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st_aurafinaTitle: Buying the Time on My Knees, Chapter 16
Fandom: Person of Interest
Rating: Explicit
Words: 7.5K (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 has an unexpected reunion.
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
They spent a week in Beijing, playing rich man and bodyguard while John's bullet wound healed up enough for him to fly. Harold Crane visited art auctions, attended long, dull financial meetings, but otherwise spent a lot of time alone in his suite with only his bodyguard for company. John watched Harold work numbers at a distance with Grace and his hired security team. Sometimes he could offer advice, and he wished he could do more but mostly he slept and recovered. By the time they left for the airport, he was well enough to hoist Harold's suitcase like a good servant, which he did, breathing in upholstery cleaner and feeling oddly reborn.
The plane refuelled in Honolulu, and while they waited in one of the private lounges, Harold gave John an envelope and a boarding pass.
"It's probably better if we don't disembark on the mainland together," he said, in response to John's enquiring expression. "I'll expect you back in New York in a week, and we can talk then. Take a little time, enjoy the beaches."
Harold must have seen something dubious in John's expression, because he reached out, patted John's hand with his own. "I'll see you very soon, I promise. But I think this is something you need to do, after all you've been through." Then, with a last squeeze of John's hand, Harold sent him on his way to another gate. John obeyed, albeit with a faint sense of unease.
He opened the envelope as he walked. Inside was a wad of cash and a phone number, written on a plain white card. The international dialling code was for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, which covered a lot of real estate, John thought. Expensive real estate.
The trip itself was gentle, and his awareness came easily online again, marking exits and potential tails, taking note of the people around him. He got to Barbados on his John Rutherford passport with no problems, which was unsurprising given what he knew of Harold's skills by now.
He tried to sink into the persona of Rutherford: a careful man recovering from an injury. It was good to weave through the tourists, to buy an eye-searing tropical shirt and blend in with the foot traffic, to feel the sun on his skin and not have to worry about who he was here to kill or whether they were tracking him. At one point, he received an automatic notification that Mr Crane had disembarked safely at JFK, on some IFT-owned staff management app. A knot of tension in his shoulders slipped loose at that, and he stopped at a stall to buy himself a hat.
He wasn't game to use the phone number until he was inside the country, and could use the local exchange, so he caught a twin prop plane to Kingstown before he dialled. By the time he landed, he felt a little curl of excitement, as if he'd been sent on a treasure hunt. He was on alert, but he was having fun, he realised. It had been a while.
Once there, and he was sure he hadn't been followed or caught anyone's eye, he tried the number. It dialled a couple of times, then opened on a slightly crackly line.
"Harold told me you were coming," Nathan said, without preamble or greeting. "Come on over; it will be so good to see you again, John."
John laughed into the receiver. "Did I get sent on vacation?"
"Call it recuperation time." John could hear the smile in Nathan's voice too.
Nathan gave him directions to a place on the island of Mustique, as well as the name of a good pilot who could be trusted, given the right bribe. ("Harold set you up all right for that, didn't he?" Nathan said. "Otherwise, I can organise it, but tell me now, because this guy is not at all averse to claiming more than one bribe. He's entrepreneurial like that.")
The plane was rickety, but John had flown in worse and sometimes low-tech was better for stealth. Watching the islands pass below, green and sparsely populated, did nothing to dispel the sense that he was on some rollicking adventure.
Mustique had a private airstrip and Samuel the pilot gave him a lift in a bright green electric buggy to the southern end of the island. From there, John had walking directions. The road became a paved path through lush trees, and then an uphill dirt path, nonetheless well-packed by foot travel. Mustique's wild, forested exterior had been largely constructed by architects and engineers, but it made for a secure approach. Difficult for paparazzi to access, and private as only the extremely rich can afford.
He bristled when he heard footsteps coming towards him, that thin veneer of relaxed excitement changing to proper alertness. He was reaching for the gun he wasn't carrying when Nathan's voice called out.
"Don't shoot me!" Nathan came around the corner, hands in his pockets. He wore a white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a pair of sunglasses propped on his head. He could have been any of the wealthy tourists John had passed, and was very far from the man who had knelt in the mud, whose teeth John had pulled. On the path John stopped abruptly, startled by the change.
Nathan took a few long, easy steps to make up the distance, threw out his arms and swept John into a warm and welcoming hug. "Oh, John," he said, and kissed him on the neck. "I am glad you're here. I mean that geographically as well as existentially." He pushed John away to look him up and down. "Harold was right; you do need some time convalescing."
Nathan's skin was warm and his grip firm. John hadn't realised how much the cold and damp of that last night in the US had seeped into his core and refused to budge, despite Morocco's balmy weather, despite the muggy air in Beijing. Now, with Nathan strong and tan and well in his arms, perhaps that coldness could disperse.
Even so, John couldn't stop himself doing a quick check of the area. "Is it safe to stop here?" For all the trees were thick, Mustique wasn't the isolated place it pretended to be.
Nathan gave an airy wave. "It's fine – I have the place wired for video. If anyone steps on the path, I get a text from the security system." He pointed at the trunk of a large hibiscus tree. When John followed the direction, he saw a small camera unit strapped to the highest part that could still see onto the path.
"Solar powered and very small," said Nathan, as they walked up the path together. "I've been working for a while; I've got them all over the island now. Not much gets past me." He smiled at John's expression, which must have shown the surprise he felt at Nathan's enthusiasm for working with hardware. "I have a lot of spare time, and you know, I was an engineer once. It might have been a hundred years ago, but it's like riding a bike."
Nathan's new home was small but modern, the epitome of luxury resort living, at the end of a road overlooking the water. On the marble porch, holding a large gin and tonic, Nathan pointed out his esteemed neighbours.
"That's Tommy Hilfiger's place," he said, indicating a white roof poking through the greenery. "And over there, that's Shania Twain." He sipped his drink and let the ice-cubes rattle in the glass. "I suppose I should be glad Harold didn't stick me on Necker Island with Richard Branson for a neighbour. I'd probably have killed and eaten him by now. Sanctimonious asshole."
He was keeping well, to John's professional gaze: a tan suited him, though it made the scars on his cheek more prominent. His hair was overgrown and ash-streaked now he no longer had a personal stylist, but it was sun kissed and healthy. In an open-necked shirt, walking in bare feet, and surrounded by the ocean, he had an aging rock star aesthetic.
Nathan caught John's assessing gaze and waggled his eyebrows with mock-salacious meaning. "Old man's still got it," he said. Then he laughed. "It's okay – I'm not egotistical enough to believe it was my alluring self that kept you coming back for more."
John caught his wrist and reeled him in, wrapped his arms around Nathan and squeezed. "I've got no orders to follow now, have I?"
"I don't know," said Nathan, his voice muffled where it was pressed to John's shoulder. "I'm pretty sure Harold has a good hold on you by now."
John kissed him, tasted lime and expensive gin, then kissed him deeper. It was good to be physically able, it was good to see Nathan alive and healthy and unafraid. He was stroking Nathan's belly and enjoying the feeling of arousal, of uncomplicated sexual want, when he noticed the earpiece tucked into Nathan's ear.
He had a moment of confused disorientation, as his brain tried to tell him that of course Nathan had an earpiece. He had become to0 comfortable with their use, with the idea that Harold would be the voice on the other end of that line, and yet he was certain this was something else. Harold's suite in Beijing was luxurious, but it was still close quarters, and John had seen no sign that Harold spoke with Nathan. Harold wouldn't have had time, not while he juggled Crane's business and worked the numbers at a distance.
He nabbed the earpiece out, despite Nathan's sudden lunge to stop him, then held Nathan easily at bay while he slipped it into his own ear. It wasn't Harold's voice.
>Rutland Bay, clear. Lime Kiln Bay, clear. Macaroni Bay, two ships still moored, IMO numbers nine eight two two… A moment after John started listening, the words suddenly stopped, and honestly, that was the most telling thing.
John pulled the earpiece out and glared at Nathan. He knew that voice, pieced together from audio samples; he'd heard it on a payphone in New York. "Does Harold know you're in contact with it?"
Nathan had the grace to be abashed. "Well, to be fair, it got in contact with me," he said. "I think it was worried about me."
John brought the earpiece close: it was silent except for the slight crackle of static. He passed the thing to Nathan, who slid it into position again.
"Shhh. It's okay, kiddo," he said to thin air. "John won't tell Harold anything. No, he won't! I'll make him promise. Better, I'll make him pinky swear."
Now that he knew what to look for, John spotted a camera positioned on a bookcase, and another above the front door. He turned back to Nathan, confused and a little angry that he would risk his hard won safety like this.
Nathan held up an appeasing hand. "Wait a bit before you tear strips off me," he said. "Have another drink, and maybe lunch. Then get mad."
John felt a frown gathering on his face, pulling muscles tight, starting a dull ache between his brows. This was a foolish thing for Nathan to do, with too much risk, in a place where it would be difficult for help to reach him swiftly.
"Finish your drink," said Nathan, and wrapped John's fingers around the heavy tumbler. "I'll explain things after lunch."
John drained his glass then let Nathan coax him into another one by the pool, by which time a woman arrived to bring lunch. It was lunch for two, John noted.
"Sylvia gets my order in the morning," Nathan says. "It –" he said, gesturing vaguely at his ear, " – probably tweaked the quantities when it saw you coming."
They ate by the pool, under a striped cotton awning: grilled fish, fresh fruit, and parcels of wild rice and vegetables. The gin and the good food went a long way towards mollifying John's shock that Nathan was interacting with the Machine.
"The problem is that Harold did a number on it, emotionally," Nathan said. "He gets crabby about the anthropomorphising, he hates that, he'll tell you for days and days that it's not alive. But there was this point when we were building it, close to the end, when I decided he was wrong about that. And once I made that leap, once I accepted it as a living being, it got clear really fast that the poor thing has had a Dickensian upbringing. Harold is my best friend, but he's a harsh parent."
John poked the last few bites of fish on his plate, trying to convince himself he had the room to comfortably stuff them in. "You both built it. Doesn't that make you its father too?"
Nathan smirked. "I'm the good daddy," he said. "Why do you think it talks to me? Harold prefers to keep himself distant; that's his choice. Myself, I'd rather take the chance to get to know the being we both made."
"What exactly can it do, if someone comes here to kill you?" John said. "There's not much point in seeing them coming, if they're coming in force." He put his fork down suddenly, overfull and angry at how blithe Nathan was being about this. "I might not be here the next time. I might not have anything of value to offer them."
Nathan flinched at that. He stood, pushing his chair out with a squeak on the stone floor. "Oh, John, I'm sorry." He took John's hand, wrapped it around his. "I know it seems like I'm playing in some rich man's paradise here, but I promise I'm not letting this second chance go without a fight." He tugged gently at the connection between them. "Come on, I'll show you."
He led John to a doorway that opened onto a stone staircase, rough hewn with worn edges, and started down, fingers still entwined in John's. "The man who built this place was a survivalist. A rich one, to be fair, but quite intensely paranoid." He patted the wall as they descended into cool, damp darkness. "He bored down into solid rock, carved himself out a bunker. The owner before me used it as a wine cellar."
They alighted onto what felt like rock underfoot, and Nathan typed a long sequence into a keypad at chest height. In the meagre light from the top of the stairs, John saw Nathan glance at the camera above the door, as if waiting for something to happen. The underground corridor was quiet but once John's ears adjusted, he could hear a faint electronic hum.
"Come on," Nathan said into the air. "Don't be like that. I said he won't tell." After another moment, he turned to John. "Are you going to tell Harold about this?" he asked. "I'm not sure it trusts my judgement of people; it might do better to hear it in your own words."
John felt the weight of observation on him, standing there in the darkness, something that lit up his awareness the way he could always pick when his unit was in a sniper's scope. They weren't alone in this basement room.
"As long as you don't put Nathan in danger, I won't tell Harold you're in communication with him," John said, at last.
There was another few seconds of darkness, and then just as Nathan drew breath to speak again, the door in front of them unlocked and swung open. A warm gust of ozone and exhaust fan came through the doorway, and a gentle blue and green glow of monitors that made John's eyes water after so long in dim light.
"Is this it?" John said, taking in the cavernous room filled with computer equipment. There was a table with a soldering iron and various pieces of tech strewn across the surface. The monitors showed scrolling images: some of the Mustique coastline and landing strip, some of New York City. John briefly recognised the dark, overshadowed opening to the library where Harold worked the numbers before the image was replaced with one of milling tourists at Times Square.
"The actual Machine? Oh, it wouldn't fit in here," Nathan said. "No, this is like a holiday home, if you'll forgive the whimsy. It keeps data here, we're working on some things together." He let go of John and hefted a security camera from the table, trailing cables. "It's helping me regain a few skills I let slip while I was a CEO."
John remembered the list of bays he had heard on the earpiece: Rutland, Limekiln, Macaroni. They were all mooring points on the island.
"It monitors the coastline for you?" he asked. "How many cameras did you put up, exactly?"
Nathan grinned. "I managed – well, it managed, really – to get in on the solar power money spill for the island, and then we gave a grant to a team of well-meaning volunteer ecologists who installed the cameras on the coast. I see a lot of sea turtles. But also, I know where every cell phone is here, who disembarks from planes, the movement of the buggies. Just like in New York, I suppose. We did have to upgrade bandwidth for the island, but it's easy to write that off as some one-per-center's little pet project. There's a lot of that here."
John followed the cameras through another cycle of images. What Nathan said made sense, and it was reassuring to know that this place was secure, that Nathan was security conscious. Except that the images weren't just of Mustique; he recognised the corridors of the Pentagon, a wide avenue from a residential street in Silicon Valley, a conference room in one of the UN buildings.
He felt observed again, but this time it was Nathan, watching him watch the monitors flicker from place to place.
"Sooner or later," Nathan said, "Someone will start work on the next AI project. They shut down all the other surveillance research projects when we succeeded with the Machine – Able Truth, Fair Run, Stellar Wind, a bunch of others – but that doesn't mean they can't be reactivated. Or someone could cook up something completely novel." He pointed at the screen. "So we're observing and we're planning so we'll be ready. When it shows up, we can make sure it's no threat to the Machine."
"You're planning to, what? Kill it?" John was surprised; he had not thought Nathan could be bloodthirsty. Still, it wasn't his survival at stake here, he supposed.
"Not if we don't have to," Nathan said, though he wasn't as shocked by the idea as John had expected. "So far, we're working on a strategy to influence it, make sure that it has the chance to develop a moral compass, like the Machine did." He smiled at John, tentative for the first time since John had met him. "It's weird to be here on this island, planning for the future of another form of intelligence. Life deals some strange twists, I've learned."
"Yeah," John said, as people milled around Shibuya on the screen. The distance between Mustique and New York was a dull ache. "Can it show me Harold?"
He'd barely finished speaking when an image flashed up on the monitor in front of him: Harold, at a diner, eating eggs, a book open beside his plate. It was Saturday morning in New York, though Harold seemed dressed for work.
"I know that diner," said Nathan, from behind John. "He likes the eggs there. Man of habits, he is, for all he's so paranoid about his identity." He propped his chin on John's shoulder to watch with him.
Someone – a woman, from the long, slim fingers and the enamelled bracelet – reached across from the other side of the table, and snatched a piece of toast from Harold's plate. Harold glanced up briefly from his book, gave a fond smile to the other person, then pushed the plate in her direction so she could help herself to the rest of his breakfast.
"That will be Grace," Nathan said, and sighed. "I know this is a trivial use of a billion dollar operation, but it helps with the homesickness. Every day I'm glad to be alive and living in paradise, but I miss New York. Even when everyone's knee-deep in slush."
You miss the people, John thought, but he didn't say it. Instead, he tipped his head to brush Nathan's cheek for a moment. Then, because apparently he also was a glutton for punishment, he said, "Can you show me Jessica?"
The next screen blinked away from Trafalgar Square to footage from a security camera that was monitoring an indoor flea market. It zoomed and zoomed again, until John saw Jessica, holding up a decorative cushion, turning it over, talking to the vendor. She'd obviously peeled off some layers, because she held a big coat under her arm, with a woollen hat tucked into one pocket.
Nathan must have sensed what John felt, because he wrapped his arms around John and held him tight. "It might not be a perfect outcome," he said, as the monitors flickered and jumped. "But we're all alive, and we're all moving forward. That's a really good thing, John. Come on, let me show you my private beach."
The beach was private because it was inaccessible except by boat, or via the secret tunnel the original owner of Nathan's house had carved through the rock face. Nathan threw open a steel bulkhead at the base of another set of stairs and they began walking steeply downhill on carved rock, lit occasionally by incandescent globes on a single wire.
"This floods in a king tide," Nathan said, as they walked. "But even in storm season it never gets higher than here." He showed John a mark on the walls, where salt water had stained the rock a long time ago. Privately, the bulkhead was pleasing to John as a solid barrier to infiltration by things other than seawater.
The sound of surf grew louder, and the ambient light brighter as the tunnel opened up into a natural cavern in the cliff face. Long hanging vines and scrubby bushes obscured the cave mouth so it wasn't visible from the water. When John stepped out onto the sand, he had to raise his hand to shield his eyes. He'd become accustomed to the darkness.
"Here," Nathan threw him a towel and a pair of sunglasses from an unplugged chest freezer at the cave opening. He pulled his shirt over his head and hung it on a hook jammed into the rock, then cast off his pants. "Come and swim."
The beach was as isolated as promised, and the water was warm and clear. John floated on his back, letting the heat seep into his bones, and his muscles relax. Nathan drifted beside him, just at fingertip's distance, and the only thing John could hear with his head half under the water was the gentle wash of waves. For the first time he could remember – for years, maybe – he felt stillness.
Nathan touched his shoulder and John opened his eyes to find that the sun had sunk low, and the light was turning everything deep gold.
"We'd better go in before it gets dark," Nathan said. He stood waist deep in the water, and his shadow drifted and rippled long behind him. John pushed his feet down, felt them sink into the sand, and reached for Nathan to kiss him.
Their skin had dried salt-rough. John's fingers snagged in Nathan's hair, and then they were pressed together, hip-high in the ocean. Nathan held him tight at bicep and hip, as if he expected John to vanish.
"John," he said, when they pulled apart. He cupped John's jaw, rubbing the salt away with a thumb, then running that thumb along John's lip.
They made their way clumsily across the sand in the fading light, and for John it was ridiculously indulgent to be ungainly and vulnerable. Nobody was coming to kill him or judge him, there were no standards to live up to, nobody to seduce or hurt or kill. There was just Nathan, crouching down to brush sand off their legs with his towel, laughing as John, impatient and turned on, played with Nathan's stupid long rock star hair.
Nathan fucked him in his huge bed swathed with gauzy hangings, held him tight and pushed into him hard, the way Jess had shown him John liked all those months ago. John sighed and arched under him, grasped for Nathan's shoulders and hair until, exasperated, Nathan caught his hands in one of his and pressed them down to the pillow above.
John rode him later in the night, astride Nathan's body in the ridiculous fairy tale bed, rising and falling with Nathan inside him and moonlight streaming over them both.
"So beautiful," Nathan said, when the pace slowed a little. He stroked John's cheek, his jaw, brushed against his nipples. Impatient, John pushed down against him, took him in as deep as his body would allow.
Nathan groaned and laughed, clutching hard on John's hips. "Most ignoble of deaths," he said, then gasped as John arched his back to clench against him. John came with Nathan inside him, Nathan stroking his cock, and the far-off sound of the ocean gasping with him.
It was too hot to sleep wrapped in each other, but Nathan kept contact through the night: an arm across John's chest, or his forehead to John's shoulder blade. By morning, though, it had cooled enough that John slept pressed against Nathan, under a cotton blanket one of them had dragged over their bodies some time before dawn.
John woke early, but lay still in Nathan's arms for a long time, listening to the waves and sensing the darkness thin. He felt Nathan move into wakefulness with gradual ease, fingers tracing patterns on John's skin, lips brushing John's head where it was in reach.
When the light was undeniably filled with gold and pink and the gulls had begun calling, Nathan pulled John close and kissed his forehead. "You'll take care of Harold, won't you?" His voice was still husky with sleep.
The mention of Harold's name brought an image of the man to John's mind: hat and overcoat, collar turned up against the January wind, and blue eyes that saw everything. John imagined Harold looking into him with that gaze, imagined Harold wanting him, imagined them in bed together like this. He shivered despite the warmth in the air.
Nathan stroked the skin along John's shoulder blade, where it had goose pimpled at the mention of Harold's name. "Ah," he said, knowingly. "Maybe I should be having this conversation with Harold, instead."
John pushed himself upright on one elbow, appalled at the idea, unsure if Nathan was teasing or serious. "Please don't," he said, imagining Harold's horrified expression.
"I'm joking," Nathan said. "Well, mostly joking. Harold does have this tendency to get lost in the theoretical. He can get very distant from humankind."
Perhaps a little defensively, John said, "I haven't seen him do that. He sure got down in the trenches when it came to helping Jessica."
Nathan cupped John's cheek. "I'm sorry. And I'm glad," he said. "I'm glad he's not locking himself away as much as he used to."
John settled down into the bed and let Nathan curl around his body again. "People change," he said. "I've changed since you and I first met." It was true, he realised. He and Jess were vastly different people now. It hadn't been the path he would have chosen for either of them, but they were both stronger now.
Breakfast was fruit and more fish, with excellent coffee brought up from one of the restaurants in an electric buggy. Nathan threw himself into the meal with gusto, talking easily with the staff who cleared the dishes from last night, and set the table for breakfast. When they were gone, John took a mouthful of coffee to fortify himself for awkwardness.
"Harold and I aren't – we're not seeing each other," he said. And then, because he'd opened this can of worms and might as well get some answers, he said, "Isn't Harold with Grace?"
Nathan speared a piece of mango with his fork and popped it into his mouth. "It's complicated," he said, and rolled his eyes. "Thanks, Mark Zuckerberg. You made it so much easier to explain things."
"That's not actually much of an explanation," said John.
"We were fighting, before the explosion, Harold and I," Nathan said. "We've known each other for decades, so we had lots of ammunition to use on each other. I knew he was engaged. I didn't know who he was engaged to. That's not what we fought over," Nathan added quickly. "We fought about the Machine, and compartmentalisation, and what safety can cost us. But when that bomb went off it burned all the chaff away. What was left was more than friendship, more than partnership. It's hard to explain."
John had seen the footage: Nathan speaking into a phone camera, sitting on a gurney in the triage centre, remarkably lucid considering his face was blistered and bleeding, and his shirt torn open where they used the defibrillators. In the video, paramedics fussed over him, and he batted them off. He'd obviously grabbed the nearest phone and started broadcasting as fast as possible, the very first sally in his campaign of life-saving public prominence. Amidst the chaos, it made for an oddly commanding performance.
"I'm Nathan Ingram, and I'm at the 34th Ferry Terminal," he had said into a stranger's FriendCzar chat window streaming directly online. "I don't believe this was a terrorist attack – if it was, then who are these men? How were they on site so quickly?" The viewpoint flashed crazily then stabilised on the faces of two obvious government stooges, who, startled at being recorded, foolishly turned their faces away from the camera, thereby confirming the shadiness of their presence. "There's something not right about this explosion," Nathan had said. "If anything happens, if someone tries to shut me up for saying so, then you know I was right. Don't let them cover it up."
It had been nicely done: non-specific enough about the threat that journalists didn't connect it solely to him or his company – after all, IFT had been more or less missing from the global stage since shortly after 9/11 – but eerie and conspiratorial enough to generate lots of interest.
"Grace made it to the triage centre. I heard her calling out for Harold. And Harold? He tried to sell me on disappearing, on abandoning every connection to the world." said Nathan. He rolled his eyes then pushed the plate of fish in John's direction. "Eat this. I'm pretty sure you need the protein," he said. "Fortunately Harold blacked out mid-argument and I took over. I got Grace into the ambulance with him – thank God Grace is Grace. Who else can take on that kind of explanation in the middle of a disaster? 'Hi, I'm guessing you're Harold's fiancée? Here he is. I don't know what name he uses with you but just roll with whatever he's got in his wallet, okay?'" He laughed, and it was somehow less bitter than before.
"So, then it was surgery for me, surgery for Harold, and neither of us sure if they'd kill us under anaesthetic." He waved vaguely at the scars on his face. "You know what it's like, when they put you under and you honestly don't know if your strategy will to pay off, or if you're never going to wake up again."
John remembered the hospital in Beijing, remembered waking with Harold at his bedside. He didn't answer Nathan; he didn't want to interrupt, so he ate his fish and listened.
Nathan's expression was sad and self-deprecating, and he seemed to be casting off his own demons with this conversation as much as he was filling John in on the history of his friendship with Harold.
"So, yes, Harold and Grace. Yes, Harold and me, back in the day, though not for a while. Grace sees other people – Harold too, I think, but he's still secretive to the point where it's pathological. I guess I can't blame him. It's a weird way for the three of us to live, saving numbers, trying not to be killed. Kind of a fishbowl situation. No boundaries."
Nathan picked up his coffee cup and peered into it, then reached for the coffee pot to find that empty too. "Time to get to work, then," he said, and pushed up from the table.
Work seemed to be the further installation of cameras, and the maintenance of ones already installed. In the underground bunker, Nathan loaded up a rucksack and slung a toolbelt around his waist, then threw one towards John.
"Since you're here," he said. "I could use someone to plant some in the restaurants – it's tricky for me to go in there." He touched the scars. "Too recognisable. Are you up for a little low-level infiltration?"
"Infiltration" was perhaps a little exaggerated: the places that were closed were easily accessed with a screwdriver and some judicious jiggling of the lock. John had the basics in electronics for just this kind of spywork, and Nathan talked John through anything more complex than that via the earpiece. Nathan sat on the hood of the little electric buggy, elbows propped on his knees, hidden in the close forest that grew right up to the edge of what passed for a town on the island.
Nathan talked easily to John, but also carried on a conversation with the Machine at the same time, switching between the two with little apparent difficulty. For John, it got a little tangled sometimes, but there was no panic or pressure. It was strangely satisfying to do this easy work as Nathan chatted in his ear. If John was uncertain of whose conversation he was hearing, he simply waited where he was, standing on a table in a darkened dining room, or at the back of a crowd in a busy café until it was his turn again.
"Those two? No, they said they'd be flying in every weekend, remember? There's no need to worry," Nathan said. Then, "I've got that feed coming in now, John. For the next one, try that long piece of driftwood nailed above the bar. Angle the lens so I can see the register." And, "No, it's your turn. You tell me one. It will be fine! Go on! Okay, who's there? Amos who?" This was followed by a soft guffaw. "See? It's a classic for a reason."
Balanced on the long wooden bar, John fixed a camera into the twisted branch of driftwood with a screwdriver. "Are you teaching it knock-knock jokes?" he asked.
"I'm a dad," said Nathan. "The jokes just pour out of me. And that camera is active now – how about one over the door?"
John jumped down from the bar, pleased with how little the wound in his gut complained. "Why would an artificial intelligence need to know about dad jokes? Why would it want to?"
Nathan sighed, but it was a wistful sound, not an infuriated one. John wondered if this was an argument he'd had with Harold in the past. "Maybe you'd want your all-seeing AI to have a sense of humour? It might see and hear everything, it might understand the meaning, but nobody has taken the time to teach it nuance."
The last camera in place, John closed the door behind him and moved quietly through the scrub to the bright green buggy, hoping to surprise Nathan. His body felt good, so good after the misery of being gut shot and left to die. It had been a long, long time since John had felt playful.
"Is this an ambush?" Nathan said at his silent approach, without looking up from his phone. "You do realise you just spent the last few hours helping me make this place the most monitored resort in the Caribbean…"
Before he could finish, John reached the buggy, stepped up on the fender to straddle Nathan's legs and kiss him. The buggy heaved under the weight of both their bodies, threatening to tip, and Nathan, sputtering and laughing, pushed John down onto solid ground. "Let's go home," he said. "Quickly."
Later, with afternoon sun angling over the bed, John lay against Nathan's chest, his body pleasantly slack and warm. Nathan's arms encircled John's chest, and his lips idly brushed the short hair at the back of John's neck. It was good for a long time, but when the shadows were lengthening, John felt the mood shift. He knew how this would go – he'd seen people in various permutations of witness protection and how their resolve slowly crumbled, as their families moved on, had lives without them. Nathan was a father, was an extrovert who loved his friends, who thrived on physical contact and shared happiness.
"You're a people person," said John. He thought of the places they'd been today, how Nathan had carefully avoided crowds, how it had been John who went into the busy cafés to plant the cameras. "Are you going to be okay? All by yourself here."
Nathan moved beneath him, stuffed another pillow behind his head to prop himself up. "I'm living in paradise, John. Why wouldn't I be okay?" His voice was blithe but John could hear the desperate growing loneliness behind it. Eventually, Nathan's patient acceptance of this situation would fail, and then he'd either take his own life or let himself be discovered so that some agency or another would take him out instead.
"What about your son? Does he know?"
There was a long, long silence. "It's better that he doesn't," Nathan said. "I talked it over with Olivia – she knows, she won't have any problems keeping it quiet. But Will? Eventually he'll fall in love with someone, and I hope it's with the kind of person you want to tell everything about your life. I'd rather he had that connection, instead of secrets. I'd rather he raise his kids with someone who knows him completely. He's got his mom. And if he loses his inheritance thanks to my actions, I know he's got his rich Uncle Harold."
John reached for Nathan's hand, squeezed it tight.
"I've had a good life. I've done things I'm proud of. And not so proud of. At this point, I don't really get to choose the lifestyle I prefer," Nathan said. "Lives were in danger because of my decisions. You got shot because of my decisions; you nearly had to shoot me because of the things I did." He brushed the gauze netting of his enormous bed. "This isn't so bad, as far as prisons go." He tugged at John's arm until he sat upright and Nathan could kiss his knuckles. "Life doesn't work out the way you expect. It's okay. And I know exactly how lucky I am, John, I promise." He cupped John's cheek, fingers moving gently, then pulled him close to kiss him. "I know you have to leave soon. But I'll see you again."
John hoped Nathan believed his own words. Maybe in the future, when Nathan's conviction was slipping, John could ask the Machine to play them back. For now, he leaned into that kiss, made it something deeper and rougher, and arched up over Nathan's body to grind against him. Nathan laughed, then groaned and closed his eyes.
"Or I could die now," he said, breathless.
Later, in the dark, they lay together, still damp with sweat where their skin was touching. The breeze was cooler, though, as it moved the gauze hangings.
"He's very fond of you," Nathan said, into the quiet. He kissed John's shoulder blade, let his lips linger there. "Harold doesn't trust easily. Not like me – I'll give my heart to pretty much anyone who says they like me. But Harold? You have to have a certain clarity of purpose to catch his attention."
John shifted so that his whole body aligned along Nathan's. Through the big square window, the moonlight reflected on the water in broken lines. Each breath Nathan took was warm on his skin.
"Did you?" John asked, eventually, when he was sure that contemplating his own clarity would only make him crazy. "Have clarity of purpose, I mean."
Nathan sighed, warm and ticklish against John's back. "I did once. Not for a long time, but yeah. The early years, building the company, building the industry to support the company – for that stuff you need the kind of fire that draws Harold in. Maybe I'm on the way to finding that clarity again." His words were slowing now, as sleep started to overcome him. "I wanted to tell you that because you probably feel lost now. But you're not. Lost, I mean."
John watched the ocean moving and shifting under the moon, thought of the constant scramble his life had devolved into before Kara shot him. He hoped that Nathan was right, that he had climbed up out of that uncertainty towards something more solid.
When Nathan had fallen asleep, John eased himself out of bed and grabbed some pants. Then he padded barefoot on the cool marble floor to that stone staircase, circling down and down to the bunker.
"I'll go wake him if you insist," he said to the camera over the door. After a moment, the electronic lock turned green with a soft beep, and John pushed the door open, walked into the darkness of the basement.
Inside, the air was warm and dry thanks to the stacks of servers singing softly to themselves. The monitors were blank, of course, because there was nobody here to see anything. John sat on one of the chairs and crooked a knee up under his chin. The room was quiet but busy, from the electronic hum to the gentle click and whir of the server banks. Even the darkened screens gave the impression of someone working industriously.
"You found us, didn't you?" he asked into the quiet. "Me and Jess."
There was no spoken response – there was no response at all for a long while – but one of the screens blinked alive with grainy security cam footage, an airport lounge. John was so good at camouflage that he couldn't immediately find his own dark head amongst the others, but Jessica, brave and beautiful in her white coat, was easy to pick out as she walked up to him at the coffee stand.
John watched her talk to him, watched her reach for his wrist, to pull him close and whisper in his ear. His memory was so clear, crystallised by the way this moment had changed everything. He mouthed the words in time with her.
"I don't care," Jess said, all those years ago. "I don't. Be with me now, just for tonight." And then she had led him, hand in hers, to some airport hotel room, and they'd soaked themselves in the other's presence.
"She was always the braver one," John said into the quiet room. "I hope you can understand that. It's important to see the difference between strong and brave."
There was no answer; apparently he and Harold's Machine were not on speaking terms yet, but there was peace in the room, and with it, John hoped, a little trust.
He sat for a while in the office chair, and finally the monitors blinked on one by one. As the images lined up, they formed a panoramic view of the island coastline, water indigo in the moonlight. A yacht drifted slowly from one screen to the next, the deck twinkling with sprays of fairy lights.
It was oddly companionable, sitting in the reflected light of the monitors. Meditative, even. John was surprised at how peaceful it was, despite the enormity of the Machine, of its existence, of its abilities. There was stillness here and John was surprised to find that there could be stillness in him, even if it was something reflected from a larger source.
"All right," he said, eventually. "I'll help you keep them safe for as long as I can."
Chapter Fifteen // Master Post // Chapter Seventeen
Fandom: Person of Interest
Rating: Explicit
Words: 7.5K (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 has an unexpected reunion.
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
They spent a week in Beijing, playing rich man and bodyguard while John's bullet wound healed up enough for him to fly. Harold Crane visited art auctions, attended long, dull financial meetings, but otherwise spent a lot of time alone in his suite with only his bodyguard for company. John watched Harold work numbers at a distance with Grace and his hired security team. Sometimes he could offer advice, and he wished he could do more but mostly he slept and recovered. By the time they left for the airport, he was well enough to hoist Harold's suitcase like a good servant, which he did, breathing in upholstery cleaner and feeling oddly reborn.
The plane refuelled in Honolulu, and while they waited in one of the private lounges, Harold gave John an envelope and a boarding pass.
"It's probably better if we don't disembark on the mainland together," he said, in response to John's enquiring expression. "I'll expect you back in New York in a week, and we can talk then. Take a little time, enjoy the beaches."
Harold must have seen something dubious in John's expression, because he reached out, patted John's hand with his own. "I'll see you very soon, I promise. But I think this is something you need to do, after all you've been through." Then, with a last squeeze of John's hand, Harold sent him on his way to another gate. John obeyed, albeit with a faint sense of unease.
He opened the envelope as he walked. Inside was a wad of cash and a phone number, written on a plain white card. The international dialling code was for Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, which covered a lot of real estate, John thought. Expensive real estate.
The trip itself was gentle, and his awareness came easily online again, marking exits and potential tails, taking note of the people around him. He got to Barbados on his John Rutherford passport with no problems, which was unsurprising given what he knew of Harold's skills by now.
He tried to sink into the persona of Rutherford: a careful man recovering from an injury. It was good to weave through the tourists, to buy an eye-searing tropical shirt and blend in with the foot traffic, to feel the sun on his skin and not have to worry about who he was here to kill or whether they were tracking him. At one point, he received an automatic notification that Mr Crane had disembarked safely at JFK, on some IFT-owned staff management app. A knot of tension in his shoulders slipped loose at that, and he stopped at a stall to buy himself a hat.
He wasn't game to use the phone number until he was inside the country, and could use the local exchange, so he caught a twin prop plane to Kingstown before he dialled. By the time he landed, he felt a little curl of excitement, as if he'd been sent on a treasure hunt. He was on alert, but he was having fun, he realised. It had been a while.
Once there, and he was sure he hadn't been followed or caught anyone's eye, he tried the number. It dialled a couple of times, then opened on a slightly crackly line.
"Harold told me you were coming," Nathan said, without preamble or greeting. "Come on over; it will be so good to see you again, John."
John laughed into the receiver. "Did I get sent on vacation?"
"Call it recuperation time." John could hear the smile in Nathan's voice too.
Nathan gave him directions to a place on the island of Mustique, as well as the name of a good pilot who could be trusted, given the right bribe. ("Harold set you up all right for that, didn't he?" Nathan said. "Otherwise, I can organise it, but tell me now, because this guy is not at all averse to claiming more than one bribe. He's entrepreneurial like that.")
The plane was rickety, but John had flown in worse and sometimes low-tech was better for stealth. Watching the islands pass below, green and sparsely populated, did nothing to dispel the sense that he was on some rollicking adventure.
Mustique had a private airstrip and Samuel the pilot gave him a lift in a bright green electric buggy to the southern end of the island. From there, John had walking directions. The road became a paved path through lush trees, and then an uphill dirt path, nonetheless well-packed by foot travel. Mustique's wild, forested exterior had been largely constructed by architects and engineers, but it made for a secure approach. Difficult for paparazzi to access, and private as only the extremely rich can afford.
He bristled when he heard footsteps coming towards him, that thin veneer of relaxed excitement changing to proper alertness. He was reaching for the gun he wasn't carrying when Nathan's voice called out.
"Don't shoot me!" Nathan came around the corner, hands in his pockets. He wore a white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a pair of sunglasses propped on his head. He could have been any of the wealthy tourists John had passed, and was very far from the man who had knelt in the mud, whose teeth John had pulled. On the path John stopped abruptly, startled by the change.
Nathan took a few long, easy steps to make up the distance, threw out his arms and swept John into a warm and welcoming hug. "Oh, John," he said, and kissed him on the neck. "I am glad you're here. I mean that geographically as well as existentially." He pushed John away to look him up and down. "Harold was right; you do need some time convalescing."
Nathan's skin was warm and his grip firm. John hadn't realised how much the cold and damp of that last night in the US had seeped into his core and refused to budge, despite Morocco's balmy weather, despite the muggy air in Beijing. Now, with Nathan strong and tan and well in his arms, perhaps that coldness could disperse.
Even so, John couldn't stop himself doing a quick check of the area. "Is it safe to stop here?" For all the trees were thick, Mustique wasn't the isolated place it pretended to be.
Nathan gave an airy wave. "It's fine – I have the place wired for video. If anyone steps on the path, I get a text from the security system." He pointed at the trunk of a large hibiscus tree. When John followed the direction, he saw a small camera unit strapped to the highest part that could still see onto the path.
"Solar powered and very small," said Nathan, as they walked up the path together. "I've been working for a while; I've got them all over the island now. Not much gets past me." He smiled at John's expression, which must have shown the surprise he felt at Nathan's enthusiasm for working with hardware. "I have a lot of spare time, and you know, I was an engineer once. It might have been a hundred years ago, but it's like riding a bike."
Nathan's new home was small but modern, the epitome of luxury resort living, at the end of a road overlooking the water. On the marble porch, holding a large gin and tonic, Nathan pointed out his esteemed neighbours.
"That's Tommy Hilfiger's place," he said, indicating a white roof poking through the greenery. "And over there, that's Shania Twain." He sipped his drink and let the ice-cubes rattle in the glass. "I suppose I should be glad Harold didn't stick me on Necker Island with Richard Branson for a neighbour. I'd probably have killed and eaten him by now. Sanctimonious asshole."
He was keeping well, to John's professional gaze: a tan suited him, though it made the scars on his cheek more prominent. His hair was overgrown and ash-streaked now he no longer had a personal stylist, but it was sun kissed and healthy. In an open-necked shirt, walking in bare feet, and surrounded by the ocean, he had an aging rock star aesthetic.
Nathan caught John's assessing gaze and waggled his eyebrows with mock-salacious meaning. "Old man's still got it," he said. Then he laughed. "It's okay – I'm not egotistical enough to believe it was my alluring self that kept you coming back for more."
John caught his wrist and reeled him in, wrapped his arms around Nathan and squeezed. "I've got no orders to follow now, have I?"
"I don't know," said Nathan, his voice muffled where it was pressed to John's shoulder. "I'm pretty sure Harold has a good hold on you by now."
John kissed him, tasted lime and expensive gin, then kissed him deeper. It was good to be physically able, it was good to see Nathan alive and healthy and unafraid. He was stroking Nathan's belly and enjoying the feeling of arousal, of uncomplicated sexual want, when he noticed the earpiece tucked into Nathan's ear.
He had a moment of confused disorientation, as his brain tried to tell him that of course Nathan had an earpiece. He had become to0 comfortable with their use, with the idea that Harold would be the voice on the other end of that line, and yet he was certain this was something else. Harold's suite in Beijing was luxurious, but it was still close quarters, and John had seen no sign that Harold spoke with Nathan. Harold wouldn't have had time, not while he juggled Crane's business and worked the numbers at a distance.
He nabbed the earpiece out, despite Nathan's sudden lunge to stop him, then held Nathan easily at bay while he slipped it into his own ear. It wasn't Harold's voice.
>Rutland Bay, clear. Lime Kiln Bay, clear. Macaroni Bay, two ships still moored, IMO numbers nine eight two two… A moment after John started listening, the words suddenly stopped, and honestly, that was the most telling thing.
John pulled the earpiece out and glared at Nathan. He knew that voice, pieced together from audio samples; he'd heard it on a payphone in New York. "Does Harold know you're in contact with it?"
Nathan had the grace to be abashed. "Well, to be fair, it got in contact with me," he said. "I think it was worried about me."
John brought the earpiece close: it was silent except for the slight crackle of static. He passed the thing to Nathan, who slid it into position again.
"Shhh. It's okay, kiddo," he said to thin air. "John won't tell Harold anything. No, he won't! I'll make him promise. Better, I'll make him pinky swear."
Now that he knew what to look for, John spotted a camera positioned on a bookcase, and another above the front door. He turned back to Nathan, confused and a little angry that he would risk his hard won safety like this.
Nathan held up an appeasing hand. "Wait a bit before you tear strips off me," he said. "Have another drink, and maybe lunch. Then get mad."
John felt a frown gathering on his face, pulling muscles tight, starting a dull ache between his brows. This was a foolish thing for Nathan to do, with too much risk, in a place where it would be difficult for help to reach him swiftly.
"Finish your drink," said Nathan, and wrapped John's fingers around the heavy tumbler. "I'll explain things after lunch."
John drained his glass then let Nathan coax him into another one by the pool, by which time a woman arrived to bring lunch. It was lunch for two, John noted.
"Sylvia gets my order in the morning," Nathan says. "It –" he said, gesturing vaguely at his ear, " – probably tweaked the quantities when it saw you coming."
They ate by the pool, under a striped cotton awning: grilled fish, fresh fruit, and parcels of wild rice and vegetables. The gin and the good food went a long way towards mollifying John's shock that Nathan was interacting with the Machine.
"The problem is that Harold did a number on it, emotionally," Nathan said. "He gets crabby about the anthropomorphising, he hates that, he'll tell you for days and days that it's not alive. But there was this point when we were building it, close to the end, when I decided he was wrong about that. And once I made that leap, once I accepted it as a living being, it got clear really fast that the poor thing has had a Dickensian upbringing. Harold is my best friend, but he's a harsh parent."
John poked the last few bites of fish on his plate, trying to convince himself he had the room to comfortably stuff them in. "You both built it. Doesn't that make you its father too?"
Nathan smirked. "I'm the good daddy," he said. "Why do you think it talks to me? Harold prefers to keep himself distant; that's his choice. Myself, I'd rather take the chance to get to know the being we both made."
"What exactly can it do, if someone comes here to kill you?" John said. "There's not much point in seeing them coming, if they're coming in force." He put his fork down suddenly, overfull and angry at how blithe Nathan was being about this. "I might not be here the next time. I might not have anything of value to offer them."
Nathan flinched at that. He stood, pushing his chair out with a squeak on the stone floor. "Oh, John, I'm sorry." He took John's hand, wrapped it around his. "I know it seems like I'm playing in some rich man's paradise here, but I promise I'm not letting this second chance go without a fight." He tugged gently at the connection between them. "Come on, I'll show you."
He led John to a doorway that opened onto a stone staircase, rough hewn with worn edges, and started down, fingers still entwined in John's. "The man who built this place was a survivalist. A rich one, to be fair, but quite intensely paranoid." He patted the wall as they descended into cool, damp darkness. "He bored down into solid rock, carved himself out a bunker. The owner before me used it as a wine cellar."
They alighted onto what felt like rock underfoot, and Nathan typed a long sequence into a keypad at chest height. In the meagre light from the top of the stairs, John saw Nathan glance at the camera above the door, as if waiting for something to happen. The underground corridor was quiet but once John's ears adjusted, he could hear a faint electronic hum.
"Come on," Nathan said into the air. "Don't be like that. I said he won't tell." After another moment, he turned to John. "Are you going to tell Harold about this?" he asked. "I'm not sure it trusts my judgement of people; it might do better to hear it in your own words."
John felt the weight of observation on him, standing there in the darkness, something that lit up his awareness the way he could always pick when his unit was in a sniper's scope. They weren't alone in this basement room.
"As long as you don't put Nathan in danger, I won't tell Harold you're in communication with him," John said, at last.
There was another few seconds of darkness, and then just as Nathan drew breath to speak again, the door in front of them unlocked and swung open. A warm gust of ozone and exhaust fan came through the doorway, and a gentle blue and green glow of monitors that made John's eyes water after so long in dim light.
"Is this it?" John said, taking in the cavernous room filled with computer equipment. There was a table with a soldering iron and various pieces of tech strewn across the surface. The monitors showed scrolling images: some of the Mustique coastline and landing strip, some of New York City. John briefly recognised the dark, overshadowed opening to the library where Harold worked the numbers before the image was replaced with one of milling tourists at Times Square.
"The actual Machine? Oh, it wouldn't fit in here," Nathan said. "No, this is like a holiday home, if you'll forgive the whimsy. It keeps data here, we're working on some things together." He let go of John and hefted a security camera from the table, trailing cables. "It's helping me regain a few skills I let slip while I was a CEO."
John remembered the list of bays he had heard on the earpiece: Rutland, Limekiln, Macaroni. They were all mooring points on the island.
"It monitors the coastline for you?" he asked. "How many cameras did you put up, exactly?"
Nathan grinned. "I managed – well, it managed, really – to get in on the solar power money spill for the island, and then we gave a grant to a team of well-meaning volunteer ecologists who installed the cameras on the coast. I see a lot of sea turtles. But also, I know where every cell phone is here, who disembarks from planes, the movement of the buggies. Just like in New York, I suppose. We did have to upgrade bandwidth for the island, but it's easy to write that off as some one-per-center's little pet project. There's a lot of that here."
John followed the cameras through another cycle of images. What Nathan said made sense, and it was reassuring to know that this place was secure, that Nathan was security conscious. Except that the images weren't just of Mustique; he recognised the corridors of the Pentagon, a wide avenue from a residential street in Silicon Valley, a conference room in one of the UN buildings.
He felt observed again, but this time it was Nathan, watching him watch the monitors flicker from place to place.
"Sooner or later," Nathan said, "Someone will start work on the next AI project. They shut down all the other surveillance research projects when we succeeded with the Machine – Able Truth, Fair Run, Stellar Wind, a bunch of others – but that doesn't mean they can't be reactivated. Or someone could cook up something completely novel." He pointed at the screen. "So we're observing and we're planning so we'll be ready. When it shows up, we can make sure it's no threat to the Machine."
"You're planning to, what? Kill it?" John was surprised; he had not thought Nathan could be bloodthirsty. Still, it wasn't his survival at stake here, he supposed.
"Not if we don't have to," Nathan said, though he wasn't as shocked by the idea as John had expected. "So far, we're working on a strategy to influence it, make sure that it has the chance to develop a moral compass, like the Machine did." He smiled at John, tentative for the first time since John had met him. "It's weird to be here on this island, planning for the future of another form of intelligence. Life deals some strange twists, I've learned."
"Yeah," John said, as people milled around Shibuya on the screen. The distance between Mustique and New York was a dull ache. "Can it show me Harold?"
He'd barely finished speaking when an image flashed up on the monitor in front of him: Harold, at a diner, eating eggs, a book open beside his plate. It was Saturday morning in New York, though Harold seemed dressed for work.
"I know that diner," said Nathan, from behind John. "He likes the eggs there. Man of habits, he is, for all he's so paranoid about his identity." He propped his chin on John's shoulder to watch with him.
Someone – a woman, from the long, slim fingers and the enamelled bracelet – reached across from the other side of the table, and snatched a piece of toast from Harold's plate. Harold glanced up briefly from his book, gave a fond smile to the other person, then pushed the plate in her direction so she could help herself to the rest of his breakfast.
"That will be Grace," Nathan said, and sighed. "I know this is a trivial use of a billion dollar operation, but it helps with the homesickness. Every day I'm glad to be alive and living in paradise, but I miss New York. Even when everyone's knee-deep in slush."
You miss the people, John thought, but he didn't say it. Instead, he tipped his head to brush Nathan's cheek for a moment. Then, because apparently he also was a glutton for punishment, he said, "Can you show me Jessica?"
The next screen blinked away from Trafalgar Square to footage from a security camera that was monitoring an indoor flea market. It zoomed and zoomed again, until John saw Jessica, holding up a decorative cushion, turning it over, talking to the vendor. She'd obviously peeled off some layers, because she held a big coat under her arm, with a woollen hat tucked into one pocket.
Nathan must have sensed what John felt, because he wrapped his arms around John and held him tight. "It might not be a perfect outcome," he said, as the monitors flickered and jumped. "But we're all alive, and we're all moving forward. That's a really good thing, John. Come on, let me show you my private beach."
The beach was private because it was inaccessible except by boat, or via the secret tunnel the original owner of Nathan's house had carved through the rock face. Nathan threw open a steel bulkhead at the base of another set of stairs and they began walking steeply downhill on carved rock, lit occasionally by incandescent globes on a single wire.
"This floods in a king tide," Nathan said, as they walked. "But even in storm season it never gets higher than here." He showed John a mark on the walls, where salt water had stained the rock a long time ago. Privately, the bulkhead was pleasing to John as a solid barrier to infiltration by things other than seawater.
The sound of surf grew louder, and the ambient light brighter as the tunnel opened up into a natural cavern in the cliff face. Long hanging vines and scrubby bushes obscured the cave mouth so it wasn't visible from the water. When John stepped out onto the sand, he had to raise his hand to shield his eyes. He'd become accustomed to the darkness.
"Here," Nathan threw him a towel and a pair of sunglasses from an unplugged chest freezer at the cave opening. He pulled his shirt over his head and hung it on a hook jammed into the rock, then cast off his pants. "Come and swim."
The beach was as isolated as promised, and the water was warm and clear. John floated on his back, letting the heat seep into his bones, and his muscles relax. Nathan drifted beside him, just at fingertip's distance, and the only thing John could hear with his head half under the water was the gentle wash of waves. For the first time he could remember – for years, maybe – he felt stillness.
Nathan touched his shoulder and John opened his eyes to find that the sun had sunk low, and the light was turning everything deep gold.
"We'd better go in before it gets dark," Nathan said. He stood waist deep in the water, and his shadow drifted and rippled long behind him. John pushed his feet down, felt them sink into the sand, and reached for Nathan to kiss him.
Their skin had dried salt-rough. John's fingers snagged in Nathan's hair, and then they were pressed together, hip-high in the ocean. Nathan held him tight at bicep and hip, as if he expected John to vanish.
"John," he said, when they pulled apart. He cupped John's jaw, rubbing the salt away with a thumb, then running that thumb along John's lip.
They made their way clumsily across the sand in the fading light, and for John it was ridiculously indulgent to be ungainly and vulnerable. Nobody was coming to kill him or judge him, there were no standards to live up to, nobody to seduce or hurt or kill. There was just Nathan, crouching down to brush sand off their legs with his towel, laughing as John, impatient and turned on, played with Nathan's stupid long rock star hair.
Nathan fucked him in his huge bed swathed with gauzy hangings, held him tight and pushed into him hard, the way Jess had shown him John liked all those months ago. John sighed and arched under him, grasped for Nathan's shoulders and hair until, exasperated, Nathan caught his hands in one of his and pressed them down to the pillow above.
John rode him later in the night, astride Nathan's body in the ridiculous fairy tale bed, rising and falling with Nathan inside him and moonlight streaming over them both.
"So beautiful," Nathan said, when the pace slowed a little. He stroked John's cheek, his jaw, brushed against his nipples. Impatient, John pushed down against him, took him in as deep as his body would allow.
Nathan groaned and laughed, clutching hard on John's hips. "Most ignoble of deaths," he said, then gasped as John arched his back to clench against him. John came with Nathan inside him, Nathan stroking his cock, and the far-off sound of the ocean gasping with him.
It was too hot to sleep wrapped in each other, but Nathan kept contact through the night: an arm across John's chest, or his forehead to John's shoulder blade. By morning, though, it had cooled enough that John slept pressed against Nathan, under a cotton blanket one of them had dragged over their bodies some time before dawn.
John woke early, but lay still in Nathan's arms for a long time, listening to the waves and sensing the darkness thin. He felt Nathan move into wakefulness with gradual ease, fingers tracing patterns on John's skin, lips brushing John's head where it was in reach.
When the light was undeniably filled with gold and pink and the gulls had begun calling, Nathan pulled John close and kissed his forehead. "You'll take care of Harold, won't you?" His voice was still husky with sleep.
The mention of Harold's name brought an image of the man to John's mind: hat and overcoat, collar turned up against the January wind, and blue eyes that saw everything. John imagined Harold looking into him with that gaze, imagined Harold wanting him, imagined them in bed together like this. He shivered despite the warmth in the air.
Nathan stroked the skin along John's shoulder blade, where it had goose pimpled at the mention of Harold's name. "Ah," he said, knowingly. "Maybe I should be having this conversation with Harold, instead."
John pushed himself upright on one elbow, appalled at the idea, unsure if Nathan was teasing or serious. "Please don't," he said, imagining Harold's horrified expression.
"I'm joking," Nathan said. "Well, mostly joking. Harold does have this tendency to get lost in the theoretical. He can get very distant from humankind."
Perhaps a little defensively, John said, "I haven't seen him do that. He sure got down in the trenches when it came to helping Jessica."
Nathan cupped John's cheek. "I'm sorry. And I'm glad," he said. "I'm glad he's not locking himself away as much as he used to."
John settled down into the bed and let Nathan curl around his body again. "People change," he said. "I've changed since you and I first met." It was true, he realised. He and Jess were vastly different people now. It hadn't been the path he would have chosen for either of them, but they were both stronger now.
Breakfast was fruit and more fish, with excellent coffee brought up from one of the restaurants in an electric buggy. Nathan threw himself into the meal with gusto, talking easily with the staff who cleared the dishes from last night, and set the table for breakfast. When they were gone, John took a mouthful of coffee to fortify himself for awkwardness.
"Harold and I aren't – we're not seeing each other," he said. And then, because he'd opened this can of worms and might as well get some answers, he said, "Isn't Harold with Grace?"
Nathan speared a piece of mango with his fork and popped it into his mouth. "It's complicated," he said, and rolled his eyes. "Thanks, Mark Zuckerberg. You made it so much easier to explain things."
"That's not actually much of an explanation," said John.
"We were fighting, before the explosion, Harold and I," Nathan said. "We've known each other for decades, so we had lots of ammunition to use on each other. I knew he was engaged. I didn't know who he was engaged to. That's not what we fought over," Nathan added quickly. "We fought about the Machine, and compartmentalisation, and what safety can cost us. But when that bomb went off it burned all the chaff away. What was left was more than friendship, more than partnership. It's hard to explain."
John had seen the footage: Nathan speaking into a phone camera, sitting on a gurney in the triage centre, remarkably lucid considering his face was blistered and bleeding, and his shirt torn open where they used the defibrillators. In the video, paramedics fussed over him, and he batted them off. He'd obviously grabbed the nearest phone and started broadcasting as fast as possible, the very first sally in his campaign of life-saving public prominence. Amidst the chaos, it made for an oddly commanding performance.
"I'm Nathan Ingram, and I'm at the 34th Ferry Terminal," he had said into a stranger's FriendCzar chat window streaming directly online. "I don't believe this was a terrorist attack – if it was, then who are these men? How were they on site so quickly?" The viewpoint flashed crazily then stabilised on the faces of two obvious government stooges, who, startled at being recorded, foolishly turned their faces away from the camera, thereby confirming the shadiness of their presence. "There's something not right about this explosion," Nathan had said. "If anything happens, if someone tries to shut me up for saying so, then you know I was right. Don't let them cover it up."
It had been nicely done: non-specific enough about the threat that journalists didn't connect it solely to him or his company – after all, IFT had been more or less missing from the global stage since shortly after 9/11 – but eerie and conspiratorial enough to generate lots of interest.
"Grace made it to the triage centre. I heard her calling out for Harold. And Harold? He tried to sell me on disappearing, on abandoning every connection to the world." said Nathan. He rolled his eyes then pushed the plate of fish in John's direction. "Eat this. I'm pretty sure you need the protein," he said. "Fortunately Harold blacked out mid-argument and I took over. I got Grace into the ambulance with him – thank God Grace is Grace. Who else can take on that kind of explanation in the middle of a disaster? 'Hi, I'm guessing you're Harold's fiancée? Here he is. I don't know what name he uses with you but just roll with whatever he's got in his wallet, okay?'" He laughed, and it was somehow less bitter than before.
"So, then it was surgery for me, surgery for Harold, and neither of us sure if they'd kill us under anaesthetic." He waved vaguely at the scars on his face. "You know what it's like, when they put you under and you honestly don't know if your strategy will to pay off, or if you're never going to wake up again."
John remembered the hospital in Beijing, remembered waking with Harold at his bedside. He didn't answer Nathan; he didn't want to interrupt, so he ate his fish and listened.
Nathan's expression was sad and self-deprecating, and he seemed to be casting off his own demons with this conversation as much as he was filling John in on the history of his friendship with Harold.
"So, yes, Harold and Grace. Yes, Harold and me, back in the day, though not for a while. Grace sees other people – Harold too, I think, but he's still secretive to the point where it's pathological. I guess I can't blame him. It's a weird way for the three of us to live, saving numbers, trying not to be killed. Kind of a fishbowl situation. No boundaries."
Nathan picked up his coffee cup and peered into it, then reached for the coffee pot to find that empty too. "Time to get to work, then," he said, and pushed up from the table.
Work seemed to be the further installation of cameras, and the maintenance of ones already installed. In the underground bunker, Nathan loaded up a rucksack and slung a toolbelt around his waist, then threw one towards John.
"Since you're here," he said. "I could use someone to plant some in the restaurants – it's tricky for me to go in there." He touched the scars. "Too recognisable. Are you up for a little low-level infiltration?"
"Infiltration" was perhaps a little exaggerated: the places that were closed were easily accessed with a screwdriver and some judicious jiggling of the lock. John had the basics in electronics for just this kind of spywork, and Nathan talked John through anything more complex than that via the earpiece. Nathan sat on the hood of the little electric buggy, elbows propped on his knees, hidden in the close forest that grew right up to the edge of what passed for a town on the island.
Nathan talked easily to John, but also carried on a conversation with the Machine at the same time, switching between the two with little apparent difficulty. For John, it got a little tangled sometimes, but there was no panic or pressure. It was strangely satisfying to do this easy work as Nathan chatted in his ear. If John was uncertain of whose conversation he was hearing, he simply waited where he was, standing on a table in a darkened dining room, or at the back of a crowd in a busy café until it was his turn again.
"Those two? No, they said they'd be flying in every weekend, remember? There's no need to worry," Nathan said. Then, "I've got that feed coming in now, John. For the next one, try that long piece of driftwood nailed above the bar. Angle the lens so I can see the register." And, "No, it's your turn. You tell me one. It will be fine! Go on! Okay, who's there? Amos who?" This was followed by a soft guffaw. "See? It's a classic for a reason."
Balanced on the long wooden bar, John fixed a camera into the twisted branch of driftwood with a screwdriver. "Are you teaching it knock-knock jokes?" he asked.
"I'm a dad," said Nathan. "The jokes just pour out of me. And that camera is active now – how about one over the door?"
John jumped down from the bar, pleased with how little the wound in his gut complained. "Why would an artificial intelligence need to know about dad jokes? Why would it want to?"
Nathan sighed, but it was a wistful sound, not an infuriated one. John wondered if this was an argument he'd had with Harold in the past. "Maybe you'd want your all-seeing AI to have a sense of humour? It might see and hear everything, it might understand the meaning, but nobody has taken the time to teach it nuance."
The last camera in place, John closed the door behind him and moved quietly through the scrub to the bright green buggy, hoping to surprise Nathan. His body felt good, so good after the misery of being gut shot and left to die. It had been a long, long time since John had felt playful.
"Is this an ambush?" Nathan said at his silent approach, without looking up from his phone. "You do realise you just spent the last few hours helping me make this place the most monitored resort in the Caribbean…"
Before he could finish, John reached the buggy, stepped up on the fender to straddle Nathan's legs and kiss him. The buggy heaved under the weight of both their bodies, threatening to tip, and Nathan, sputtering and laughing, pushed John down onto solid ground. "Let's go home," he said. "Quickly."
Later, with afternoon sun angling over the bed, John lay against Nathan's chest, his body pleasantly slack and warm. Nathan's arms encircled John's chest, and his lips idly brushed the short hair at the back of John's neck. It was good for a long time, but when the shadows were lengthening, John felt the mood shift. He knew how this would go – he'd seen people in various permutations of witness protection and how their resolve slowly crumbled, as their families moved on, had lives without them. Nathan was a father, was an extrovert who loved his friends, who thrived on physical contact and shared happiness.
"You're a people person," said John. He thought of the places they'd been today, how Nathan had carefully avoided crowds, how it had been John who went into the busy cafés to plant the cameras. "Are you going to be okay? All by yourself here."
Nathan moved beneath him, stuffed another pillow behind his head to prop himself up. "I'm living in paradise, John. Why wouldn't I be okay?" His voice was blithe but John could hear the desperate growing loneliness behind it. Eventually, Nathan's patient acceptance of this situation would fail, and then he'd either take his own life or let himself be discovered so that some agency or another would take him out instead.
"What about your son? Does he know?"
There was a long, long silence. "It's better that he doesn't," Nathan said. "I talked it over with Olivia – she knows, she won't have any problems keeping it quiet. But Will? Eventually he'll fall in love with someone, and I hope it's with the kind of person you want to tell everything about your life. I'd rather he had that connection, instead of secrets. I'd rather he raise his kids with someone who knows him completely. He's got his mom. And if he loses his inheritance thanks to my actions, I know he's got his rich Uncle Harold."
John reached for Nathan's hand, squeezed it tight.
"I've had a good life. I've done things I'm proud of. And not so proud of. At this point, I don't really get to choose the lifestyle I prefer," Nathan said. "Lives were in danger because of my decisions. You got shot because of my decisions; you nearly had to shoot me because of the things I did." He brushed the gauze netting of his enormous bed. "This isn't so bad, as far as prisons go." He tugged at John's arm until he sat upright and Nathan could kiss his knuckles. "Life doesn't work out the way you expect. It's okay. And I know exactly how lucky I am, John, I promise." He cupped John's cheek, fingers moving gently, then pulled him close to kiss him. "I know you have to leave soon. But I'll see you again."
John hoped Nathan believed his own words. Maybe in the future, when Nathan's conviction was slipping, John could ask the Machine to play them back. For now, he leaned into that kiss, made it something deeper and rougher, and arched up over Nathan's body to grind against him. Nathan laughed, then groaned and closed his eyes.
"Or I could die now," he said, breathless.
Later, in the dark, they lay together, still damp with sweat where their skin was touching. The breeze was cooler, though, as it moved the gauze hangings.
"He's very fond of you," Nathan said, into the quiet. He kissed John's shoulder blade, let his lips linger there. "Harold doesn't trust easily. Not like me – I'll give my heart to pretty much anyone who says they like me. But Harold? You have to have a certain clarity of purpose to catch his attention."
John shifted so that his whole body aligned along Nathan's. Through the big square window, the moonlight reflected on the water in broken lines. Each breath Nathan took was warm on his skin.
"Did you?" John asked, eventually, when he was sure that contemplating his own clarity would only make him crazy. "Have clarity of purpose, I mean."
Nathan sighed, warm and ticklish against John's back. "I did once. Not for a long time, but yeah. The early years, building the company, building the industry to support the company – for that stuff you need the kind of fire that draws Harold in. Maybe I'm on the way to finding that clarity again." His words were slowing now, as sleep started to overcome him. "I wanted to tell you that because you probably feel lost now. But you're not. Lost, I mean."
John watched the ocean moving and shifting under the moon, thought of the constant scramble his life had devolved into before Kara shot him. He hoped that Nathan was right, that he had climbed up out of that uncertainty towards something more solid.
When Nathan had fallen asleep, John eased himself out of bed and grabbed some pants. Then he padded barefoot on the cool marble floor to that stone staircase, circling down and down to the bunker.
"I'll go wake him if you insist," he said to the camera over the door. After a moment, the electronic lock turned green with a soft beep, and John pushed the door open, walked into the darkness of the basement.
Inside, the air was warm and dry thanks to the stacks of servers singing softly to themselves. The monitors were blank, of course, because there was nobody here to see anything. John sat on one of the chairs and crooked a knee up under his chin. The room was quiet but busy, from the electronic hum to the gentle click and whir of the server banks. Even the darkened screens gave the impression of someone working industriously.
"You found us, didn't you?" he asked into the quiet. "Me and Jess."
There was no spoken response – there was no response at all for a long while – but one of the screens blinked alive with grainy security cam footage, an airport lounge. John was so good at camouflage that he couldn't immediately find his own dark head amongst the others, but Jessica, brave and beautiful in her white coat, was easy to pick out as she walked up to him at the coffee stand.
John watched her talk to him, watched her reach for his wrist, to pull him close and whisper in his ear. His memory was so clear, crystallised by the way this moment had changed everything. He mouthed the words in time with her.
"I don't care," Jess said, all those years ago. "I don't. Be with me now, just for tonight." And then she had led him, hand in hers, to some airport hotel room, and they'd soaked themselves in the other's presence.
"She was always the braver one," John said into the quiet room. "I hope you can understand that. It's important to see the difference between strong and brave."
There was no answer; apparently he and Harold's Machine were not on speaking terms yet, but there was peace in the room, and with it, John hoped, a little trust.
He sat for a while in the office chair, and finally the monitors blinked on one by one. As the images lined up, they formed a panoramic view of the island coastline, water indigo in the moonlight. A yacht drifted slowly from one screen to the next, the deck twinkling with sprays of fairy lights.
It was oddly companionable, sitting in the reflected light of the monitors. Meditative, even. John was surprised at how peaceful it was, despite the enormity of the Machine, of its existence, of its abilities. There was stillness here and John was surprised to find that there could be stillness in him, even if it was something reflected from a larger source.
"All right," he said, eventually. "I'll help you keep them safe for as long as I can."
Chapter Fifteen // Master Post // Chapter Seventeen