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st_aurafinaTitle: Buying the Time on My Knees, Chapter 15
Fandom: Person of Interest
Rating: Explicit
Words: 6K (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:
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
John scrambled to his feet, slipped in his own blood, and fell to the floor of the changing room. He knew he had to get up, had to get moving, because breaking out of a Chinese jail would be that much harder with a gut wound. Still, lying there on the grimy tile, blood pooling cool and gelatinous between him and the floor, he was calmer and more at ease than he had been since rejoining the agency. He'd been retired, to use Mark's terms, and it was a relief. Even if he died, it was a relief. That was an odd realisation, he thought, drifting back into an eerie calm darkness again.
He woke twice to the squeak and hiss of the door opening. Both times, frightened faces looked down on him, then quickly abandoned the room. John didn't blame them. Doing something about the white guy lying shot in his own blood would only cause them trouble.
He lay there gathering strength to pull himself upright. Any minute now, he told himself. The first thing to do was get off the floor. Then assess the damage from the bullet, and figure out the nearest and safest way to get some first aid…
He didn't realise he was greying out until he felt fingers slip inside his jacket. He rallied himself enough to grab the wrist, and came face to face with one of the pickpocket kids who worked full time at the airport. The kid screamed at him and lunged forward, teeth bared.
"Hey, want money?" John said, in his barely passable Mandarin. The words were muffled, and a fresh trickle of blood slipped past his lips. He swiped it on his sleeve. "I have money."
The kid pulled back to stare sceptically at him. John didn't blame him: he must look like a talking corpse by now.
"You could steal what I have. But I can get more." He offered the kid fifty bucks as a sweetener. "I gotta get out of here."
The boy snatched the money as fast as lightning and bolted from the room. John sighed and tried getting himself upright again. The blood on the tiled floor had dried enough to go tacky, which was bad because he'd been lying here far too long, but good because it gave him some traction underfoot.
He was dizzy and cold – par for the course with blood loss – but his jaw had gone past pain to numbness, and the bullet wound in his guts was bearable. The wound was still bleeding, but sluggishly. He took a fistful of paper towels and jammed them into the wound, screwing his eyes closed tight to stop from crying out, then forced himself to stand properly upright instead of hunching over. That hurt more than he expected, and the blood started pulsing from the bullet wound again. At least the pain distracted him from the bloody pulp in his mouth where the molars had been.
He could live with this, he told himself. He wasn't giving up yet. He'd just wait a few minutes, and work on making himself look respectable first.
John was washing his face when the door swung open again, and he spun on one heel. It was the pickpocket again, this time with a bunch of his little friends, presumably to rob John blind. John sighed and drew his weapon, then cocked it. He didn't want to shoot kids, but kids could be ruthless, especially when they were hungry and desperate. Hopefully he could put a few shots into the wall, and they'd be smart enough to see him as a threat, and therefore too much risk for relatively small returns.
"Five hundred," the boy said. He stood as an arrowhead at the front of his group. "Up front five hundred. Five hundred later."
John leaned a hip against the sink in an attempt at casual nonchalance, but also because his legs were giving out.
The boy shrugged, and spoke to his friends in a low mutter. He was getting ready to leave.
"Okay," said John, and holstered his gun. "Five hundred now, then the cash machine for more." He didn't need to, actually, he was padded with cash in various currencies, but they didn't need to know that.
"Okay," said the kid, sounding the syllables out carefully. He held out his hand.
John counted the notes into his palm and showed the kid that his wallet was empty now. "What have you got?"
What they had was a wheelchair. John looked at it suspiciously, then decided that he was as good as dead already, so he might as well go in comfort. He settled himself in the chair. At the very least, a child gang of financially ambitious kids would be interesting.
They whizzed along the corridor and back into the main causeway of the airport, passing tourists and airport maintenance in a flash. Then they took a sharp right into one of the access corridors beside the food court, which lead to the back area behind the restaurants.
The first thing he saw was the familiar shape of his own luggage. The second was the figure of Harold Finch standing behind the suit bag and the duffle, leaning on his cane.
"Thank you, gentleman," Harold said to the boys. "Here is the balance of our agreement." He passed out envelopes, presumably thick with cash.
John gave the leader of the gang a narrow-eyed look, but the kid tucked his envelope inside his puffy red jacket and grinned at John unapologetically.
"I don't have much Mandarin, but we seemed to find a middle ground for communication. They have been remarkably useful," said Harold.
"Watch that one in the red coat," said John. "Scored a double pay-packet." He reached inside his jacket and peeled the paper towel away from his wound. It was sodden, red and heavy in his grip.
Harold was appalled. "Are you shot?"
John peered up at him, suddenly exhausted, now that there was someone here to help. "Why'd'you think I'm in a wheelchair?" he asked.
"It's possible there's been something of a translation error," said Harold, and got out his phone. "I was under the impression you'd sprained your ankle." Whoever he was calling answered, and he turned a little aside from John. "Yes, this is Mr Crane. I'm afraid my bodyguard has had an altercation with a group of men outside the airport. I believe he needs medical attention; may I leave that in your care?"
"Who was that?" said John.
Harold lifted John's bag experimentally, and winced. "That was one of Mr Crane's personal assistants when he's in China," he said. "I know that she's an undercover agent – Chinese secret service watch all international travellers of a certain financial calibre – but she does facilitate a lot of things. On top of that, she's really very hard to shock." He eyed the state of John's suit and clucked his tongue. "That won't do, Mr Reese," he said and reached for John's suit bag.
John hauled himself up, and leaned weak-limbed against the wall. He stood there, placid in the chill air behind the restaurants while Harold peeled the filthy suit off, then shook out a clean shirt and helped him into it.
"It will stain, but at least the stain will be fresh," Harold said. "It will help me sell the story a little better. Please sit down; if you fall, I won't be able to lift you."
John folded back into the wheelchair, wobbly after that small exertion. Harold took the water bottle from John's overnight bag, poured a little onto his handkerchief and used it to clean the blood off John's face. John let him, but when Harold's fingers touched his cheek over a missing tooth, John flinched and a little more blood escaped from the corner of his mouth.
"Sorry," John said, thickly, and took the square of linen from Harold's hands to clean himself up. "It'll stop soon."
The blood loss was making John stupid, because he couldn't make sense of Harold's expression: sympathetic, maybe? Angry? Sad? He finished cleaning his own face and then held the crumpled, blood-stained ball of linen in his palm.
Harold took it from him, then hoisted the duffle onto John's lap, folded the suit bag, then balanced his cane on top of everything. When he went behind the chair to push, the chair didn't move at all.
"Ah," said Harold. "We have encountered a small problem, Mr Reese." He leaned his entire bodyweight on the chair and it started to roll. "Never mind. Newton's second law will save us!"
John laughed, a soft, helpless kind of laugh that seemed to fit the absurd nature of the situation. He reached down to the wheels to help keep the chair rolling, despite the pain in his guts. There was a ridiculous levity about the whole undertaking, something infectious and gleeful about their stupid, awkward progress through the back ways of the airport.
Harold fortunately had a plan of the camera free zones in the airport, and had planned a course for them to follow.
"There are few places without cameras these days," he said as he pushed. "But one can organise a number of convenient malfunctions – indeed, I've taken advantage of a few blackouts organised by other parties."
They emerged close to the pick-up bay at the front of the domestic terminal, and Harold helped John stand, once he'd piled the luggage up beside the chair.
Ms Li, Harold's personal assistant while he was staying in China, was a neat, small woman whose shoulders nonetheless spoke of some serious sports training. The moment her black sedan appeared at the pick-up lane of the International terminal, Harold shifted easily into the personality of Mr Crane: preternaturally calm, eternally polite, and under the assumption that everything would be taken care of. John leaned on the metal railing meant to hold luggage trolleys, holding Harold's bundled up woollen scarf pressed against his abdomen. They'd left the wheelchair at the sliding door and it had already vanished back into the main terminal. An alighting passenger had bundled an elderly woman into it from their taxi, and pushed her inside.
"All you have to do is be surly and non-communicative," Harold said, resting a hand possessively on John's shoulder.
John narrowed his eyes at Harold, trying to parse if this was a joke or an insult, and Harold said, "Yes, exactly like that."
Ms Li hurried up to them, her heels clicking on the pavement. "Mr Crane!" she said, her accent smoothly British. "What on earth happened here?"
"Ms Li," said Harold. "I'm afraid I led Mr Rutherford into a somewhat dangerous situation. I know you said not to go exploring but I'm afraid that I am easily distracted." He shook his head, apparently sorrowful but not exactly repentant. "I called you instead of the police because I was sure you would know what to do. I do apologise for the inconvenience. Please don't hesitate to add any excess expense to my account."
John met Ms Li's eyes, and tried to convey all the frustration that came with being responsible for an oblivious rich man. She gave him a small smile, and he knew that it would be all right.
Before he knew it, he had been bundled off to a hospital, glossy white and expensive-looking, where a polite surgeon took a look at his injury while Harold and Ms Li spoke with a well-dressed Sub-Lieutenant from the 4th Brigade who was flanked by a cohort of police officers. The fact that Mr Crane had not brought a bodyguard with him when he entered the country seemed not to be a problem. John's Mandarin was not as adept as Kara's, but he could follow the conversation enough to pick up that Harold was easing the way with liberal applications of cash.
The doctor was adamant that John needed surgery, and was appalled when John refused.
"What is the problem, Mr Rutherford?" Harold detached himself from the group of police officers. His face bore an expression of detached concern, appropriate for an employee who had been injured in the line of his duties.
"I'm not having surgery," John said. "If this guy won't sew me up, then he can give me a needle…"
"Don't be absurd!" Apparently Harold Crane expected a certain level of control over his employees' decisions. "I will not allow you to leave this hospital without the doctor's permission, and I most certainly will not allow you to operate on yourself. There is no need to worry. It would be shameful if I were to be attacked a second time while here in Beijing. I will be perfectly safe while you're under anaesthetic, because these police officers won't leave my side for a moment. And," he rested his fingers on John's wrist. "I will be here from the moment you wake up. I promise."
John was about to protest that it wasn't fear for himself that made him cautious, then nurses flocked around him to set up an IV line. Very shortly after that, as far as he could tell, he woke in the recovery room wearing a hospital robe and with his belly swathed in clean white bandages. Harold sat beside his bed, holding a book open with one finger, and his phone resting on the mattress beside him. Two police officers guarded the double doors. There were no other patients in the recovery ward with him, though it bustled with nurses in crisp white uniforms.
"You're awake," said Harold, and closed his book. "How do you feel?"
John blinked slowly, still floating, knowing this memory wouldn't stick. "Don't let me say anything," he said, his mouth dry.
"I won't," said Harold. He reached for the bookmark tucked inside the back cover and passed it to John.
John stared at it, trying to make the words focus. It was a white index card, turned sideway so the handwriting ran perpendicular to the blue lines. He wiped his eyes with fingers that trembled frustratingly, but then was able to find the optimum distance to read the words. They were written in blue pen – a fountain pen, from the way the ink blurred a little into the cheap card – and the upward strokes were firm and decisive.
"Do you change your writing style for each Harold?" he asked, distracted by the idea. It was difficult to focus. He hated anaesthesia, he hated this artificial feeling of loose, easy calm.
Harold smiled. "Check item number five," he said, and opened his book.
John frowned and looked again at the words on the card.
Answers to questions you have asked more than once and so, I believe, will wish to ask again:
1. The area is secure. I am monitoring the security cameras.
2. Jessica is safe. She is staying in an apartment in Manhattan. Grace is with her.
3. Your weapon is secure. You gave it to me. It is in my pocket, disturbing the line of my jacket. The safety is on.
4. No, I don't know anything about guns but I am adept at finding manuals.
5. Times you have woken and asked questions:three four five
6. No, you haven't said anything untoward. And if you had, I would tell you.
7. Yes, I modify my writing. One of my personae is left-handed.
"Okay," said John, and passed the card back to Harold. "You better eat that once we're out of here."
"Ah." Harold took his pen from an inside pocket and, propping the card on the front of his book, added an eighth point, and amended the number of times John had woken, striking out the last. Then he tucked the card into his book, and reached for a plastic tumbler of water. When he stood to hold the straw to John's mouth, John noticed the side of his jacket facing the bed did indeed hang low, as if something very heavy sat in one pocket.
John closed his eyes, sipped the water, which was blissfully cold on his raw throat, and fell asleep again.
It was three days before he walked out of the hospital, as limp and bloodless as a wet towel but with a clean bill of health and two new molars which Harold assured him were not bugged.
"I wouldn't mind if you bugged them," John said. "At least you'd have a good reason."
Harold frowned as he got into the chauffeured car. "That's more of a Cold War thing, as far as I know. Why bug teeth these days, when we can just switch on your phone?" With this cheering thought, he directed the car to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and settled back against the leather upholstery.
By now, Harold had fully established an identity for Mr John Rutherford, security specialist, and organised to have the gaps in his paperwork filled.
"And back pay," said Harold, in the car, passing over Mr Rutherford's wallet. "Mr Crane is a demanding employer, and he does have his ways, but he compensates for the annoyance quite generously."
John flicked through the cards in the wallet: cash, membership cards, three high-end credit cards and large bills in both greenbacks and yuan.
"What happens now?" he asked, as the car pulled up in the glass-walled private atrium of the hotel. A liveried doorman hurried over to open the door.
Harold raised his eyebrows, and John could see the person of Mr Crane sliding into place: polite, withdrawn and quietly insistent. "We behave like a rich man and his injured bodyguard," he said. "And hopefully the river of appropriate behaviour will carry us gently home."
Porters descended on them like hawks, gathering the few bags John had retained, as well as taking Harold's overcoat as they walked through the door. Ms Li met them in the lobby to update Mr Crane on the last few details of John's paperwork. Harold leaned over her tablet to sign some documents, as any businessman would, so John shifted into bodyguard mode: standing close but at an angle that politely meant he couldn't see the screen, hands easy at his side, eyes assessing potential threats in the lobby. His body protested both the posture and the concentration, and a headache rose up throbbing at the bright lights. It was a small pain, all in all, so he pushed it down as he always did and forced his body to obey.
In the executive elevator, Harold pressed a button on his phone, then leaned over to speak low in John's ear. "It would be very useful if we could make some employer-employee small talk. For Ms Li's bugs, you see."
John nodded. "Of course, sir," he said, with great deference. "Is there anything you'll be needing?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Mr Rutherford. I expect you to rest and heal up." Harold raised his eyebrows at John.
"Yes, sir," John said. "I'll get right on that."
Harold's suite was large and airy, with skylights and tall narrow windows that cast long stripes of sunlight along the pale wood floors. John's luggage had been carefully placed in one of the bedrooms, and John should have gone to unpack it, to check what had been disturbed by Ms Li's inevitable search, but instead, he sunk down onto one of the sofas in the lounge, exhausted.
Harold pressed his finger to his lips for silence, then propped his phone on a stand on the coffee table and tapped a button. A light that had previously been red turned green, and Harold said, "There. I've randomised and looped the audio, which should take care of Ms Li's bugs. We'll be safe to speak freely now." He looked at John, worried, then brought him a bottle of water.
"Thanks," said John, and took a few sips.
Harold sat down opposite him and opened his laptop. "I have a flight booked for tomorrow. Is there anything you need retrieved before we leave the country?"
John took another mouthful of water and shook his head. "Have you heard from Jess?"
Harold frowned. "I didn't want to chance talking to Jessica directly until I had secured the room, but Grace makes an excellent intermediary and we have been talking vaguely about our mutual friend, hopefully without putting Jessica at risk. She's doing well, all things considered – I don't want to explain things that really are Jessica's to tell you, but perhaps she won't mind me saying that she's made a clean break from Mr Arndt."
There was something to the very careful way he spoke that suggested whatever had happened between Jessica and Peter had been very uncomfortable. That, and the way Harold was fastidiously cleaning his glasses now.
"Were you all right?" John asked. "You don't usually work in the field." Harold had said they had few people on the ground after Dillinger was killed, but the idea of Harold out in the city, putting himself at risk was startling.
Harold nodded. "My plane was landing when Grace called to say she'd received Jessica's number again. If you hadn't contacted me, if I hadn't been so close when the Machine detected the danger Jessica was in, there wouldn't have been time to get organised and up to Vermont. I went to speak with Jessica and there was… an altercation."
Harold said those last words slowly and carefully, as if he wanted to get the words exactly right. His smile was calm, quite the opposite of what John was suddenly feeling. Anxiety, cold and spreading in his chest, made him take a few uneasy breaths. In a strange, detached way, he realised he was more afraid of what could have happened to Jess than what had already happened to him.
"Mr Reese?" Harold came to sit beside him on the sofa. "Here," he proffered the water again, and John took it, holding it between his palms. "I'm sorry, I didn't intend to alarm you." He put his hand on John's forearm. "Jessica is safe," he said firmly. "You helped me save her. And you could not have been there yourself, not if you'd gotten on a plane in Morocco the moment she contacted you."
John still held the water bottle, and Harold took it from him, unscrewed the lid and passed it back. John sipped the water, watching Harold. This close, he could see a fading bruise in the man's hairline, a contusion where the skin had split and had not finished healing.
He reached out to brush it with his fingers, and Harold ducked his head out of reach. "Were you hurt?" John asked. "Did Peter do this?"
"I walked into a very tense situation," Harold said. "Mr Arndt had been drinking. He became violent and there were a few quite frightening moments between the time that he hit me and the time that my driver could intervene." His smile became self-deprecating. "I made the driver wait outside, you see. I thought – well. There's a certain insulation wealth gives you," he said. "Sometimes I forget that it doesn't extend to those very immediate situations where people don't care about money or, indeed, anything."
He put his glasses back on and blinked mildly at John. "Wealth has nevertheless been very useful in making sure that Jessica is legally protected, though I'm disturbed at the disparity in response between me filing a restraining order against Mr Arndt, and his wife doing the same thing. And Mr Arndt remains very, very frightened of the financial havoc I can wreak upon him with one phone call. It has provided a good incentive for him to remain as far from Jessica as he can."
"That's good," John said, and sagged in his seat. Whatever had happened, whatever risk Jess had been in, he could worry about later. For now, she was safe. There was so much to process, and he hadn't realised how much his body hurt, from the surgery, from the tension.
"Now," Harold said, as he walked back to his laptop. "Since I've befuddled Ms Li's listening devices, perhaps we could Skype with Grace tonight?"
"That would be great," said John.
He had only closed his eyes for a moment, he was sure, but the next thing he knew, the sunlight had faded, and Harold was speaking to him.
"I'm sorry to wake you, Mr Reese, but would you be offended if I just…"
John blinked at Harold, who, pleased he was awake, lifted John's legs up onto the sofa, and draped a blanket over him.
"I think you'll be more comfortable that way," Harold said. "I'll wake you when dinner comes up. I'm assuming you'll want to stay in?"
John nodded, then fell asleep wondering what Harold would have done if John had said he'd rather have a night on the town.
He woke again when Harold was on the phone, ordering dinner, and stayed awake this time long enough to pick at the shared tasting plate on the table between them. All the while, Harold worked on his laptop, glancing occasionally up at John, then back at his screen.
When waitstaff had cleared the dishes and left, Harold stood and carried the laptop around to John's side, then sat beside him. John heaved himself upright, feeling a little better after some sleep away from the hospital.
Grace watched from a window on the screen, and as soon as John came into view, she gave a little wave with her fingertips. Over her shoulder, John saw an apartment: drapes, overstuffed furniture, and walls crammed with art.
"Can he hear me now?" Grace said, her voice tinny on the speakers, with that little hiccupping delay that told John Harold was using some kind of high-security link to allow them to speak. "Oh, John, honey, you look like you need a week of liver and onions to build you up again."
At that, the screen jerked a little and Jessica appeared next to Grace. "Jesus," she said. "How much blood did you lose? Did they transfuse you?" Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail;she wore a loose t-shirt over sweatpants and no make-up.
"They did," Harold said. "And apparently his blood count is normal." He squeezed John's shoulder and took out another phone, started texting on it. John heard a ping in the room where Grace and Jessica sat. Grace pulled out her own phone, looked down at the screen and grinned.
"Excuse me, you two," she said. "I just need to take this." She stood, and pushed the screen in Jess's direction, then disappeared from view.
On John's side, Harold stepped into his own bedroom, and pulled the door closed.
"Gosh, they're subtle," said Jess, her tone deliberately light, and her expression much more wary.
John felt the weight of guilt and misery settle on his shoulders; he had no right to force this conversation on her, and she had no obligation to face it, either. "We don't have to – I can call Harold back."
"No," said Jess. "It's okay. Probably better to clear the air now, while we're on different continents and your partner is…do you even know where she is?"
John shook his head. "I'm pretty sure she's going to keep as far away as she can from me, though."
Jess snorted. "She was a piece of work, all right." Her body language was different, John thought. More forthright? No, that wasn't it. Less cautious, maybe. He caught himself immediately trying to extrapolate reasons for that, and then stopped. He didn't know what she'd been through, and he had no right to know.
"Harold said you'd left the agency," Jess said. "That's all he'd say. I'm guessing from the bullet wound that it didn't go well."
John shrugged. "It could have gone worse," he said.
"Ha," said Jess. "Same." She looked down. "Thank you, for sending Harold to Vermont. It was – oh, God, it was so awkward, after the cops took Peter, just me and Harold in this wrecked motel room. But somehow it was easier to walk away with him than it would have been with someone who…" She waved towards John, unable to say the words.
"Someone who cares about you," John said, then winced, apologetic. "I mean, of course Harold cares, but…"
"It's okay," said Jess. "I know what you mean. I could always talk to Nathan much more than I could to Harold. Harold has a way of making himself feel distant. But in this case, it meant I didn't have to explain myself. Or be embarrassed. Have you noticed that? He's so polite, you'd think he'd be full of judgement too, but he's not." She grinned. "Also, he's kind of a badass."
John laughed, picturing Harold ordering the Chinese police officers around with quiet, implacable authority. "Yeah. He is." Then he remembered Harold directing him on the road to rescue Nathan. He wondered briefly what it would be like, having that calm steadiness at his back all the time.
"He showed up at our hotel," she said suddenly. "I don't know what would have happened if he hadn't knocked on the door when he did. God." She rested her head in her hands for a moment. "Peter had everything planned out. I knew something was up. I wanted to believe everything was going to be so much better, but in my gut, I knew it wasn't. That's when I called you."
"What Kara did," John said. "If it tipped things over the edge, I…"
Jess interrupted him. "Would she have given him a gun? He had a gun. He had all these plans, this stupid suicide plan, how he was helping me, how he was doing me a favour by shooting me first so I wouldn't have to see him die."
John's stomach dropped, a horrible, cold realisation of what Harold had walked in on, what Jess had been facing alone until then. He blinked, opened his mouth to say something stupid and protective, then stopped, really considered it. He tried to fit Kara's particular brand of psychopathy to what Jess had asked. He couldn't imagine that she'd take much pleasure in encouraging Peter to kill Jess; she'd never shown much sympathy for the male bullies of the world.
"No," he said. It helped, being analytical. It pushed back the panic of knowing Jess had been that close to death. "Honestly, she would have thought it was funnier to give you a gun. She'd have called it empowering." And what a mess that would have been for Jess, who had always been a healer.
"What he did, that's… That's not even the worst thing," Jess said, her gaze down as she spoke, as if not meeting John's eyes made the words easier. "I keep going over and over it, and the thing that freaks me out is that I froze. I couldn't do anything until he pointed that gun at Harold. How crazy is that? I couldn't save myself – I don't know, maybe I felt I deserved it, whatever, that's for me and my therapist, I guess – but I wouldn't let him kill Harold. Once I made that decision, all the control he had wrapped around me, it was suddenly like tissue paper. And he was nothing, once I knocked the gun out of his hand. It was easy. Horribly easy, just like that." She looked up at him, her eyes dry, her jaw set. "It terrifies me, that I was that weak for that long."
"Oh, Jess," John said. "You're not weak." The distance between them stretched vast and cold when his arms ached to hold her. "I've never thought you were weak."
Jess laughed, a little bitter, maybe, but also with relief. "You just got shot in the guts, what do you know?"
"I'm glad you're safe," he said, finally.
"I'm glad you are." Jess watched him through the screen. "Life isn't playing out like I hoped," she said. "But I'm starting to figure out that it's kind of like that for everyone."
"I'm sorry," said John. "For my part in how it played out." For bringing Kara to your door, for putting you in danger, for not being there again and again.
Jess sighed and leaned back in her chair. "I knew what your job was," she said. "You shouldn't apologise when part of the attraction for me was the risk."
They were both watching the other now, wary and curious, like two strangers who had discovered they had a shared history. John had no idea who he was without his work; it was easy to imagine that Jess felt the same about her life.
"Are you going to live in New York?" he asked, finally. "When you're settled, I mean."
Jess nodded. "Yeah," she said. "There's plenty of work, it's close enough to visit Mom, when she finally forgives me for the separation." She paused for a moment, then hurried on past what was turning into another painful subject. Jessica's mother had never been a fan of John. "Are you coming back to the city?"
"I want to," said John. "If I can. If it's safe." For Harold, for Grace and Jess. He wasn't particularly invested in his own safety, but he wouldn't lead Kara or Mark to his friends if he could.
"Come see me," Jess said, and John heard hope in her voice. "We can talk."
John smiled, struck with the unexpected pleasure of anticipation and excitement of seeing Jess openly, or as openly as he could on the run from the CIA. "That would be really good."
He dozed on the sofa on and off through the night, even though he had a perfectly luxurious bed. When Harold gently suggested he take the chance to be more comfortable, now that he was out of a hospital bed, John shook his head. He didn't like his chances of sleeping steadily in that big, empty bedroom, away from the pale glow of Harold's screen.
"I'm very comfortable here," he said, shifting his legs under the blanket. "What about you? Don't you sleep?"
Whatever Harold had been working on involved a lot of typing and a lot of waiting. "Occasionally," he said, fingers moving quietly and quickly. "But at the moment, I am trying to talk two hired security men through working a number, without letting them or the number know about it." He glanced up at John over the top of the screen. "It's a little complicated, and not particularly conducive to rest."
John could feel his frustration, at the distance between himself and the person in danger, at the obstacles that come from using an unknowing proxy. "When we get back," he started to say, but Harold gave a little shake of his head, albeit with a smile.
"I want to say yes," he said. "Very much – I can't imagine anyone more qualified to help me with the numbers but…"
"I get it," John said, perhaps a little too quickly to convince Harold he was fine with a refusal. "I've got a dangerous history. I wouldn't want someone like me around the people I loved."
Harold looked horrified and a little sad. "John, no – first of all, Grace would cheerfully throttle me for trying to protect her like that. I told you very early on that I'd learned better than to make decisions about her safety without her. No, what I'm worried about is the sense of obligation. I've found it's very complicated, this business of saving people, and it puts people in a position where they feel they have to pay back the debt. I don't want that – I don't want to see you hurt or killed because you felt you owed it to me."
John looked at the man who had recorded letters for him when he had thought he was alone, who had flown across the globe to convince him not to go nobly to his death, who had put himself in danger because John asked him to protect Jess. Who had kissed him at Dillinger's graveside because he needed to feel alive. Who was trying right now to be ridiculously noble and selfless when he didn't have to.
John pushed himself upright and walked gingerly to Harold's side of the sofa and sat, folded his hands in his lap to keep them still. "What if this was something I wanted because working with you makes me happy? Risking my life to save people, knowing you're there at my back? I can't think of anything better."
Harold blinked at him in the reflected light of his screen, and John saw the ghost of a smile cross his face. "All right," he said. "As soon as we're back in the city, we'll get to work."
Chapter Fourteen // Master Post // Chapter Sixteen
Fandom: Person of Interest
Rating: Explicit
Words: 6K (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:
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
John scrambled to his feet, slipped in his own blood, and fell to the floor of the changing room. He knew he had to get up, had to get moving, because breaking out of a Chinese jail would be that much harder with a gut wound. Still, lying there on the grimy tile, blood pooling cool and gelatinous between him and the floor, he was calmer and more at ease than he had been since rejoining the agency. He'd been retired, to use Mark's terms, and it was a relief. Even if he died, it was a relief. That was an odd realisation, he thought, drifting back into an eerie calm darkness again.
He woke twice to the squeak and hiss of the door opening. Both times, frightened faces looked down on him, then quickly abandoned the room. John didn't blame them. Doing something about the white guy lying shot in his own blood would only cause them trouble.
He lay there gathering strength to pull himself upright. Any minute now, he told himself. The first thing to do was get off the floor. Then assess the damage from the bullet, and figure out the nearest and safest way to get some first aid…
He didn't realise he was greying out until he felt fingers slip inside his jacket. He rallied himself enough to grab the wrist, and came face to face with one of the pickpocket kids who worked full time at the airport. The kid screamed at him and lunged forward, teeth bared.
"Hey, want money?" John said, in his barely passable Mandarin. The words were muffled, and a fresh trickle of blood slipped past his lips. He swiped it on his sleeve. "I have money."
The kid pulled back to stare sceptically at him. John didn't blame him: he must look like a talking corpse by now.
"You could steal what I have. But I can get more." He offered the kid fifty bucks as a sweetener. "I gotta get out of here."
The boy snatched the money as fast as lightning and bolted from the room. John sighed and tried getting himself upright again. The blood on the tiled floor had dried enough to go tacky, which was bad because he'd been lying here far too long, but good because it gave him some traction underfoot.
He was dizzy and cold – par for the course with blood loss – but his jaw had gone past pain to numbness, and the bullet wound in his guts was bearable. The wound was still bleeding, but sluggishly. He took a fistful of paper towels and jammed them into the wound, screwing his eyes closed tight to stop from crying out, then forced himself to stand properly upright instead of hunching over. That hurt more than he expected, and the blood started pulsing from the bullet wound again. At least the pain distracted him from the bloody pulp in his mouth where the molars had been.
He could live with this, he told himself. He wasn't giving up yet. He'd just wait a few minutes, and work on making himself look respectable first.
John was washing his face when the door swung open again, and he spun on one heel. It was the pickpocket again, this time with a bunch of his little friends, presumably to rob John blind. John sighed and drew his weapon, then cocked it. He didn't want to shoot kids, but kids could be ruthless, especially when they were hungry and desperate. Hopefully he could put a few shots into the wall, and they'd be smart enough to see him as a threat, and therefore too much risk for relatively small returns.
"Five hundred," the boy said. He stood as an arrowhead at the front of his group. "Up front five hundred. Five hundred later."
John leaned a hip against the sink in an attempt at casual nonchalance, but also because his legs were giving out.
The boy shrugged, and spoke to his friends in a low mutter. He was getting ready to leave.
"Okay," said John, and holstered his gun. "Five hundred now, then the cash machine for more." He didn't need to, actually, he was padded with cash in various currencies, but they didn't need to know that.
"Okay," said the kid, sounding the syllables out carefully. He held out his hand.
John counted the notes into his palm and showed the kid that his wallet was empty now. "What have you got?"
What they had was a wheelchair. John looked at it suspiciously, then decided that he was as good as dead already, so he might as well go in comfort. He settled himself in the chair. At the very least, a child gang of financially ambitious kids would be interesting.
They whizzed along the corridor and back into the main causeway of the airport, passing tourists and airport maintenance in a flash. Then they took a sharp right into one of the access corridors beside the food court, which lead to the back area behind the restaurants.
The first thing he saw was the familiar shape of his own luggage. The second was the figure of Harold Finch standing behind the suit bag and the duffle, leaning on his cane.
"Thank you, gentleman," Harold said to the boys. "Here is the balance of our agreement." He passed out envelopes, presumably thick with cash.
John gave the leader of the gang a narrow-eyed look, but the kid tucked his envelope inside his puffy red jacket and grinned at John unapologetically.
"I don't have much Mandarin, but we seemed to find a middle ground for communication. They have been remarkably useful," said Harold.
"Watch that one in the red coat," said John. "Scored a double pay-packet." He reached inside his jacket and peeled the paper towel away from his wound. It was sodden, red and heavy in his grip.
Harold was appalled. "Are you shot?"
John peered up at him, suddenly exhausted, now that there was someone here to help. "Why'd'you think I'm in a wheelchair?" he asked.
"It's possible there's been something of a translation error," said Harold, and got out his phone. "I was under the impression you'd sprained your ankle." Whoever he was calling answered, and he turned a little aside from John. "Yes, this is Mr Crane. I'm afraid my bodyguard has had an altercation with a group of men outside the airport. I believe he needs medical attention; may I leave that in your care?"
"Who was that?" said John.
Harold lifted John's bag experimentally, and winced. "That was one of Mr Crane's personal assistants when he's in China," he said. "I know that she's an undercover agent – Chinese secret service watch all international travellers of a certain financial calibre – but she does facilitate a lot of things. On top of that, she's really very hard to shock." He eyed the state of John's suit and clucked his tongue. "That won't do, Mr Reese," he said and reached for John's suit bag.
John hauled himself up, and leaned weak-limbed against the wall. He stood there, placid in the chill air behind the restaurants while Harold peeled the filthy suit off, then shook out a clean shirt and helped him into it.
"It will stain, but at least the stain will be fresh," Harold said. "It will help me sell the story a little better. Please sit down; if you fall, I won't be able to lift you."
John folded back into the wheelchair, wobbly after that small exertion. Harold took the water bottle from John's overnight bag, poured a little onto his handkerchief and used it to clean the blood off John's face. John let him, but when Harold's fingers touched his cheek over a missing tooth, John flinched and a little more blood escaped from the corner of his mouth.
"Sorry," John said, thickly, and took the square of linen from Harold's hands to clean himself up. "It'll stop soon."
The blood loss was making John stupid, because he couldn't make sense of Harold's expression: sympathetic, maybe? Angry? Sad? He finished cleaning his own face and then held the crumpled, blood-stained ball of linen in his palm.
Harold took it from him, then hoisted the duffle onto John's lap, folded the suit bag, then balanced his cane on top of everything. When he went behind the chair to push, the chair didn't move at all.
"Ah," said Harold. "We have encountered a small problem, Mr Reese." He leaned his entire bodyweight on the chair and it started to roll. "Never mind. Newton's second law will save us!"
John laughed, a soft, helpless kind of laugh that seemed to fit the absurd nature of the situation. He reached down to the wheels to help keep the chair rolling, despite the pain in his guts. There was a ridiculous levity about the whole undertaking, something infectious and gleeful about their stupid, awkward progress through the back ways of the airport.
Harold fortunately had a plan of the camera free zones in the airport, and had planned a course for them to follow.
"There are few places without cameras these days," he said as he pushed. "But one can organise a number of convenient malfunctions – indeed, I've taken advantage of a few blackouts organised by other parties."
They emerged close to the pick-up bay at the front of the domestic terminal, and Harold helped John stand, once he'd piled the luggage up beside the chair.
Ms Li, Harold's personal assistant while he was staying in China, was a neat, small woman whose shoulders nonetheless spoke of some serious sports training. The moment her black sedan appeared at the pick-up lane of the International terminal, Harold shifted easily into the personality of Mr Crane: preternaturally calm, eternally polite, and under the assumption that everything would be taken care of. John leaned on the metal railing meant to hold luggage trolleys, holding Harold's bundled up woollen scarf pressed against his abdomen. They'd left the wheelchair at the sliding door and it had already vanished back into the main terminal. An alighting passenger had bundled an elderly woman into it from their taxi, and pushed her inside.
"All you have to do is be surly and non-communicative," Harold said, resting a hand possessively on John's shoulder.
John narrowed his eyes at Harold, trying to parse if this was a joke or an insult, and Harold said, "Yes, exactly like that."
Ms Li hurried up to them, her heels clicking on the pavement. "Mr Crane!" she said, her accent smoothly British. "What on earth happened here?"
"Ms Li," said Harold. "I'm afraid I led Mr Rutherford into a somewhat dangerous situation. I know you said not to go exploring but I'm afraid that I am easily distracted." He shook his head, apparently sorrowful but not exactly repentant. "I called you instead of the police because I was sure you would know what to do. I do apologise for the inconvenience. Please don't hesitate to add any excess expense to my account."
John met Ms Li's eyes, and tried to convey all the frustration that came with being responsible for an oblivious rich man. She gave him a small smile, and he knew that it would be all right.
Before he knew it, he had been bundled off to a hospital, glossy white and expensive-looking, where a polite surgeon took a look at his injury while Harold and Ms Li spoke with a well-dressed Sub-Lieutenant from the 4th Brigade who was flanked by a cohort of police officers. The fact that Mr Crane had not brought a bodyguard with him when he entered the country seemed not to be a problem. John's Mandarin was not as adept as Kara's, but he could follow the conversation enough to pick up that Harold was easing the way with liberal applications of cash.
The doctor was adamant that John needed surgery, and was appalled when John refused.
"What is the problem, Mr Rutherford?" Harold detached himself from the group of police officers. His face bore an expression of detached concern, appropriate for an employee who had been injured in the line of his duties.
"I'm not having surgery," John said. "If this guy won't sew me up, then he can give me a needle…"
"Don't be absurd!" Apparently Harold Crane expected a certain level of control over his employees' decisions. "I will not allow you to leave this hospital without the doctor's permission, and I most certainly will not allow you to operate on yourself. There is no need to worry. It would be shameful if I were to be attacked a second time while here in Beijing. I will be perfectly safe while you're under anaesthetic, because these police officers won't leave my side for a moment. And," he rested his fingers on John's wrist. "I will be here from the moment you wake up. I promise."
John was about to protest that it wasn't fear for himself that made him cautious, then nurses flocked around him to set up an IV line. Very shortly after that, as far as he could tell, he woke in the recovery room wearing a hospital robe and with his belly swathed in clean white bandages. Harold sat beside his bed, holding a book open with one finger, and his phone resting on the mattress beside him. Two police officers guarded the double doors. There were no other patients in the recovery ward with him, though it bustled with nurses in crisp white uniforms.
"You're awake," said Harold, and closed his book. "How do you feel?"
John blinked slowly, still floating, knowing this memory wouldn't stick. "Don't let me say anything," he said, his mouth dry.
"I won't," said Harold. He reached for the bookmark tucked inside the back cover and passed it to John.
John stared at it, trying to make the words focus. It was a white index card, turned sideway so the handwriting ran perpendicular to the blue lines. He wiped his eyes with fingers that trembled frustratingly, but then was able to find the optimum distance to read the words. They were written in blue pen – a fountain pen, from the way the ink blurred a little into the cheap card – and the upward strokes were firm and decisive.
"Do you change your writing style for each Harold?" he asked, distracted by the idea. It was difficult to focus. He hated anaesthesia, he hated this artificial feeling of loose, easy calm.
Harold smiled. "Check item number five," he said, and opened his book.
John frowned and looked again at the words on the card.
Answers to questions you have asked more than once and so, I believe, will wish to ask again:
1. The area is secure. I am monitoring the security cameras.
2. Jessica is safe. She is staying in an apartment in Manhattan. Grace is with her.
3. Your weapon is secure. You gave it to me. It is in my pocket, disturbing the line of my jacket. The safety is on.
4. No, I don't know anything about guns but I am adept at finding manuals.
5. Times you have woken and asked questions:
6. No, you haven't said anything untoward. And if you had, I would tell you.
7. Yes, I modify my writing. One of my personae is left-handed.
"Okay," said John, and passed the card back to Harold. "You better eat that once we're out of here."
"Ah." Harold took his pen from an inside pocket and, propping the card on the front of his book, added an eighth point, and amended the number of times John had woken, striking out the last. Then he tucked the card into his book, and reached for a plastic tumbler of water. When he stood to hold the straw to John's mouth, John noticed the side of his jacket facing the bed did indeed hang low, as if something very heavy sat in one pocket.
John closed his eyes, sipped the water, which was blissfully cold on his raw throat, and fell asleep again.
It was three days before he walked out of the hospital, as limp and bloodless as a wet towel but with a clean bill of health and two new molars which Harold assured him were not bugged.
"I wouldn't mind if you bugged them," John said. "At least you'd have a good reason."
Harold frowned as he got into the chauffeured car. "That's more of a Cold War thing, as far as I know. Why bug teeth these days, when we can just switch on your phone?" With this cheering thought, he directed the car to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and settled back against the leather upholstery.
By now, Harold had fully established an identity for Mr John Rutherford, security specialist, and organised to have the gaps in his paperwork filled.
"And back pay," said Harold, in the car, passing over Mr Rutherford's wallet. "Mr Crane is a demanding employer, and he does have his ways, but he compensates for the annoyance quite generously."
John flicked through the cards in the wallet: cash, membership cards, three high-end credit cards and large bills in both greenbacks and yuan.
"What happens now?" he asked, as the car pulled up in the glass-walled private atrium of the hotel. A liveried doorman hurried over to open the door.
Harold raised his eyebrows, and John could see the person of Mr Crane sliding into place: polite, withdrawn and quietly insistent. "We behave like a rich man and his injured bodyguard," he said. "And hopefully the river of appropriate behaviour will carry us gently home."
Porters descended on them like hawks, gathering the few bags John had retained, as well as taking Harold's overcoat as they walked through the door. Ms Li met them in the lobby to update Mr Crane on the last few details of John's paperwork. Harold leaned over her tablet to sign some documents, as any businessman would, so John shifted into bodyguard mode: standing close but at an angle that politely meant he couldn't see the screen, hands easy at his side, eyes assessing potential threats in the lobby. His body protested both the posture and the concentration, and a headache rose up throbbing at the bright lights. It was a small pain, all in all, so he pushed it down as he always did and forced his body to obey.
In the executive elevator, Harold pressed a button on his phone, then leaned over to speak low in John's ear. "It would be very useful if we could make some employer-employee small talk. For Ms Li's bugs, you see."
John nodded. "Of course, sir," he said, with great deference. "Is there anything you'll be needing?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Mr Rutherford. I expect you to rest and heal up." Harold raised his eyebrows at John.
"Yes, sir," John said. "I'll get right on that."
Harold's suite was large and airy, with skylights and tall narrow windows that cast long stripes of sunlight along the pale wood floors. John's luggage had been carefully placed in one of the bedrooms, and John should have gone to unpack it, to check what had been disturbed by Ms Li's inevitable search, but instead, he sunk down onto one of the sofas in the lounge, exhausted.
Harold pressed his finger to his lips for silence, then propped his phone on a stand on the coffee table and tapped a button. A light that had previously been red turned green, and Harold said, "There. I've randomised and looped the audio, which should take care of Ms Li's bugs. We'll be safe to speak freely now." He looked at John, worried, then brought him a bottle of water.
"Thanks," said John, and took a few sips.
Harold sat down opposite him and opened his laptop. "I have a flight booked for tomorrow. Is there anything you need retrieved before we leave the country?"
John took another mouthful of water and shook his head. "Have you heard from Jess?"
Harold frowned. "I didn't want to chance talking to Jessica directly until I had secured the room, but Grace makes an excellent intermediary and we have been talking vaguely about our mutual friend, hopefully without putting Jessica at risk. She's doing well, all things considered – I don't want to explain things that really are Jessica's to tell you, but perhaps she won't mind me saying that she's made a clean break from Mr Arndt."
There was something to the very careful way he spoke that suggested whatever had happened between Jessica and Peter had been very uncomfortable. That, and the way Harold was fastidiously cleaning his glasses now.
"Were you all right?" John asked. "You don't usually work in the field." Harold had said they had few people on the ground after Dillinger was killed, but the idea of Harold out in the city, putting himself at risk was startling.
Harold nodded. "My plane was landing when Grace called to say she'd received Jessica's number again. If you hadn't contacted me, if I hadn't been so close when the Machine detected the danger Jessica was in, there wouldn't have been time to get organised and up to Vermont. I went to speak with Jessica and there was… an altercation."
Harold said those last words slowly and carefully, as if he wanted to get the words exactly right. His smile was calm, quite the opposite of what John was suddenly feeling. Anxiety, cold and spreading in his chest, made him take a few uneasy breaths. In a strange, detached way, he realised he was more afraid of what could have happened to Jess than what had already happened to him.
"Mr Reese?" Harold came to sit beside him on the sofa. "Here," he proffered the water again, and John took it, holding it between his palms. "I'm sorry, I didn't intend to alarm you." He put his hand on John's forearm. "Jessica is safe," he said firmly. "You helped me save her. And you could not have been there yourself, not if you'd gotten on a plane in Morocco the moment she contacted you."
John still held the water bottle, and Harold took it from him, unscrewed the lid and passed it back. John sipped the water, watching Harold. This close, he could see a fading bruise in the man's hairline, a contusion where the skin had split and had not finished healing.
He reached out to brush it with his fingers, and Harold ducked his head out of reach. "Were you hurt?" John asked. "Did Peter do this?"
"I walked into a very tense situation," Harold said. "Mr Arndt had been drinking. He became violent and there were a few quite frightening moments between the time that he hit me and the time that my driver could intervene." His smile became self-deprecating. "I made the driver wait outside, you see. I thought – well. There's a certain insulation wealth gives you," he said. "Sometimes I forget that it doesn't extend to those very immediate situations where people don't care about money or, indeed, anything."
He put his glasses back on and blinked mildly at John. "Wealth has nevertheless been very useful in making sure that Jessica is legally protected, though I'm disturbed at the disparity in response between me filing a restraining order against Mr Arndt, and his wife doing the same thing. And Mr Arndt remains very, very frightened of the financial havoc I can wreak upon him with one phone call. It has provided a good incentive for him to remain as far from Jessica as he can."
"That's good," John said, and sagged in his seat. Whatever had happened, whatever risk Jess had been in, he could worry about later. For now, she was safe. There was so much to process, and he hadn't realised how much his body hurt, from the surgery, from the tension.
"Now," Harold said, as he walked back to his laptop. "Since I've befuddled Ms Li's listening devices, perhaps we could Skype with Grace tonight?"
"That would be great," said John.
He had only closed his eyes for a moment, he was sure, but the next thing he knew, the sunlight had faded, and Harold was speaking to him.
"I'm sorry to wake you, Mr Reese, but would you be offended if I just…"
John blinked at Harold, who, pleased he was awake, lifted John's legs up onto the sofa, and draped a blanket over him.
"I think you'll be more comfortable that way," Harold said. "I'll wake you when dinner comes up. I'm assuming you'll want to stay in?"
John nodded, then fell asleep wondering what Harold would have done if John had said he'd rather have a night on the town.
He woke again when Harold was on the phone, ordering dinner, and stayed awake this time long enough to pick at the shared tasting plate on the table between them. All the while, Harold worked on his laptop, glancing occasionally up at John, then back at his screen.
When waitstaff had cleared the dishes and left, Harold stood and carried the laptop around to John's side, then sat beside him. John heaved himself upright, feeling a little better after some sleep away from the hospital.
Grace watched from a window on the screen, and as soon as John came into view, she gave a little wave with her fingertips. Over her shoulder, John saw an apartment: drapes, overstuffed furniture, and walls crammed with art.
"Can he hear me now?" Grace said, her voice tinny on the speakers, with that little hiccupping delay that told John Harold was using some kind of high-security link to allow them to speak. "Oh, John, honey, you look like you need a week of liver and onions to build you up again."
At that, the screen jerked a little and Jessica appeared next to Grace. "Jesus," she said. "How much blood did you lose? Did they transfuse you?" Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail;she wore a loose t-shirt over sweatpants and no make-up.
"They did," Harold said. "And apparently his blood count is normal." He squeezed John's shoulder and took out another phone, started texting on it. John heard a ping in the room where Grace and Jessica sat. Grace pulled out her own phone, looked down at the screen and grinned.
"Excuse me, you two," she said. "I just need to take this." She stood, and pushed the screen in Jess's direction, then disappeared from view.
On John's side, Harold stepped into his own bedroom, and pulled the door closed.
"Gosh, they're subtle," said Jess, her tone deliberately light, and her expression much more wary.
John felt the weight of guilt and misery settle on his shoulders; he had no right to force this conversation on her, and she had no obligation to face it, either. "We don't have to – I can call Harold back."
"No," said Jess. "It's okay. Probably better to clear the air now, while we're on different continents and your partner is…do you even know where she is?"
John shook his head. "I'm pretty sure she's going to keep as far away as she can from me, though."
Jess snorted. "She was a piece of work, all right." Her body language was different, John thought. More forthright? No, that wasn't it. Less cautious, maybe. He caught himself immediately trying to extrapolate reasons for that, and then stopped. He didn't know what she'd been through, and he had no right to know.
"Harold said you'd left the agency," Jess said. "That's all he'd say. I'm guessing from the bullet wound that it didn't go well."
John shrugged. "It could have gone worse," he said.
"Ha," said Jess. "Same." She looked down. "Thank you, for sending Harold to Vermont. It was – oh, God, it was so awkward, after the cops took Peter, just me and Harold in this wrecked motel room. But somehow it was easier to walk away with him than it would have been with someone who…" She waved towards John, unable to say the words.
"Someone who cares about you," John said, then winced, apologetic. "I mean, of course Harold cares, but…"
"It's okay," said Jess. "I know what you mean. I could always talk to Nathan much more than I could to Harold. Harold has a way of making himself feel distant. But in this case, it meant I didn't have to explain myself. Or be embarrassed. Have you noticed that? He's so polite, you'd think he'd be full of judgement too, but he's not." She grinned. "Also, he's kind of a badass."
John laughed, picturing Harold ordering the Chinese police officers around with quiet, implacable authority. "Yeah. He is." Then he remembered Harold directing him on the road to rescue Nathan. He wondered briefly what it would be like, having that calm steadiness at his back all the time.
"He showed up at our hotel," she said suddenly. "I don't know what would have happened if he hadn't knocked on the door when he did. God." She rested her head in her hands for a moment. "Peter had everything planned out. I knew something was up. I wanted to believe everything was going to be so much better, but in my gut, I knew it wasn't. That's when I called you."
"What Kara did," John said. "If it tipped things over the edge, I…"
Jess interrupted him. "Would she have given him a gun? He had a gun. He had all these plans, this stupid suicide plan, how he was helping me, how he was doing me a favour by shooting me first so I wouldn't have to see him die."
John's stomach dropped, a horrible, cold realisation of what Harold had walked in on, what Jess had been facing alone until then. He blinked, opened his mouth to say something stupid and protective, then stopped, really considered it. He tried to fit Kara's particular brand of psychopathy to what Jess had asked. He couldn't imagine that she'd take much pleasure in encouraging Peter to kill Jess; she'd never shown much sympathy for the male bullies of the world.
"No," he said. It helped, being analytical. It pushed back the panic of knowing Jess had been that close to death. "Honestly, she would have thought it was funnier to give you a gun. She'd have called it empowering." And what a mess that would have been for Jess, who had always been a healer.
"What he did, that's… That's not even the worst thing," Jess said, her gaze down as she spoke, as if not meeting John's eyes made the words easier. "I keep going over and over it, and the thing that freaks me out is that I froze. I couldn't do anything until he pointed that gun at Harold. How crazy is that? I couldn't save myself – I don't know, maybe I felt I deserved it, whatever, that's for me and my therapist, I guess – but I wouldn't let him kill Harold. Once I made that decision, all the control he had wrapped around me, it was suddenly like tissue paper. And he was nothing, once I knocked the gun out of his hand. It was easy. Horribly easy, just like that." She looked up at him, her eyes dry, her jaw set. "It terrifies me, that I was that weak for that long."
"Oh, Jess," John said. "You're not weak." The distance between them stretched vast and cold when his arms ached to hold her. "I've never thought you were weak."
Jess laughed, a little bitter, maybe, but also with relief. "You just got shot in the guts, what do you know?"
"I'm glad you're safe," he said, finally.
"I'm glad you are." Jess watched him through the screen. "Life isn't playing out like I hoped," she said. "But I'm starting to figure out that it's kind of like that for everyone."
"I'm sorry," said John. "For my part in how it played out." For bringing Kara to your door, for putting you in danger, for not being there again and again.
Jess sighed and leaned back in her chair. "I knew what your job was," she said. "You shouldn't apologise when part of the attraction for me was the risk."
They were both watching the other now, wary and curious, like two strangers who had discovered they had a shared history. John had no idea who he was without his work; it was easy to imagine that Jess felt the same about her life.
"Are you going to live in New York?" he asked, finally. "When you're settled, I mean."
Jess nodded. "Yeah," she said. "There's plenty of work, it's close enough to visit Mom, when she finally forgives me for the separation." She paused for a moment, then hurried on past what was turning into another painful subject. Jessica's mother had never been a fan of John. "Are you coming back to the city?"
"I want to," said John. "If I can. If it's safe." For Harold, for Grace and Jess. He wasn't particularly invested in his own safety, but he wouldn't lead Kara or Mark to his friends if he could.
"Come see me," Jess said, and John heard hope in her voice. "We can talk."
John smiled, struck with the unexpected pleasure of anticipation and excitement of seeing Jess openly, or as openly as he could on the run from the CIA. "That would be really good."
He dozed on the sofa on and off through the night, even though he had a perfectly luxurious bed. When Harold gently suggested he take the chance to be more comfortable, now that he was out of a hospital bed, John shook his head. He didn't like his chances of sleeping steadily in that big, empty bedroom, away from the pale glow of Harold's screen.
"I'm very comfortable here," he said, shifting his legs under the blanket. "What about you? Don't you sleep?"
Whatever Harold had been working on involved a lot of typing and a lot of waiting. "Occasionally," he said, fingers moving quietly and quickly. "But at the moment, I am trying to talk two hired security men through working a number, without letting them or the number know about it." He glanced up at John over the top of the screen. "It's a little complicated, and not particularly conducive to rest."
John could feel his frustration, at the distance between himself and the person in danger, at the obstacles that come from using an unknowing proxy. "When we get back," he started to say, but Harold gave a little shake of his head, albeit with a smile.
"I want to say yes," he said. "Very much – I can't imagine anyone more qualified to help me with the numbers but…"
"I get it," John said, perhaps a little too quickly to convince Harold he was fine with a refusal. "I've got a dangerous history. I wouldn't want someone like me around the people I loved."
Harold looked horrified and a little sad. "John, no – first of all, Grace would cheerfully throttle me for trying to protect her like that. I told you very early on that I'd learned better than to make decisions about her safety without her. No, what I'm worried about is the sense of obligation. I've found it's very complicated, this business of saving people, and it puts people in a position where they feel they have to pay back the debt. I don't want that – I don't want to see you hurt or killed because you felt you owed it to me."
John looked at the man who had recorded letters for him when he had thought he was alone, who had flown across the globe to convince him not to go nobly to his death, who had put himself in danger because John asked him to protect Jess. Who had kissed him at Dillinger's graveside because he needed to feel alive. Who was trying right now to be ridiculously noble and selfless when he didn't have to.
John pushed himself upright and walked gingerly to Harold's side of the sofa and sat, folded his hands in his lap to keep them still. "What if this was something I wanted because working with you makes me happy? Risking my life to save people, knowing you're there at my back? I can't think of anything better."
Harold blinked at him in the reflected light of his screen, and John saw the ghost of a smile cross his face. "All right," he said. "As soon as we're back in the city, we'll get to work."
Chapter Fourteen // Master Post // Chapter Sixteen