elbow. John’s mouth is dry, his cock heavy against his belly, thickening with anticipation. “I will expect you to keep them there. You can hold on to the pillow if that makes it easier.”
John raises his arms and grips the upper edge of his pillow, glad for the anchor point.
Harold looks up, freezes halfway through rolling up his other sleeve. His eyes are wide behind his glasses.
“Oh my,” he says. “That is beautiful.” His voice is rough.
Heat breaks out across John’s skin, a flush of exhilaration, delight. His muscles flex, as though his body wants to arch up into Harold’s approval. A familiar response, even if the situation is new.
It takes a few more moments, then Harold remembers what he was doing and tucks the last fold in his shirtsleeve into place, his gaze still on John.
“Are you comfortable?” he asks.
It’s a disorienting question. John’s comfort is not what people ask for when they have him like this. Usually they want him to be anything but.
Harold isn’t like those people, though. Harold wants things that John couldn’t imagine on his own, he realized that much the first day they met. It didn’t take him much longer to realize that whatever Harold can imagine, John wants him to have.
He lets himself feel the softness of the mattress beneath him, shifts his head so that the pillow supports his neck. Allows his legs to relax, to fall open.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m good here, Finch.”
Harold sits down beside him on the edge of the bed, level with his hips, the mattress dipping with his weight.
“Not quite yet, I think,” he says. He reaches his hand out, across John’s body, lays it against the curve of his hip. His thumb strokes along the cresting bone, inches from the hard shaft of John’s erection. “But we’ll get you there, don’t worry.”
His smile is warm, and devious.
John’s dick twitches. Drops of fluid form at the tip, drip onto his belly.
Harold cups his other hand around John’s balls.
There is something filthy about that move that is startling, coming from Harold Finch, always so polite and proper, so mild-mannered. But if Harold was uncertain earlier, before John told him yes to this, his hands are absolutely steady now, calm and unhurried. And the thing about Harold is, if he decides to do something, he goes all in—that part isn’t unexpected at all. He rubs John’s balls together, rolls them in his fingers. An easy, unhesitating possession, claiming the most vulnerable part of John, as he’s done from the very beginning. John keeps still, would stay still if Harold’s fist tightened, closed, ground his testicles down into pain, but Harold’s touch remains gentle, cradling John in his palm like the weight of something precious. Something delicate.
John has to close his eyes, turn his head away. His chest is heaving.
Harold’s hand on his hip strokes up his flank. Soothing, calm.
“It’s all right, John. You’re doing so well for me.” He squeezes John’s balls—light, careful pressure, perfectly calculated—and John whimpers with the pleasure of it, bites his lip around the sound to keep it in. “I’m not going to draw this out, not this time. I know you can take whatever I ask you to take, but I think you’ll agree the conversation we’ve just had was quite emotionally draining enough. I have no need to push you further up against your limits. All I want today is for you to feel good.” He lets go of John’s sac, slides his hand up to wrap his fingers around the length of John’s cock. “Feel free to come whenever you’re ready.”
The first pull sends heat rushing up John’s spine, flooding through his nervous system. His grip tightens on the pillow, his muscles seizing with the sensory input. Harold twists his palm over the head of his cock, capturing the moisture leaking from him, and the next stroke is slippery, firm and smooth, and John is shaking, out of control.
Out of his own control.
Harold has him, Harold is handling his body, giving him what he needs. Harold knows what he needs, John trusts him to know, like he trusts Harold’s instructions in his ear in the field, when the bullets are flying. It’s just that no one ever told him he needed this: the reassuring caresses of Harold’s free hand petting his side; the warmth in Harold’s voice that keeps talking him through it, keeps telling him he’s good, and pretty, and cared for; the unrelenting gentleness of Harold’s touch that’s building the pleasure inside him too quickly to stop or ward off or defend himself against. In his chest, his heart keeps expanding, a throbbing ache of emotions that his ribs can’t contain, that will break him apart. His eyes are still closed, squeezed shut against all of it, but he can hear himself now, the noises he’s making, giving his position away. There’s nowhere else to hide.
Then Harold’s hand on his flank slides lower, along the crease of his groin, over the inside of his thigh—vulnerable skin exposed without thinking, soft touch making his cock pulse in Harold’s grip, his balls draw up tighter—and settles directly on top of the bandaged cut.
John’s eyes fly open, reflex and instinct. Harold is watching his face, smiles at him.
It isn’t painful, the wound is too shallow and Harold isn’t pressing down. It’s just a weight, against the place where his skin was broken, against the place where Harold chose to mend it. A reminder.
“That’s it,” Harold says, encouraging, as if John is on the verge of grasping a complex thread of logic. His hand on John’s cock is moving faster, gripping him harder. “Let me take care of you.” He strokes his thumb along the outer edge of the bandage, over John’s inner thigh, where the skin is delicate, unmarked. Leans in, closer, confiding a secret. “It doesn’t have to hurt.”
John comes.
Every part of him that shatters remains whole.
“That’s Ellison safely delivered into the arms of the FBI,” John says, closing the door behind him as he returns to the library. “Despite all the concerned parties who didn’t want him to go.”
Finch is at the computer, fingers busy on the keyboard. His eyes don’t leave the screen.
“Good work, Mr. Reese,” he says, and John’s skin prickles predictably at the words. He’s been more consciously aware of that sensation the last few weeks, since their night at the hotel; here and now, it takes the anticipation that’s been thrumming inside him since he left Federal Plaza and turns it into something solid, a certainty. “Give me a few more minutes and I will have hacked into all the co-conspirators’ accounts. The agent in charge of the case may find an anonymous gift of evidence corroborating Mr. Ellison’s testimony quite useful. I shouldn’t be long.”
“Every bit helps,” John says. “Take your time.”
There’s a bottle of water standing on the table, waiting. Unopened, but still cold from the fridge, condensation clinging to the plastic. Set out for him, after Harold knew he was returning to base. He picks it up, unscrews the cap, drinks deep. It’s been a long day; he can’t remember having anything to drink but coffee since breakfast. Harold would know that. Harold’s been watching.
He feels that certainty again, a living thing beating alongside his heart.
He sets the bottle back down on the table, smears the condensation with his thumb.
He wants…
“You asked me,” he says. “When you confronted me about getting myself hurt, you asked me why.”
The steady tempo of Harold’s typing slows abruptly, though he doesn’t stop what he’s doing, doesn’t turn around.
“And we’ve explored your reasons extensively since.”
It’s easier, without Harold looking at him, saying what he wants Harold to know. He imagines Harold is well aware of that.
“There’s one reason we haven’t really talked about,” he says. “I did it because it was a sure thing.”
A pause. In the silence, John can hear the humming of the computer hard drives, the whirring of the generator that keeps them off the grid, the noises shaped by the insulation of the books lining the walls. He would know where he was just from the sound of the space, from how it makes him feel.
“Yes?” Finch says. Not quite a question. Confirmation that he’s listening, encouraging John to carry on.
John wets his lips, tries to order his words.
He takes off his suit jacket, hangs it over the back of a chair. Smooths out the collar, the perfect stitching done by the tailor Harold chose for him. Another gesture, like the bottle of water. Another simple gift. The thing is, John isn’t used to simple.
“When you do the work I’ve done,” he says, “with the kind of people I worked with, you learn that if you ask someone for what you want, what you need, they might give it to you. But what you’ve given them is the power to withhold it. To deny you, at any time, in order to control, or to punish.”
He unclips his holster from his belt, lays his gun down on the table. The metal is warm from his body, the same temperature as his skin. Another limb.
He doesn’t mention the COs—in the Army, in the CIA—who learned his weak spots, pushed them to turn him into a willing tool for jobs that could never be done in daylight; doesn’t mention Kara, who would cradle him close or draw blood at the same provocation, for no reason but to keep him guessing, to keep him aching and trembling in the darkness they shared. Harold won’t need the details to understand, and they seem distant now, anyway, faded, compared to the vibrant saturation of the knowledge that carried him here today.
He lifts his hand off the pistol.
“It’s safer,” he goes on, “if you can find another way to get the person to give you what you need from them, without ever having to ask. Better field protocol. Better trade craft.” He has, as always, a folding knife in his pocket; he takes it out, puts it on the table next to the gun, crouches down to unstrap the ankle holster holding his backup pistol. The grip of the .22 thuds against the wood of the tabletop when he sets it down. He isn’t being careful. “You said it yourself at the hotel,” he tells Harold, and this is the hard thing, the thing he regrets, “I found a predictable pattern in your behavior. If I came to you injured, I knew you were never going to send me away.”
Harold turns, then—the full shift of his body in his chair that lets him face John fully—though the script he’s writing is clearly unfinished, suspended mid line.
“And yet,” he says, running his gaze up John’s body, “I can’t help but notice that, despite the three hand-to-hand confrontations and the one ill-advised car chase you’ve been in today, you’ve managed to remain entirely unscathed.”
“Not a scratch,” John agrees. He takes a step away from the table, leaving his weapons behind. Unarmed under Harold’s regard. It feels the same as turning the insides of his wounded wrists up for Harold to inspect, a rush of vulnerability that makes his breath catch. “And I realized something, when I caught myself sidestepping that third guy’s swings in the biker bar.” He moves closer, all the way up to Harold’s chair. It’s dizzying, what he’s feeling, exhilaration like the moment before a skydive, that step outside the plane. Knowing you will fall. Knowing the chute will catch you. “This is a sure thing, too.”
Slowly, with deliberation, he folds to his knees.
Harold draws a breath in, a sudden, visible expansion of his chest that stretches the seams of his waistcoat. Out of the corner of his eye, John sees the cursor blink on his computer screen, marking the moments at a steady beat while Harold holds John’s upturned gaze, and sees.
“Indeed, Mr. Reese,” he says at last. His voice is soft, his smile not quite steady. “It would please me if you try to remember that.”
John bends his head, accepting.
When Harold resumes the hack, it’s one-handed, his free hand resting against the back of John’s neck, fingers gently stroking the hair at his nape.
John keeps still, allows the tight discipline of his mind to unspool beneath the touch. Let’s himself feel the tiredness of his body, the ache in his muscles.
It’s all right.
Simple.
Harold is taking care of him.