![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
st_aurafinaTitle: Buying the Time on My Knees
Fandom: Person of Interest
Rating: Explicit
Words: 7K (this chapter) 80K overall.
Characters/Pairings: Jessica/John, Jessica/John/Nathan, John/Nathan, John/Harold, John/Kara, Harold/Grace, Rick Dillinger, Mark Snow, Grace Hendricks, Lawrence Szilard, Daniel Aquino
Warnings/Content: Pegging, D/s dynamics, Dubious Consent, Domestic Violence, Infidelity, Light Bondage, Threesome - M/M/F, Canon-Typical Violence, Alternate Universe: Jessica lives, Alternate Universe: Nathan lives
Notes: This fic is complete at 80K and will be updated weekly. All the ships mentioned do happen, but some of them not for a long while. (Harold/John doesn't happen for a long while, for example, but it gets there.)
Dubcon warning is for the Kara/John relationship, which gets dicey from time to time.
Thank you tolilacsigil and talkingtothesky, who both helped me get this behemoth finished.
Title is from Iron and Wine's song, House by the Sea
Master post with chapter links
Chapter Summary:
John learns that Jessica is far from safe, and that Nathan has been trying to help her.
Overall Summary:
After he joins the CIA, John stays in touch with Jessica as best he can without endangering her marriage or alerting the agency. He doesn't realise that these breaks from his professional life are as much a respite for Jess as they are for him.
Meanwhile, Jessica's number keeps coming up and Nathan has a plan to keep her safe.
Also at the Archive
Nathan was long gone by the time that John got to the street. There wasn't anything analogue small enough to fit inside Nathan's cufflinks, so John had taken a chance that Harold wouldn't immediately detect one of the CIA's finest and smallest GPS trackers. This risk was apparently paying off: John had a strong signal coming through. He hailed a taxi and directed it towards the moving tracker.
There was a certain disconnect, bringing his work skills into play while thinking of Jess. John had put a lot of effort into the kind of compartmentalisation that allowed him to switch from his time as an agent to his time with her. The separation between these two worlds wasn't just uncomfortably blurred now, it had been wiped out completely.
He sat, still and calm, as the taxi brought him to the Pierre Hotel where Nathan's signal had stopped moving. The lobby was thick with evening guests, dressed in finery and moving in glittering waves to rows of taxis and town cars ready to ferry them to theatres and restaurants. John made his way towards the front desk, prepared to bribe the concierge to find out what room Nathan held in this hotel, then rethought the situation. Nathan's friend Harold was certainly paranoid enough to counter-bribe the obvious staff. The ones John should talk to were the maids and bellhops, who were invisible to the extremely wealthy. He diverted himself to a door marked 'Staff Only' and pushed through to the lockers.
Five hundred dollars later, John knew Nathan was staying in the Villaneuve Suite on the forty-third floor. He took a service elevator up to the floor below, broke into the room underneath the suite, fortunately empty, and went out on the balcony. Forty-two floors above the street, the traffic was a river of light and a soft whisper punctuated by the occasional siren. John hoisted himself over the tall glass safety panels present to stop people doing just that, and jammed the toes of his shoes under the glass while he searched for handholds. He balanced very lightly on the corner of the glass panels then hauled his bodyweight up a floor, walking some of the way up with his feet against the wall. John checked that the drapes were closed on the wide double doors into the suite, and then bellied up and over to solid ground again. He pressed his ear to the glass door while he checked himself over: weapons in place, both shoes on, nothing broken in the adrenaline of the climb.
The glass doors were double-glazed but thanks to the vintage of the Pierre and the traffic sounds being so muted at this height, John could hear muffled voices from within. He crouched on the balcony in the darkness and slowed his breathing, willed his heartbeat to settle, and the words became clearer.
"You know we'll do anything we can to help you." This voice, calm and paternal, was Nathan. The serious protective tone was very different to the one he used with John. With John, he had been all merriment and lightness.
There was more crying, a soft and tired sob which, if this was Jessica, made John's fists clench. Then she spoke, and it was undeniably Jess. "You don't understand. You don't know what it's like when things are good between us."
John knew he should get himself off this balcony and secure the room, but he kept crouching by the glass door, trying to find meaning for Jessica's words. Had he hurt her without realising? That would explain the way they had drifted over the past months, and the growing disconnection he'd felt from her. It made sense to him: his work had begun to infiltrate even the few moments they managed to spend together.
"It's not that I don't – it's not…" Jessica's words tripped and stumbled from her lips in a way that was not like her at all. John had the creeping sensation that he was hearing lines from a play, people playing characters and emulating speech patterns completely alien from themselves. "I know the clichés. I know what you think is going on between us, but it's not like that. This isn't that thing you see on daytime drama. We have really happy times. I love him. Our lives are real, we have real problems and we solve them and it's okay. Most of the time it's okay."
Nathan's voice was steady and quiet, low enough John had to hold his breath to catch the words. "You don't have to justify anything to me, Jessica. You know that. But this? This isn't okay."
There was a pause, and then Jessica gave a sharp cry, of pain or fear. John didn't stop to parse the difference. He pushed open the French doors, and moved through the drapes at speed, taking in the layout of the room while he strode across to where Nathan stood. Before anyone could take a breath, while their expressions were just beginning to show surprise, he put the gun against Nathan's ribs, standing close enough that the weapon was invisible to anyone in the room.
"John?" Jessica's expression was pale, and she had dark shadows under her eyes. She looked hastily dressed: hair scraped back in a ponytail, no make-up, rumpled jeans and t-shirt, all too light for the winter weather.
She sat on a sofa upholstered in thick silver velvet, her arms wrapped around her body. Behind her stood Nathan's friend Harold, his eyes wide and horrified at the sight of John. John was just as startled. He hadn't known Harold was even in the room: the man hadn't said a word the whole time John had been listening.
Nathan stood stock still beside John, breathing fast in a way that told John he understood exactly what John did for a living and how close to death he was right now. John kept one hand on Nathan's hip to stop him moving away from the muzzle of his gun, and made a quick and professional assessment of the room.
It was lavishly furnished, with solid marble and dark wood: low sofas and a dining table and lots of open space. John's feet sunk into deep pale plush, an expensive carpet to maintain in a hotel. This was clearly the hub of the suite, since three doors opened onto it, aside from the balcony and the main entrance. Neither Nathan nor Harold were obviously armed, and he doubted they were the kind to be able to conceal weapons skilfully. Jessica, though upset and afraid, seemed unhurt.
"What are you doing here?" she said, into the lengthening silence. She looked past him to the balcony, unbelieving. "Were you out there all the time?"
"Jess," he said. "Let me get you out of here."
Her expression was one of absolute confusion. She picked up her glass, a balloon with an inch of golden liquor in it, and took a sip, then another.
"What did you do?" This was from Harold, and it was directed at Nathan. "Good God, Nathan, have you been seeing him?"
Nathan clearly was the idiot Harold accused him of being, because John saw him smirk. John turned his own gaze on Harold, kept it cold. He'd kill both of them if they'd hurt Jessica.
"Stop it!" Jessica said. She stood up, still holding the snifter, and walked over towards them. "John, this is nothing to do with you. I don't know why you're here but I want you to go."
"I know why he's here," Harold said, grimly.
Nathan waved at the sofa with a soothing gesture. "Let's all sit down," he said. "We can talk through this, sort something out."
"I don't think so," said John. He reached out, intending to take Jess's elbow. "We'll be leaving now." He knew how this would go. He'd get Jessica safely behind him and then they'd walk out of this room together.
It was entirely unexpected, so it caught him by surprise. The moment he touched Jessica's arm, she swiftly and unexpectedly smashed the glass into his temple.
Anyone else, he could have dodged. Anyone else, including Kara Stanton who moved like an adder when she was on the attack, he could have caught by the wrist, wrenched their arm behind their back, maybe snapped their neck. But Jess? Jess, he would let cut out his heart. He registered her movement, calculated her trajectory and then shut his eyes, let the glass crush into his skin. This was what she wanted, and frankly, he probably deserved it.
Several things happened in the next few moments: the glass cracked like a good quality Easter egg, in large pieces and few shards. One of those sliced cleanly into Jess's palm and she screamed. One gashed John in a long line through his hair, and as he grabbed for Jess, he felt warmth pulse down his face.
Nathan turned towards them, forgetting John's weapon, his hands outstretched and face aghast. John took Jess in his arm and forced her behind him, bringing his weapon up, taking aim at Ingram in one smooth movement.
Harold stepped awkwardly around the sofa and shouted in a much bigger voice than John would have thought he had. "Stop!"
Nathan froze, now facing John, palms open, expression horrified. John kept his gun up, safety off, but did not shoot. Behind him, Jess sobbed. John heard the slow and steady drip of blood onto the thick plush of the carpet. She was alive, though. He would keep her alive.
"Step back, Nathan. John thinks we intend harm to Ms Arndt. Please calm down, so we can explain what's happening."
"You don't intend harm to her?" John said, in the affable tone he used when he was about to kill someone. To Jess, in a low voice, he said, "Stay behind me, Jess. It's going to be okay."
Jess' breathing was fast and irregular: she was panicking and a panicking person in a standoff could be a terrible, random thing. He reached behind, hoping she'd grab hold of him. No fingers clutched his, though he brushed her bare arm and felt it quake. He stood there, the only thing between these men and Jess, with his own blood dripping onto his shoulder.
"Mr Reese," said Harold, his voice calm and steady. Hearing one of his aliases, one that Jess did not know so could not have told him, made John swing the gun in his direction.
"That's the name you use most, isn't it?" Harold said, apparently unfazed by facing down the barrel of a gun. "I'm aware of your work for the CIA. I know you have many aliases." He put a hand out to stop Nathan from shoving him out of range of the gun. "No, I'm fine. Mr Reese won't shoot me if I don't hurt him or Jessica. It's time that we talked about why the two of them have come to our attention."
Here it comes, though John. This was why Mark had gotten involved; this was the real reason Jessica had matched with Nathan on Angler. It was a recruitment of some kind, and here came the pitch.
"You will have noticed that the intel delivered by your handlers in the last few years has become significantly better. The… technology which supplies that intelligence is also able to detect when civilians are in danger."
This was not the conversation he was expecting. John's lips were dry, which always happened to him when he was in the middle of a standoff, something to do with the way he breathed. That made him think of chapstick, which reminded him about the tattoo-covering concealer, which made him want desperately to turn around and ask Jess about that little glass bottle she'd left behind that day at the airport hotel.
Nathan picked his own snifter and took a swig, as if to fortify him. "Are you sure about this, Harold?"
Harold wheeled on him, his eyes flinty. "You are in no position to question my actions, Nathan." He eyed the man. "I know he can't have jacked your phone, so there must be a physical tracker of some sort on you. Did he give you a gift?" His mouth twisted in a bitter smile. "Some token of his affection, perhaps?"
Nathan was foolhardy but not stupid, and John could see him recalling all the points of contact they'd had today. He wasn't stupid but he had little impulse control, and his gaze flicked to his cuffs automatically.
Harold shook his head, disbelieving and reached for Nathan's wrist. John gestured with his gun for him to stop.
"You can pat your friend down later." He made sure to put as much bitterness into the words as Harold had a moment ago. "Improved intel delivery, you were saying?" He had to get something out of Harold, something he could bring to Mark to trade for his safety and Jessica's too. These guys were someone's assets, and someone's assets made for a good bargaining chip.
"That's correct," said Harold. "You'll have noticed an increase in specificity in your targets, I imagine. Unfortunately for you, that also means a loss in perspective. You operate surgically for your government, but the scalpel rarely gets to see the whole body."
John's aim hadn't wavered; he kept it steady, focused on Harold's centre of mass. "How are you involved in the industry?" he said, voice calm. Staying calm would keep Jess alive, would get the two of them out of here, would help him get Jess to safety.
Harold's expression was grim. "I'm not; neither of us have been, not since they tried to kill us at the ferry terminal. I have nothing to do with threats relevant to national security. That has been your job, Mr Reese. You're very good at it, I might add, though I believe you are becoming disillusioned with the nature of your missions."
That would be enough, John thought. That was enough to take to Mark now. The question was whether he should eliminate the two of them, or leave them compromised but in place so Mark would be able to use them.
Either way, it was time to go. "We're leaving." He stepped backwards so he could see Jess in his peripheral vision. She'd touched her face with her bleeding hand, and her skin, wax-pale was streaked with red.
John reached out for her, never taking his eyes off Harold and Nathan. "Jess, take my hand." It was a command, voiced low but firm.
"I feel sick," said Jess, her voice wobbly. "I think I'm going to puke."
John's stomach dropped. This might not just be shock. He put a bullet into the floor in front of Harold, who jumped backwards and winced as he jarred his back. To John's left, Jess moaned and covered her ears but didn't move, just stood there, looking off into nowhere. Her expression was vacant and terrified, like nothing he could imagine on Jess' face.
"What did you give her?" he said. He'd need to know, to see her through the worst of it, or reverse an overdose if they'd miscalculated badly. And then he'd kill these men and leave their bodies bleeding into the carpet. "Pentobarb? Midazolam?"
"Rémy Martin," said Nathan. Frustrated he wasn't taking this seriously, John answered with a shot over the man's shoulder. The bullet hit the buffet, and a row of decanters shattered. Glass tinkled as a deep red-gold waterfall cascaded to the carpet. The air was filled with a sweet, volatile fragrance.
"Well," said Nathan. "No more brandy for us."
"Mr Reese, we did not drug Jessica," Harold said, his voice a little higher pitched than a moment ago. "And while you're perfectly capable of shooting us – I can assure you, you absolutely have the upper hand in this room – it will not prevent the danger that is looming."
"I'm always in danger," John said, teeth gritted. "Why would I need you to tell me about it?"
He was stepping towards Jessica to get an arm around her waist and bring her out of this room whether she wanted to leave or not, when he realised that they were both staring at him in surprise.
"Mr Reese, it's not you who is in danger," Harold said.
Beside John, Jessica was suddenly and violently sick on the carpet. There was no way John could move her, not doubled over like this, not and keep them both clear of threat by these men. He'd have to kill them, and do it in front of Jess. These two worlds were not meant to mix. Jessica was never meant to see this side of him. The corners of his eyes were tight and prickling, and he was sweating. He felt it trickling between his shoulder blades as he slid his finger against the trigger and drew breath, ready to shoot. Nathan first, because he was the bigger and more physically able of the two. He could keep Jess safe. She might hate him but he could keep her safe.
Harold's voice was calm. "Mr Reese. Put the gun away, it's frightening Jessica, and we mean you no harm."
Nathan, his hands held comfortably above his shoulders, said, "We created a program that predicts the likelihood of a terrorist attack. It's very good. You've been working according to its predictions for a while now. Problem is, it predicts violence of any sort, not just the terrorist kind. I, uh, I tried to help those people. Nobody else would." He waved in the direction of his scarred face. "Government wasn't too happy about me still having access," he said. "They blew up an entire ferry terminal just to kill me."
Jessica heaved again under John's arm, retching and sobbing at the same time.
Nathan pointed at the ice bucket on the buffet. "I think Jessica would appreciate a little dignity, don't you?" he said. At John's nod, he upturned it, blithely spilling ice and water onto the carpet, and walked slowly towards them with the bucket outstretched.
John let go of Jess for a moment and nudged her with his hip towards a chair at the dining table. He took the silver bucket and passed it to her. She leaned over it, miserable, still dripping blood from her lacerated hand. Moving very slowly, John smoothed the hair out of her face, kept it clear of the bucket and her mouth. This time, Jess didn't flinch away from him, but hugged the bucket, her shoulders heaving, whether from sobs or from vomiting, John didn't know. He still hadn't looked down at her, because he was keeping the gun trained on Harold. Harold was beginning to sway with the fatigue of standing for a long time.
"What sort of intel do you receive?" John asked, just to keep them talking, but also to help with his risk assessment. Was this part of the vigilante thing? Was this why Nathan had been trying to save Mrs Martínez a few months ago?
Harold looked relieved, finally able to deliver information. "An identifying number of some sort," he said. "Usually a social security number, but we've had green cards, passport numbers, VA numbers. Whatever we get, it's never wrong."
"Once we got a badge number for a Mountie," said Nathan. "That was interesting. Since we're talking now, could you see your way to letting Harold sit down?"
"I'm fine," said Harold. "Stop worrying about me, and concentrate on not getting shot." He was standing awkwardly, though, sparing one hip by putting all his weight on the other leg, leaning into the cane. John gestured him towards the sofa and he limped across the floor, treading carefully across broken glass and melting ice cubes, then eased himself down slowly. The way he moved, he wouldn't be getting up quickly from there. Once Harold was seated, John holstered the gun, and knelt down to check on Jess. He'd see them if they shifted position.
"Hey," he said, softly. "Hey, Jess." He could hear something dripping: blood, brandy, ice water, he didn't know. The room was a mess, and reeked of vomit and alcohol. Ingram and Harold waited patiently, staying very still.
Jess blinked at him, tired and pale. She'd lost a lot of weight since he had seen her last. She dragged her hand across her mouth, realised her palm was bleeding, and turned it over, surprised at the cut on it. John watched her assess the cut, then look at his face with narrowed eyes. He remembered the gash on his temple and put a finger to it: sticky, warm blood came away clotted with hair. The touch dislodged something, and the wound began pulsing sluggishly, new trickles of blood running down his cheek over the dry.
"You want me to find something to put on this?" he said, hoping professional instincts would help her rally.
She wiped her mouth again and put the bucket down on the floor. "Yeah," she said, sounding more like herself. "What have they got for first aid?"
John stood, still watching the two men at the other end of the room, and opened a few drawers in the buffet, looking for anything useful. Nathan pointed at the dining table, where covered dishes and a beaded bottle of wine were arranged.
"Napkins," he said. "High thread count, should soak up blood spectacularly well."
John gathered the napkins and gave them to Jess. She immediately balled one up in her fist, and passed one to John. "Put pressure on that," she said, her voice hoarse.
John pressed a napkin to his temple, fetched a glass from the buffet, and not trusting the water in the pitcher, risked a step into the cavernous bathroom to fill it from the faucet. It meant he lost sight of the two men for a few seconds, but when he came out they hadn't moved.
Jess took a few sips of water, and beckoned to him. "Come back down here," she said. "I want to check the bleeding." Her hand that wasn't holding the napkin moved awkwardly, as if not all the fingers worked properly.
"Did you cut your other hand?" he said, while she lifted the napkin away from his temple and peered at the cut.
"Hurt my wrist," she said. "Yours is slowing down." She relaxed her fist clutching the crumpled napkin, and blood bloomed into the linen, creeping upward into the crisp white. Jess squeezed it closed again, and used the back of her other hand to press hard on the napkin. "I think mine will need a couple of stitches."
"How did you hurt your wrist? Did I hurt you?" The problem with working in an adrenalized state was that John didn't remember everything clearly, just the things his brain decided he needed to for survival. He worried he had grabbed her so hard she'd been hurt.
Fresh tears streamed down Jess' face. "No," she said, her voice so faint John took his eyes off Harold and Nathan to check she wasn't passing out. Instead, colour had flooded her face and she busied herself checking her wound again. When she lifted the napkin away from the skin, blood welled across her palm alarmingly fast. The napkin was rapidly becoming soaked. John felt weirdly guilty, as if he should have broken the glass better with his head.
Kneeling in front of her, looking up at her face, John stroked her knee gently with two fingers. "Jess," he said. "Jessie, what happened?"
She cried openly now, the kind of weary, hopeless sobbing John had seen in warzones. She reached to the table and took another napkin, changing out the one she clutched in her hand, apparently unaware or uncaring that she was sobbing softly.
Confused, angry, he stood and looked at the men: both of them were worried, but neither of them seemed surprised by her reaction.
"It was Jessica's number we received, not yours," Harold said. "I know that given the nature of your work, that would not seem to make sense, but in fact, we have been receiving Jessica's number on and off for some time now. It's a situation we've seen before."
"It's hard to get close to these people," said Nathan. He was so different from the man John had been slowly stalking: assured and calm in a way he had not allowed John to know. "For various reasons, they're in a situation where they have been carefully isolated from friends and family. They tend not to socialise much alone, they find themselves financially restricted as their partner assumes control of the family's income."
"When we receive a number," said Harold, "It means that the person is either going to commit, or be the victim of a violent crime. When we receive a number multiple times, it usually means that they're in close contact with someone who openly or secretly considers killing them and does so repeatedly."
John knew what they were talking about, but it didn't make sense to him. Jessica was not the kind of woman who would stay with an abusive boyfriend. She had a strong right hook and wasn't afraid to use it. Had used it on John when he'd been younger and full of himself. His stomach flip-flopped. He would have known, if Peter was hitting her. He didn't like Peter – had never liked him, even though they'd only met that once in the bar – but he had put that down to jealousy, something he didn't have the right to indulge in.
"We had naturally assumed that you were this person," Harold went on, remorseless. "Your work was violent, your partner is…"
"Sociopathic," John said. "It goes with the job." Jess, clearly tuned out of this conversation, now leaned against his legs, as if that were the only thing holding her upright now. He put an arm around her shoulder, kept himself very still and very solid.
"When Nathan saw her post on Angler, he took it upon himself to make contact that way." Harold's mouth was tight with disapproval.
"I still think it was a great plan," Nathan said. "I wish I hadn't told you, Harold. The three of us were on the way to building some rapport."
"I'm sure you're right," said Harold. "I'm sure you would have been best of friends right up until Mr Reese's superiors ordered him to shoot you. In any case, the fact that we have Jessica's number means that someone is pre-meditating harm to her. Mr Arndt is hugely in debt, and has several loan sharks on his heels. I don't believe his financial situation is a tenable one, not without intervention. Both of the Arndts have significant life insurance policies, and while I don't believe they were purchased with murderous intent, it's possible that he has started researching the ways in which he could make a claim against his wife's."
John by now had a hand gently curled around Jessica's head where it rested against his leg, and he hoped she couldn't hear Harold's voice through his fingers over her ear.
"She can't go back," he said. "I won't let her go back."
Jess pushed against his leg until he moved, and she stood. "I need a shower," she said, as if they'd been romping on the beach instead of trashing a hotel suite. "If it's anything like the last place, the shower will be amazing."
John stared at her. "Your hand…"
"I'll get Shelley to suture it for me. She's on night shift." Jess looked around her. "Have you seen my purse?"
"Shelley?" The nurse, her friend at the hospital. The hospital in New Rochelle. John understood suddenly and it horrified him. "Jess, you can't go back."
She picked up her purse where it had been discarded on the buffet, fortunately untouched by the spreading pool of brandy. "You can't stop me," she said. "It's my choice." She stopped by Nathan. "I said I didn't want him involved. You fucked up."
Nathan had the grace to flinch at the accusation. "In my defence, I just wanted everyone to be safe and happy."
The look she gave him was angry and disappointed. "I'm not here for the entertainment of bored billionaires," she said. She plucked at the front of her t-shirt unhappily, then sighed. "I want a shower, I want a change of clothes, and I want to go home."
"I'll organise it right now," Nathan said, reaching for his phone. John was there in two strides, snatching it from him.
"No reinforcements," he said to Nathan, and then to Jess, who stood in the doorway to the bathroom. "Jess, you can't go back." He walked over and she favoured him with a scathing look.
"Are you sweeping in to save me, John? Carry me out over your shoulder? How fucking romantic. I might puke again." The scorn in her voice was so alien that John physically recoiled, and even that seemed to anger her.
Her voice dropped to a hiss, and she jabbed him in the chest with her finger. "We were clear about what this relationship would be from the outset. You didn't want to be a part of my life, you couldn't see your way clear to giving any part of your life, and now, when you've magically decided my life isn't going the way you want it to, you're on board with these guys who want to save me. Fuck you." She shut the bathroom door in his face, and he heard the shower start.
John stood at the door, hand on the wood, wanting very much to break it down, but thinking that it would probably make matters worse.
Behind him on the sofa, Harold spoke. "She has the right to make her own decisions," he said, quietly. "I only say because it's a lesson I had to learn. On a lesser scale, though the results were still painful."
John turned to face him. "You've known she was in danger for how many months, exactly?"
"Jessica's number first appeared a month after her wedding," Harold said. "I wasn't involved at the time. Nathan worked the numbers then, and he was overwhelmed. But her number appears sporadically, then tensions are resolved in the short term and the cycle repeats."
Nathan shook his head. "The thing is, we can't force her to leave. If we try, she'll still go home, but next time she'll be less inclined to ask for help."
"I don't care," said John. "I'll take her to a safehouse if I have to."
"And when Ms Stanton wonders why you haven't met her in Romania?" Harold stood, creaky, and limped over to the buffet to poke at the hole in the wallpaper with the end of his cane.
John stared at him. He'd had no message about a new mission.
"You'll be receiving orders tomorrow morning, I believe." Harold lifted two of the intact decanters out of the brandy puddle. "When we thought you were the threat, I made sure to monitor your activity."
John took out his own phone and put it on the table as if it were about to explode. It was supposed to be secure, it was supposed to be inviolable. Delighted to have a phone at last, Nathan picked it up and with disturbingly few movements, unlocked it and put it to his ear.
"Hello, this is Nathan in the Villenueve Suite – I need a casual wardrobe for a woman, size…" He raised an eyebrow at Harold, who held up four fingers. "Size four. And shoes…"
"Eight narrow," said John, despite himself.
"Eight narrow, yes. Two pairs, lovely. I'll leave the choices to you. Thank you." Nathan hung up and passed the phone back to John. "It's not jacked, by the way. You're too scrupulous for that. You and your partner both are, but you use IFT messaging software occasionally. It's not your fault; we did sell it to the CIA." Nathan settled down in a chair, pleased with himself. "So, in a way, that money is paying for Jessica's clothes. I do like the symmetry in that."
The clothes arrived astonishingly fast, before Jess had emerged from the shower. John knocked on the door just as the water turned off, and she opened it, hair wrapped in a towel.
John held up a suitbag for her, and a pair of pumps. "There's sandals, if you'd rather," he said.
"These are fine," she said, and took them. "Did he get makeup?"
"Sorry!" said Nathan, from behind John. "Don't wear it myself, didn't think of it. Not that I wear women's clothing much, either. Though I bet I'd look swell in pantyhose…" John turned away from him, left him talking to Harold about his best options for casual drag wear. Nathan was back in cheery billionaire mode, now that the immediate threat was neutralised and there were problems to solve. John couldn't believe he'd been fooled by an act, or at least a persona. He was only just realising how much of Nathan's public life was a construction.
Jessica was still watched him, her mouth an angry straight line. She held the suitbag with her forearm, and he remembered her injured wrist.
"Do you need help with that?" he said, then when her expression turned thunderous at the suggestion that she couldn't dress, by way of explanation he added, "Your wrist."
She looked at him for a few more moments, then nodded and let him in.
The bathroom was enormous, bigger than he had realised when he grabbed a glass of water. Jess hung the suitbag on the towel rail and unzipped it, flicking through the clothes, and finding the underwear. It all had tags on; they must have sent someone bolting down to a department store.
"I want you to…" John said into the silence, but Jess cut him off.
"It's so not about what you want, mister," she said, and stepped into the panties. Her wrist must have been tender, because she used her pinky to pull them up. When they dragged on her damp skin, John put his hand out, and she let him finish getting them in place. He helped her with pantyhose, hooked up her bra.
It was so commonplace, the thing that married couples do: banal, awkward and unsexy. John felt disjointed, intimate and distant at the same time. He opened his mouth to say something but again, Jess got there first.
"That first word had better not be 'I'." She pulled her hair out of the collar of a pale blue blouse, and turned so that John could button it up.
I'm worried about you, he was going to say. Or, I want to help. Instead, he folded her collar down, helped her into a skirt, zipped it up against her hip.
"I can look after myself, John," Jess finally said. "I've been doing it for a while now."
John sat on the edge of the tub and put his hands on her hips. "What do you need?" he said.
She smiled then, a tiny curve of a thing that told him he'd done okay. "I need you to go away and let me deal with my life on my own."
That was unacceptable, and John felt his shoulders tighten, his gut pulled in ready to fight. Jess took his hand, finally, and held it so she could look at him.
"It's my life, John, and you chose not to be a part of it. I don't have room to make things easier for you right now, so I want you to go back to your job, and concentrate on surviving. I'll be doing the same thing."
John couldn't look at her face without seeing his own in the mirror behind her, and for a moment, he didn't recognise either of them. They had been two kids. When had they become these solemn, battle-weary people? Everything was wrong, everything was built on wrong decisions and bad paths chosen, and there was no going back to fix any of it. He reached out and touched her face, then kissed her softly on the lips. "Okay," he said, finally, and picked up her crumpled jeans from the floor.
"Leave them," said Jess. "I don't want to wear any of it again." She took a hand towel, wrapped it around her palm, and walked past him into the living room.
A flurry of maids and workmen had descended on the Villaneuve suite, cleaning and tidying with studied silence. Nathan leaned against the clean end of the buffet with his coat over his arm, looking stupidly pleased with himself. Harold still sat on the sofa, engrossed in his laptop.
"This is a rite of passage, isn't it?" Nathan said with a sigh. "Trashing my hotel room. I feel twenty years younger. I hope photos get leaked to Instagram."
Harold gave him a disgusted look. When John and Jessica approached, he stood, apparently ready to explain something, but Nathan jumped in front of him. John thought this must be a familiar relationship dynamic for them, because Harold simply rolled his eyes and stepped back.
"Okay," said Nathan. "I'll drive you home, Jessica, or at least to the hospital to get your hand seen to."
Jess shook her head. "Nope. I saw how you threw that brandy back; I'm not getting in a car with you behind the wheel." She crossed her arms, considering. "I'll go with your driver, though."
Nathan gave an easy going shrug. "Let's organise it on the way," he said, one arm outstretched in Jessica's direction. She glanced at John once before she stepped away, walking swiftly through the door while John stood in bewildered confusion. By the time he realised that this was goodbye and she was leaving, Nathan stood the elevator, talking loudly to his chauffeur, organising someone to drive Jess' car back to New Rochelle. Then the door opened, and they were gone.
Author's notes:
These two personal accounts of experience with domestic violence were really important in the way I wrote this chapter. (I'm sorry I don't have a link to the original, which was a Guardian piece):
I was in a domestic violence situation and it was only once I felt I could share small issues without being judged or immediately told I was a fool if I didn’t leave immediately that I started to open up and trust someone else’s perspective on my situation. Just being a soft place for those you love to share their struggles without judgement is all I can recommend.
Don’t let someone become isolated. That’s the number one way abusers get control and that’s what my ex did. I had one friend who went through hell and high water every time I moved or changed my phone number to find me. And that always meant so much to me. It made me feel like I mattered to someone.
Chapter Six // Master Post
// Chapter Eight
Fandom: Person of Interest
Rating: Explicit
Words: 7K (this chapter) 80K overall.
Characters/Pairings: Jessica/John, Jessica/John/Nathan, John/Nathan, John/Harold, John/Kara, Harold/Grace, Rick Dillinger, Mark Snow, Grace Hendricks, Lawrence Szilard, Daniel Aquino
Warnings/Content: Pegging, D/s dynamics, Dubious Consent, Domestic Violence, Infidelity, Light Bondage, Threesome - M/M/F, Canon-Typical Violence, Alternate Universe: Jessica lives, Alternate Universe: Nathan lives
Notes: This fic is complete at 80K and will be updated weekly. All the ships mentioned do happen, but some of them not for a long while. (Harold/John doesn't happen for a long while, for example, but it gets there.)
Dubcon warning is for the Kara/John relationship, which gets dicey from time to time.
Thank you to
lilacsigil and talkingtothesky, who both helped me get this behemoth finished.Title is from Iron and Wine's song, House by the Sea
Master post with chapter links
Chapter Summary:
John learns that Jessica is far from safe, and that Nathan has been trying to help her.
Overall Summary:
After he joins the CIA, John stays in touch with Jessica as best he can without endangering her marriage or alerting the agency. He doesn't realise that these breaks from his professional life are as much a respite for Jess as they are for him.
Meanwhile, Jessica's number keeps coming up and Nathan has a plan to keep her safe.
Also at the Archive
Nathan was long gone by the time that John got to the street. There wasn't anything analogue small enough to fit inside Nathan's cufflinks, so John had taken a chance that Harold wouldn't immediately detect one of the CIA's finest and smallest GPS trackers. This risk was apparently paying off: John had a strong signal coming through. He hailed a taxi and directed it towards the moving tracker.
There was a certain disconnect, bringing his work skills into play while thinking of Jess. John had put a lot of effort into the kind of compartmentalisation that allowed him to switch from his time as an agent to his time with her. The separation between these two worlds wasn't just uncomfortably blurred now, it had been wiped out completely.
He sat, still and calm, as the taxi brought him to the Pierre Hotel where Nathan's signal had stopped moving. The lobby was thick with evening guests, dressed in finery and moving in glittering waves to rows of taxis and town cars ready to ferry them to theatres and restaurants. John made his way towards the front desk, prepared to bribe the concierge to find out what room Nathan held in this hotel, then rethought the situation. Nathan's friend Harold was certainly paranoid enough to counter-bribe the obvious staff. The ones John should talk to were the maids and bellhops, who were invisible to the extremely wealthy. He diverted himself to a door marked 'Staff Only' and pushed through to the lockers.
Five hundred dollars later, John knew Nathan was staying in the Villaneuve Suite on the forty-third floor. He took a service elevator up to the floor below, broke into the room underneath the suite, fortunately empty, and went out on the balcony. Forty-two floors above the street, the traffic was a river of light and a soft whisper punctuated by the occasional siren. John hoisted himself over the tall glass safety panels present to stop people doing just that, and jammed the toes of his shoes under the glass while he searched for handholds. He balanced very lightly on the corner of the glass panels then hauled his bodyweight up a floor, walking some of the way up with his feet against the wall. John checked that the drapes were closed on the wide double doors into the suite, and then bellied up and over to solid ground again. He pressed his ear to the glass door while he checked himself over: weapons in place, both shoes on, nothing broken in the adrenaline of the climb.
The glass doors were double-glazed but thanks to the vintage of the Pierre and the traffic sounds being so muted at this height, John could hear muffled voices from within. He crouched on the balcony in the darkness and slowed his breathing, willed his heartbeat to settle, and the words became clearer.
"You know we'll do anything we can to help you." This voice, calm and paternal, was Nathan. The serious protective tone was very different to the one he used with John. With John, he had been all merriment and lightness.
There was more crying, a soft and tired sob which, if this was Jessica, made John's fists clench. Then she spoke, and it was undeniably Jess. "You don't understand. You don't know what it's like when things are good between us."
John knew he should get himself off this balcony and secure the room, but he kept crouching by the glass door, trying to find meaning for Jessica's words. Had he hurt her without realising? That would explain the way they had drifted over the past months, and the growing disconnection he'd felt from her. It made sense to him: his work had begun to infiltrate even the few moments they managed to spend together.
"It's not that I don't – it's not…" Jessica's words tripped and stumbled from her lips in a way that was not like her at all. John had the creeping sensation that he was hearing lines from a play, people playing characters and emulating speech patterns completely alien from themselves. "I know the clichés. I know what you think is going on between us, but it's not like that. This isn't that thing you see on daytime drama. We have really happy times. I love him. Our lives are real, we have real problems and we solve them and it's okay. Most of the time it's okay."
Nathan's voice was steady and quiet, low enough John had to hold his breath to catch the words. "You don't have to justify anything to me, Jessica. You know that. But this? This isn't okay."
There was a pause, and then Jessica gave a sharp cry, of pain or fear. John didn't stop to parse the difference. He pushed open the French doors, and moved through the drapes at speed, taking in the layout of the room while he strode across to where Nathan stood. Before anyone could take a breath, while their expressions were just beginning to show surprise, he put the gun against Nathan's ribs, standing close enough that the weapon was invisible to anyone in the room.
"John?" Jessica's expression was pale, and she had dark shadows under her eyes. She looked hastily dressed: hair scraped back in a ponytail, no make-up, rumpled jeans and t-shirt, all too light for the winter weather.
She sat on a sofa upholstered in thick silver velvet, her arms wrapped around her body. Behind her stood Nathan's friend Harold, his eyes wide and horrified at the sight of John. John was just as startled. He hadn't known Harold was even in the room: the man hadn't said a word the whole time John had been listening.
Nathan stood stock still beside John, breathing fast in a way that told John he understood exactly what John did for a living and how close to death he was right now. John kept one hand on Nathan's hip to stop him moving away from the muzzle of his gun, and made a quick and professional assessment of the room.
It was lavishly furnished, with solid marble and dark wood: low sofas and a dining table and lots of open space. John's feet sunk into deep pale plush, an expensive carpet to maintain in a hotel. This was clearly the hub of the suite, since three doors opened onto it, aside from the balcony and the main entrance. Neither Nathan nor Harold were obviously armed, and he doubted they were the kind to be able to conceal weapons skilfully. Jessica, though upset and afraid, seemed unhurt.
"What are you doing here?" she said, into the lengthening silence. She looked past him to the balcony, unbelieving. "Were you out there all the time?"
"Jess," he said. "Let me get you out of here."
Her expression was one of absolute confusion. She picked up her glass, a balloon with an inch of golden liquor in it, and took a sip, then another.
"What did you do?" This was from Harold, and it was directed at Nathan. "Good God, Nathan, have you been seeing him?"
Nathan clearly was the idiot Harold accused him of being, because John saw him smirk. John turned his own gaze on Harold, kept it cold. He'd kill both of them if they'd hurt Jessica.
"Stop it!" Jessica said. She stood up, still holding the snifter, and walked over towards them. "John, this is nothing to do with you. I don't know why you're here but I want you to go."
"I know why he's here," Harold said, grimly.
Nathan waved at the sofa with a soothing gesture. "Let's all sit down," he said. "We can talk through this, sort something out."
"I don't think so," said John. He reached out, intending to take Jess's elbow. "We'll be leaving now." He knew how this would go. He'd get Jessica safely behind him and then they'd walk out of this room together.
It was entirely unexpected, so it caught him by surprise. The moment he touched Jessica's arm, she swiftly and unexpectedly smashed the glass into his temple.
Anyone else, he could have dodged. Anyone else, including Kara Stanton who moved like an adder when she was on the attack, he could have caught by the wrist, wrenched their arm behind their back, maybe snapped their neck. But Jess? Jess, he would let cut out his heart. He registered her movement, calculated her trajectory and then shut his eyes, let the glass crush into his skin. This was what she wanted, and frankly, he probably deserved it.
Several things happened in the next few moments: the glass cracked like a good quality Easter egg, in large pieces and few shards. One of those sliced cleanly into Jess's palm and she screamed. One gashed John in a long line through his hair, and as he grabbed for Jess, he felt warmth pulse down his face.
Nathan turned towards them, forgetting John's weapon, his hands outstretched and face aghast. John took Jess in his arm and forced her behind him, bringing his weapon up, taking aim at Ingram in one smooth movement.
Harold stepped awkwardly around the sofa and shouted in a much bigger voice than John would have thought he had. "Stop!"
Nathan froze, now facing John, palms open, expression horrified. John kept his gun up, safety off, but did not shoot. Behind him, Jess sobbed. John heard the slow and steady drip of blood onto the thick plush of the carpet. She was alive, though. He would keep her alive.
"Step back, Nathan. John thinks we intend harm to Ms Arndt. Please calm down, so we can explain what's happening."
"You don't intend harm to her?" John said, in the affable tone he used when he was about to kill someone. To Jess, in a low voice, he said, "Stay behind me, Jess. It's going to be okay."
Jess' breathing was fast and irregular: she was panicking and a panicking person in a standoff could be a terrible, random thing. He reached behind, hoping she'd grab hold of him. No fingers clutched his, though he brushed her bare arm and felt it quake. He stood there, the only thing between these men and Jess, with his own blood dripping onto his shoulder.
"Mr Reese," said Harold, his voice calm and steady. Hearing one of his aliases, one that Jess did not know so could not have told him, made John swing the gun in his direction.
"That's the name you use most, isn't it?" Harold said, apparently unfazed by facing down the barrel of a gun. "I'm aware of your work for the CIA. I know you have many aliases." He put a hand out to stop Nathan from shoving him out of range of the gun. "No, I'm fine. Mr Reese won't shoot me if I don't hurt him or Jessica. It's time that we talked about why the two of them have come to our attention."
Here it comes, though John. This was why Mark had gotten involved; this was the real reason Jessica had matched with Nathan on Angler. It was a recruitment of some kind, and here came the pitch.
"You will have noticed that the intel delivered by your handlers in the last few years has become significantly better. The… technology which supplies that intelligence is also able to detect when civilians are in danger."
This was not the conversation he was expecting. John's lips were dry, which always happened to him when he was in the middle of a standoff, something to do with the way he breathed. That made him think of chapstick, which reminded him about the tattoo-covering concealer, which made him want desperately to turn around and ask Jess about that little glass bottle she'd left behind that day at the airport hotel.
Nathan picked his own snifter and took a swig, as if to fortify him. "Are you sure about this, Harold?"
Harold wheeled on him, his eyes flinty. "You are in no position to question my actions, Nathan." He eyed the man. "I know he can't have jacked your phone, so there must be a physical tracker of some sort on you. Did he give you a gift?" His mouth twisted in a bitter smile. "Some token of his affection, perhaps?"
Nathan was foolhardy but not stupid, and John could see him recalling all the points of contact they'd had today. He wasn't stupid but he had little impulse control, and his gaze flicked to his cuffs automatically.
Harold shook his head, disbelieving and reached for Nathan's wrist. John gestured with his gun for him to stop.
"You can pat your friend down later." He made sure to put as much bitterness into the words as Harold had a moment ago. "Improved intel delivery, you were saying?" He had to get something out of Harold, something he could bring to Mark to trade for his safety and Jessica's too. These guys were someone's assets, and someone's assets made for a good bargaining chip.
"That's correct," said Harold. "You'll have noticed an increase in specificity in your targets, I imagine. Unfortunately for you, that also means a loss in perspective. You operate surgically for your government, but the scalpel rarely gets to see the whole body."
John's aim hadn't wavered; he kept it steady, focused on Harold's centre of mass. "How are you involved in the industry?" he said, voice calm. Staying calm would keep Jess alive, would get the two of them out of here, would help him get Jess to safety.
Harold's expression was grim. "I'm not; neither of us have been, not since they tried to kill us at the ferry terminal. I have nothing to do with threats relevant to national security. That has been your job, Mr Reese. You're very good at it, I might add, though I believe you are becoming disillusioned with the nature of your missions."
That would be enough, John thought. That was enough to take to Mark now. The question was whether he should eliminate the two of them, or leave them compromised but in place so Mark would be able to use them.
Either way, it was time to go. "We're leaving." He stepped backwards so he could see Jess in his peripheral vision. She'd touched her face with her bleeding hand, and her skin, wax-pale was streaked with red.
John reached out for her, never taking his eyes off Harold and Nathan. "Jess, take my hand." It was a command, voiced low but firm.
"I feel sick," said Jess, her voice wobbly. "I think I'm going to puke."
John's stomach dropped. This might not just be shock. He put a bullet into the floor in front of Harold, who jumped backwards and winced as he jarred his back. To John's left, Jess moaned and covered her ears but didn't move, just stood there, looking off into nowhere. Her expression was vacant and terrified, like nothing he could imagine on Jess' face.
"What did you give her?" he said. He'd need to know, to see her through the worst of it, or reverse an overdose if they'd miscalculated badly. And then he'd kill these men and leave their bodies bleeding into the carpet. "Pentobarb? Midazolam?"
"Rémy Martin," said Nathan. Frustrated he wasn't taking this seriously, John answered with a shot over the man's shoulder. The bullet hit the buffet, and a row of decanters shattered. Glass tinkled as a deep red-gold waterfall cascaded to the carpet. The air was filled with a sweet, volatile fragrance.
"Well," said Nathan. "No more brandy for us."
"Mr Reese, we did not drug Jessica," Harold said, his voice a little higher pitched than a moment ago. "And while you're perfectly capable of shooting us – I can assure you, you absolutely have the upper hand in this room – it will not prevent the danger that is looming."
"I'm always in danger," John said, teeth gritted. "Why would I need you to tell me about it?"
He was stepping towards Jessica to get an arm around her waist and bring her out of this room whether she wanted to leave or not, when he realised that they were both staring at him in surprise.
"Mr Reese, it's not you who is in danger," Harold said.
Beside John, Jessica was suddenly and violently sick on the carpet. There was no way John could move her, not doubled over like this, not and keep them both clear of threat by these men. He'd have to kill them, and do it in front of Jess. These two worlds were not meant to mix. Jessica was never meant to see this side of him. The corners of his eyes were tight and prickling, and he was sweating. He felt it trickling between his shoulder blades as he slid his finger against the trigger and drew breath, ready to shoot. Nathan first, because he was the bigger and more physically able of the two. He could keep Jess safe. She might hate him but he could keep her safe.
Harold's voice was calm. "Mr Reese. Put the gun away, it's frightening Jessica, and we mean you no harm."
Nathan, his hands held comfortably above his shoulders, said, "We created a program that predicts the likelihood of a terrorist attack. It's very good. You've been working according to its predictions for a while now. Problem is, it predicts violence of any sort, not just the terrorist kind. I, uh, I tried to help those people. Nobody else would." He waved in the direction of his scarred face. "Government wasn't too happy about me still having access," he said. "They blew up an entire ferry terminal just to kill me."
Jessica heaved again under John's arm, retching and sobbing at the same time.
Nathan pointed at the ice bucket on the buffet. "I think Jessica would appreciate a little dignity, don't you?" he said. At John's nod, he upturned it, blithely spilling ice and water onto the carpet, and walked slowly towards them with the bucket outstretched.
John let go of Jess for a moment and nudged her with his hip towards a chair at the dining table. He took the silver bucket and passed it to her. She leaned over it, miserable, still dripping blood from her lacerated hand. Moving very slowly, John smoothed the hair out of her face, kept it clear of the bucket and her mouth. This time, Jess didn't flinch away from him, but hugged the bucket, her shoulders heaving, whether from sobs or from vomiting, John didn't know. He still hadn't looked down at her, because he was keeping the gun trained on Harold. Harold was beginning to sway with the fatigue of standing for a long time.
"What sort of intel do you receive?" John asked, just to keep them talking, but also to help with his risk assessment. Was this part of the vigilante thing? Was this why Nathan had been trying to save Mrs Martínez a few months ago?
Harold looked relieved, finally able to deliver information. "An identifying number of some sort," he said. "Usually a social security number, but we've had green cards, passport numbers, VA numbers. Whatever we get, it's never wrong."
"Once we got a badge number for a Mountie," said Nathan. "That was interesting. Since we're talking now, could you see your way to letting Harold sit down?"
"I'm fine," said Harold. "Stop worrying about me, and concentrate on not getting shot." He was standing awkwardly, though, sparing one hip by putting all his weight on the other leg, leaning into the cane. John gestured him towards the sofa and he limped across the floor, treading carefully across broken glass and melting ice cubes, then eased himself down slowly. The way he moved, he wouldn't be getting up quickly from there. Once Harold was seated, John holstered the gun, and knelt down to check on Jess. He'd see them if they shifted position.
"Hey," he said, softly. "Hey, Jess." He could hear something dripping: blood, brandy, ice water, he didn't know. The room was a mess, and reeked of vomit and alcohol. Ingram and Harold waited patiently, staying very still.
Jess blinked at him, tired and pale. She'd lost a lot of weight since he had seen her last. She dragged her hand across her mouth, realised her palm was bleeding, and turned it over, surprised at the cut on it. John watched her assess the cut, then look at his face with narrowed eyes. He remembered the gash on his temple and put a finger to it: sticky, warm blood came away clotted with hair. The touch dislodged something, and the wound began pulsing sluggishly, new trickles of blood running down his cheek over the dry.
"You want me to find something to put on this?" he said, hoping professional instincts would help her rally.
She wiped her mouth again and put the bucket down on the floor. "Yeah," she said, sounding more like herself. "What have they got for first aid?"
John stood, still watching the two men at the other end of the room, and opened a few drawers in the buffet, looking for anything useful. Nathan pointed at the dining table, where covered dishes and a beaded bottle of wine were arranged.
"Napkins," he said. "High thread count, should soak up blood spectacularly well."
John gathered the napkins and gave them to Jess. She immediately balled one up in her fist, and passed one to John. "Put pressure on that," she said, her voice hoarse.
John pressed a napkin to his temple, fetched a glass from the buffet, and not trusting the water in the pitcher, risked a step into the cavernous bathroom to fill it from the faucet. It meant he lost sight of the two men for a few seconds, but when he came out they hadn't moved.
Jess took a few sips of water, and beckoned to him. "Come back down here," she said. "I want to check the bleeding." Her hand that wasn't holding the napkin moved awkwardly, as if not all the fingers worked properly.
"Did you cut your other hand?" he said, while she lifted the napkin away from his temple and peered at the cut.
"Hurt my wrist," she said. "Yours is slowing down." She relaxed her fist clutching the crumpled napkin, and blood bloomed into the linen, creeping upward into the crisp white. Jess squeezed it closed again, and used the back of her other hand to press hard on the napkin. "I think mine will need a couple of stitches."
"How did you hurt your wrist? Did I hurt you?" The problem with working in an adrenalized state was that John didn't remember everything clearly, just the things his brain decided he needed to for survival. He worried he had grabbed her so hard she'd been hurt.
Fresh tears streamed down Jess' face. "No," she said, her voice so faint John took his eyes off Harold and Nathan to check she wasn't passing out. Instead, colour had flooded her face and she busied herself checking her wound again. When she lifted the napkin away from the skin, blood welled across her palm alarmingly fast. The napkin was rapidly becoming soaked. John felt weirdly guilty, as if he should have broken the glass better with his head.
Kneeling in front of her, looking up at her face, John stroked her knee gently with two fingers. "Jess," he said. "Jessie, what happened?"
She cried openly now, the kind of weary, hopeless sobbing John had seen in warzones. She reached to the table and took another napkin, changing out the one she clutched in her hand, apparently unaware or uncaring that she was sobbing softly.
Confused, angry, he stood and looked at the men: both of them were worried, but neither of them seemed surprised by her reaction.
"It was Jessica's number we received, not yours," Harold said. "I know that given the nature of your work, that would not seem to make sense, but in fact, we have been receiving Jessica's number on and off for some time now. It's a situation we've seen before."
"It's hard to get close to these people," said Nathan. He was so different from the man John had been slowly stalking: assured and calm in a way he had not allowed John to know. "For various reasons, they're in a situation where they have been carefully isolated from friends and family. They tend not to socialise much alone, they find themselves financially restricted as their partner assumes control of the family's income."
"When we receive a number," said Harold, "It means that the person is either going to commit, or be the victim of a violent crime. When we receive a number multiple times, it usually means that they're in close contact with someone who openly or secretly considers killing them and does so repeatedly."
John knew what they were talking about, but it didn't make sense to him. Jessica was not the kind of woman who would stay with an abusive boyfriend. She had a strong right hook and wasn't afraid to use it. Had used it on John when he'd been younger and full of himself. His stomach flip-flopped. He would have known, if Peter was hitting her. He didn't like Peter – had never liked him, even though they'd only met that once in the bar – but he had put that down to jealousy, something he didn't have the right to indulge in.
"We had naturally assumed that you were this person," Harold went on, remorseless. "Your work was violent, your partner is…"
"Sociopathic," John said. "It goes with the job." Jess, clearly tuned out of this conversation, now leaned against his legs, as if that were the only thing holding her upright now. He put an arm around her shoulder, kept himself very still and very solid.
"When Nathan saw her post on Angler, he took it upon himself to make contact that way." Harold's mouth was tight with disapproval.
"I still think it was a great plan," Nathan said. "I wish I hadn't told you, Harold. The three of us were on the way to building some rapport."
"I'm sure you're right," said Harold. "I'm sure you would have been best of friends right up until Mr Reese's superiors ordered him to shoot you. In any case, the fact that we have Jessica's number means that someone is pre-meditating harm to her. Mr Arndt is hugely in debt, and has several loan sharks on his heels. I don't believe his financial situation is a tenable one, not without intervention. Both of the Arndts have significant life insurance policies, and while I don't believe they were purchased with murderous intent, it's possible that he has started researching the ways in which he could make a claim against his wife's."
John by now had a hand gently curled around Jessica's head where it rested against his leg, and he hoped she couldn't hear Harold's voice through his fingers over her ear.
"She can't go back," he said. "I won't let her go back."
Jess pushed against his leg until he moved, and she stood. "I need a shower," she said, as if they'd been romping on the beach instead of trashing a hotel suite. "If it's anything like the last place, the shower will be amazing."
John stared at her. "Your hand…"
"I'll get Shelley to suture it for me. She's on night shift." Jess looked around her. "Have you seen my purse?"
"Shelley?" The nurse, her friend at the hospital. The hospital in New Rochelle. John understood suddenly and it horrified him. "Jess, you can't go back."
She picked up her purse where it had been discarded on the buffet, fortunately untouched by the spreading pool of brandy. "You can't stop me," she said. "It's my choice." She stopped by Nathan. "I said I didn't want him involved. You fucked up."
Nathan had the grace to flinch at the accusation. "In my defence, I just wanted everyone to be safe and happy."
The look she gave him was angry and disappointed. "I'm not here for the entertainment of bored billionaires," she said. She plucked at the front of her t-shirt unhappily, then sighed. "I want a shower, I want a change of clothes, and I want to go home."
"I'll organise it right now," Nathan said, reaching for his phone. John was there in two strides, snatching it from him.
"No reinforcements," he said to Nathan, and then to Jess, who stood in the doorway to the bathroom. "Jess, you can't go back." He walked over and she favoured him with a scathing look.
"Are you sweeping in to save me, John? Carry me out over your shoulder? How fucking romantic. I might puke again." The scorn in her voice was so alien that John physically recoiled, and even that seemed to anger her.
Her voice dropped to a hiss, and she jabbed him in the chest with her finger. "We were clear about what this relationship would be from the outset. You didn't want to be a part of my life, you couldn't see your way clear to giving any part of your life, and now, when you've magically decided my life isn't going the way you want it to, you're on board with these guys who want to save me. Fuck you." She shut the bathroom door in his face, and he heard the shower start.
John stood at the door, hand on the wood, wanting very much to break it down, but thinking that it would probably make matters worse.
Behind him on the sofa, Harold spoke. "She has the right to make her own decisions," he said, quietly. "I only say because it's a lesson I had to learn. On a lesser scale, though the results were still painful."
John turned to face him. "You've known she was in danger for how many months, exactly?"
"Jessica's number first appeared a month after her wedding," Harold said. "I wasn't involved at the time. Nathan worked the numbers then, and he was overwhelmed. But her number appears sporadically, then tensions are resolved in the short term and the cycle repeats."
Nathan shook his head. "The thing is, we can't force her to leave. If we try, she'll still go home, but next time she'll be less inclined to ask for help."
"I don't care," said John. "I'll take her to a safehouse if I have to."
"And when Ms Stanton wonders why you haven't met her in Romania?" Harold stood, creaky, and limped over to the buffet to poke at the hole in the wallpaper with the end of his cane.
John stared at him. He'd had no message about a new mission.
"You'll be receiving orders tomorrow morning, I believe." Harold lifted two of the intact decanters out of the brandy puddle. "When we thought you were the threat, I made sure to monitor your activity."
John took out his own phone and put it on the table as if it were about to explode. It was supposed to be secure, it was supposed to be inviolable. Delighted to have a phone at last, Nathan picked it up and with disturbingly few movements, unlocked it and put it to his ear.
"Hello, this is Nathan in the Villenueve Suite – I need a casual wardrobe for a woman, size…" He raised an eyebrow at Harold, who held up four fingers. "Size four. And shoes…"
"Eight narrow," said John, despite himself.
"Eight narrow, yes. Two pairs, lovely. I'll leave the choices to you. Thank you." Nathan hung up and passed the phone back to John. "It's not jacked, by the way. You're too scrupulous for that. You and your partner both are, but you use IFT messaging software occasionally. It's not your fault; we did sell it to the CIA." Nathan settled down in a chair, pleased with himself. "So, in a way, that money is paying for Jessica's clothes. I do like the symmetry in that."
The clothes arrived astonishingly fast, before Jess had emerged from the shower. John knocked on the door just as the water turned off, and she opened it, hair wrapped in a towel.
John held up a suitbag for her, and a pair of pumps. "There's sandals, if you'd rather," he said.
"These are fine," she said, and took them. "Did he get makeup?"
"Sorry!" said Nathan, from behind John. "Don't wear it myself, didn't think of it. Not that I wear women's clothing much, either. Though I bet I'd look swell in pantyhose…" John turned away from him, left him talking to Harold about his best options for casual drag wear. Nathan was back in cheery billionaire mode, now that the immediate threat was neutralised and there were problems to solve. John couldn't believe he'd been fooled by an act, or at least a persona. He was only just realising how much of Nathan's public life was a construction.
Jessica was still watched him, her mouth an angry straight line. She held the suitbag with her forearm, and he remembered her injured wrist.
"Do you need help with that?" he said, then when her expression turned thunderous at the suggestion that she couldn't dress, by way of explanation he added, "Your wrist."
She looked at him for a few more moments, then nodded and let him in.
The bathroom was enormous, bigger than he had realised when he grabbed a glass of water. Jess hung the suitbag on the towel rail and unzipped it, flicking through the clothes, and finding the underwear. It all had tags on; they must have sent someone bolting down to a department store.
"I want you to…" John said into the silence, but Jess cut him off.
"It's so not about what you want, mister," she said, and stepped into the panties. Her wrist must have been tender, because she used her pinky to pull them up. When they dragged on her damp skin, John put his hand out, and she let him finish getting them in place. He helped her with pantyhose, hooked up her bra.
It was so commonplace, the thing that married couples do: banal, awkward and unsexy. John felt disjointed, intimate and distant at the same time. He opened his mouth to say something but again, Jess got there first.
"That first word had better not be 'I'." She pulled her hair out of the collar of a pale blue blouse, and turned so that John could button it up.
I'm worried about you, he was going to say. Or, I want to help. Instead, he folded her collar down, helped her into a skirt, zipped it up against her hip.
"I can look after myself, John," Jess finally said. "I've been doing it for a while now."
John sat on the edge of the tub and put his hands on her hips. "What do you need?" he said.
She smiled then, a tiny curve of a thing that told him he'd done okay. "I need you to go away and let me deal with my life on my own."
That was unacceptable, and John felt his shoulders tighten, his gut pulled in ready to fight. Jess took his hand, finally, and held it so she could look at him.
"It's my life, John, and you chose not to be a part of it. I don't have room to make things easier for you right now, so I want you to go back to your job, and concentrate on surviving. I'll be doing the same thing."
John couldn't look at her face without seeing his own in the mirror behind her, and for a moment, he didn't recognise either of them. They had been two kids. When had they become these solemn, battle-weary people? Everything was wrong, everything was built on wrong decisions and bad paths chosen, and there was no going back to fix any of it. He reached out and touched her face, then kissed her softly on the lips. "Okay," he said, finally, and picked up her crumpled jeans from the floor.
"Leave them," said Jess. "I don't want to wear any of it again." She took a hand towel, wrapped it around her palm, and walked past him into the living room.
A flurry of maids and workmen had descended on the Villaneuve suite, cleaning and tidying with studied silence. Nathan leaned against the clean end of the buffet with his coat over his arm, looking stupidly pleased with himself. Harold still sat on the sofa, engrossed in his laptop.
"This is a rite of passage, isn't it?" Nathan said with a sigh. "Trashing my hotel room. I feel twenty years younger. I hope photos get leaked to Instagram."
Harold gave him a disgusted look. When John and Jessica approached, he stood, apparently ready to explain something, but Nathan jumped in front of him. John thought this must be a familiar relationship dynamic for them, because Harold simply rolled his eyes and stepped back.
"Okay," said Nathan. "I'll drive you home, Jessica, or at least to the hospital to get your hand seen to."
Jess shook her head. "Nope. I saw how you threw that brandy back; I'm not getting in a car with you behind the wheel." She crossed her arms, considering. "I'll go with your driver, though."
Nathan gave an easy going shrug. "Let's organise it on the way," he said, one arm outstretched in Jessica's direction. She glanced at John once before she stepped away, walking swiftly through the door while John stood in bewildered confusion. By the time he realised that this was goodbye and she was leaving, Nathan stood the elevator, talking loudly to his chauffeur, organising someone to drive Jess' car back to New Rochelle. Then the door opened, and they were gone.
Author's notes:
These two personal accounts of experience with domestic violence were really important in the way I wrote this chapter. (I'm sorry I don't have a link to the original, which was a Guardian piece):
I was in a domestic violence situation and it was only once I felt I could share small issues without being judged or immediately told I was a fool if I didn’t leave immediately that I started to open up and trust someone else’s perspective on my situation. Just being a soft place for those you love to share their struggles without judgement is all I can recommend.
Don’t let someone become isolated. That’s the number one way abusers get control and that’s what my ex did. I had one friend who went through hell and high water every time I moved or changed my phone number to find me. And that always meant so much to me. It made me feel like I mattered to someone.
Chapter Six // Master Post
// Chapter Eight