Work Text:
The first time that Harold kisses Grace, it's an accident, though not unintentional. They are in her sun-filled apartment, on the summer solstice, preparing to go out on a date – a date! – and he is waiting patiently by the door while she rushes about doing last-minute things, sending an email, checking a biographical tidbit on the artist whose show they're planning to see before their late dinner, making sure she hasn't left the stove on. She's joined him and has her hand on the doorknob, and then she says something about curtains and turns back. He turns with her, involuntarily, drawn to the light, and their faces bump, and just like that, they are kissing.
It's overwhelmingly simple, and easy, and right; he wants to laugh at the rightness of it. They've already had the conversation about social awkwardness – expressed, on her side, with lovely but incongruous fluidity and openness – but they don't know each other very well yet. He's impressed at how much information he gathers through kissing her.
They go on three more dates before they sleep together. He's a gentleman; he wants to be sure no lingering awkwardness carries over to the bedroom; and he is very, very careful. By then, he knows a lot about her, between the conversations and the secretive, solitary research the necessity of which he hopes he isn't lying to himself about. There is nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with her. When her body opens to him, and he lets himself sink into the permissible goodness, the bliss, the grace of her perfectly-named self, he wants to weep, but he's too busy becoming happy.
Later, he is inexcusably imprecise about the duration of his happiness. It's somewhat short of four years; one thousand, four hundred and thirty-three days are what he's given. It's a prime number. In the end, it's only divisible by him.
When his newly dead body, cold and graceless, escapes the hospital, it homes in on the Machine like a chick to the warmth of its mother's wing. Which is entirely backwards, he manages to think before sagging, in a haze of pain, into a chair in front of a computer in the library. Not the Library; that comes a little later. Just a public library with a computer tucked away in a corner, that he can coax into his service for half an hour before anyone disturbs him, and then wipe away all trace of his presence.
It's a crude conjoining, like that of two strangers who've always known each other, humping against a wall behind the cheapest bar in town. There's no elegance, no courtship, no elaborate cipher; those come later as well. But the Machine recognizes its Admin, knows his needs, his backdoor desperation to be doing something, even if all the puzzles, all the treasure maps lead only to pools of blood and scattered coins and footprints walking away.
It gives him a long list of numbers, unadorned and naked to the chilly air. One of them he knows, has long ago memorized. Panicked, he does the unthinkable and punches in Grace's number, the other one that fails to define her, on the burner phone. She answers, listens to the silence, says "Harold?" and then, five seconds later, starts to cry. He breaks the connection and weeps silently for the rest of his half hour, clutching the phone tight in his fist, and then he throws it away and takes the numbers to his next refuge, tracks them down but doesn't save any of them (one, though he cannot appreciate the wild synchronicity at the time, is Jessica's). Most of them, in fact, have been dead for some time; the Machine has given him the backlog.
But he has saved Grace. And that, for a little while, is enough.
*
The first time that Harold kisses John, it is unintentional, though not an accident. It happens after his journey with Root, of course; he would never have allowed himself such a thing, before. They have a day without numbers, without blood and guns and agoraphobia, and in wordless accord settle in to spend it in the Library together, something else that never used to happen. Bear is thrilled, and requests endless games of chase-the-ball down the length of the room.
John has gone out for coffee and green tea in late morning, when Bear rises from what Finch had hoped would be a longer nap, and puts his head on his master's knee, looking pointedly up at the ball on the desk.
"Do you really find such pleasure in doing the same thing, over and over?" Finch asks the dog, who gives him a quizzical glance as if to say Don't you? There are, in fact, things he has found pleasure in repeating; or, at least, satisfaction. He sighs and throws the ball.
Bear bounds away, but the ball lodges awkwardly under a shelf, deep enough that the dog's muzzle is unable to reach. "Ignore it," Finch advises. "Pretend it no longer exists." But apparently Bear is too determined a canine to question the ball's reality, and too smart to be distracted from it; in his small but focused mind the ball has acquired a glow that eclipses all other stars, even the ones filled with organic peanut butter that Finch keeps in a tin on the desk. He whines; he will likely sit there all day and whine.
For some reason, it doesn't occur to Finch to outlast the whining until John walks in the door. "Oh, very well," he says, limps over to the shelf, tells Bear to sit and stay (in Dutch, naturally), and gets down on his knees.
It's a slow process, fetching the ball, and it hurts, but he knows how to handle his damaged body, and in his own way he is as tenacious and object-oriented as the dog. He's got his shoulder down to the floor and his body twisted into the contorted posture required by his fused spine, and has just placed his hand triumphantly upon the ball, when he hears the door opening. Then footsteps.
It's not a stranger, of course, or worse, someone he knows. It's his perfect amalgam of the two, bearing sencha. John gives him no time to panic, says, "Hello, Harold," as soon as he walks in, doesn't even miss a beat when he sees his boss twisted up half under a bookcase. "Need a hand?" he says, and Finch replies that he has two, thank you, and shoots the ball out with a flick of his fingers. Bear stays until he is released with a guttural word, and then he picks up his ball and walks off contented to flop down and chew on it.
Or so Finch deduces, from the sounds, but he's having just a little difficulty in uncontorting himself. "You planning to stay down there all day?" John asks, and then without request lopes over and sinks to his knees with lazy, lupine grace, and gently unfolds Finch, and somewhere in the process their faces come close enough together that it occurs to Finch to wonder what would happen if, and he presses his mouth to John's. Just for half a second, which is how long it takes him to realize he's getting no response, and too long to pretend that the kiss was some error of his nervous system resulting from imitating a pretzel.
He gets to his feet without John's help, murmurs, "Thank you, Mr. Reese," because he is a gentleman, and limps back toward his desk. Ignore it, he tells himself. Pretend it doesn't exist.
"Harold," John says. "Wait."
He turns back, wavers a bit, steadies himself. "Please tell me you're not suggesting we discuss this," he says; it hurts nearly as much as the pretzeling. "If you must take it into consideration, I suggest you think of it as data. Thank you for the tea."
"Damn it," and Finch realizes with the words how seldom he's heard Reese swear, even in the midst of bloody battle, "you're not dismissing me. Not after—"
"Do as you like, Mr. Reese." As long as you don't commit inadvertent doggerel, he almost adds, but manages to stop himself.
He turns away again; the voice goes velvety and dangerous, like the butt of a revolver nuzzling at the back of his neck. "Is that an offer you really want to make, Finch? What is it you think I like?"
He is under no obligation to answer the question; on the other hand, he could provide an extensive list of the things Reese likes, from the thrill of threatening to drop people off buildings down to the unexpected craving for pistachio ice cream. A few of the items may even distract Reese from his apparent object, wondering how Finch had found out. But he doesn't offer them.
"Me," he says. "Inexplicably, you seem to like me. Some sort of protective instinct, I suppose, the strong propping up the weak—"
"Or it's the peanut butter treats," Reese says, his voice and his feet coming closer, and then he spins Finch around, hands careful on his shoulders, not letting go—
Oh. John's mouth is softer than expected, and warm, and tastes of coffee. Finch isn't astounded by how good he is at kissing; it's a physical skill, after all. What undermines his defenses is the way John is accommodating his difficulties, angling his neck to make up for the stiffness in Finch's, disguising the yaws and torsions as passion. Or no, the passion is real, and that's what's making Finch's knees weak. He should be furious at being helped; he's not, or perhaps his fury is what's wearing the mask of ardor.
No. He's just forgotten what it's like to be ardent. He used to be quite good at it, given half a chance.
John breaks the kiss first, and Harold sags a little into the firm grip, tingling all over with lust and ambiguity. He lets himself be examined by keen eyes, and waits to be defined. He certainly can't define himself, any longer.
"Did you think I was going to sue you for sexual harassment, Mr. Finch?" John asks, a lovely subtle lilt of amusement in his tone. "You just took me by surprise."
For some reason this makes Harold think of military maneuvers. He has ambushed John; ducked inside fortified walls; delved below his mines. "It was improper," he says, in a voice that means but oh, so satisfying.
"But it felt good. You have to admit." Harold nods, unable to say yes. Yes.
"I thought I'd be the one," John whispers. "To slip first. To act without knowing. But I should have guessed; you're braver than I am."
This is absurd, but Harold recognizes a seductive compliment when he hears one. "I don't suppose there are any rules for our situation," he says. "To break, I mean. Just the fundamental... commandments." Find the number. Protect, or prevent. Repeat as necessary. Keep the secrets. Try to stay alive.
John smiles a little, or Harold thinks it's a smile, then takes him aback by murmuring, "Give me my sin again." And then they're kissing, and everything goes out of his head but need, and terror, and rightness.
*
He wishes he'd been able to court John. And then he realizes that he has, just perhaps not in the time-honored fashion. With Grace, he used to worry, not that she wanted him for his money, but that it spoiled something pure and uncomplicated in their relationship. His relationship with John has never been pure, never been simple; it helps to know this, because he's not very good at breaking patterns once they're established. In the end, he can't help wanting to give people things: dangerous jobs, art commissions, places to live. Life.
Lying in bed in the dark, looking at the blurry moonlight through John's windows and his imperfect eyes, he is stolen away by a moment of absolute happiness. It lasts seventeen seconds by his count, and then it's over. And then, remembering that two is also a prime number, he shifts a little closer to the warmth of his partner in crime and deliverance, his familiar stranger, his saving grace, and lets himself sink into the sweet oblivion of sleep.