st_aurafina (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
st_aurafina) wrote2020-02-28 02:23 pm
st_aurafina) wrote2020-02-28 02:23 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: The Man in the (Summer Weight) Suit (Person of Interest, Rated Teen, Harold/John)
Title: The Man in the (Summer Weight) Suit
Fandom:
Rating:
Words:
Characters/Pairings:
Warnings/Content: Time Travel, Character Invents Time Travel to Save Dead Loved One, Character’s Suspicious Actions Get Them In Trouble With The One(s) They’re Trying To Help, Unashamed Happy Ending, The Most Indulgent of Fix-Its
Notes: Written fortalkingtothesky
Summary: The man in the suit is familiar, but John can't figure out what he wants.
Also at the Archive
The library is as quiet as church, and John finds it a little intimidating. He stands next to Sophie while she browses a display of books about horses. John peers at the pages, but there aren't any pictures and the print is small. His sister is in fourth grade, and her books are really hard. He tugs on her elbow.
"Can I go over there?" he says, voice carefully soft, and points to the children's section.
Sophie glances over to the small coloured chairs and reading mats. "Okay," she says. "Stay where I can see you, though."
John nods and wanders over to the shelves lined with rows and rows of picture books. There he stands still, holding tight to his book bag that his mother sewed for him. He's only just started to be able to read alone, and there's so many books here that he's paralysed for choice.
Suddenly the air seems to sizzle, and a gust of air washes over John, smelling of hot machinery, like when the brakes burned out on his dad's truck. Then there's someone standing in the middle of the reading area holding a rectangular device. A TV remote, maybe. They've recently got one at home, and John is fascinated.
John glances across the library to see if this appearance is as startling to other people as it is to him, but Sophie stays engrossed in her horse book, and their mom is talking to the librarian lady at the desk.
This man might be a librarian too. He's really old and he has glasses. His pale suit seems old-fashioned, with a vest and a fancy handkerchief in the pocket. John knows to be careful of strangers but he doesn't think this counts. Librarians belong in libraries after all.
"For heaven's sake," the man says to himself. He limps to one of the tiny chairs and sits down slowly, like John's grandma does when she says everything is hurting. Then, unlike John's grandma, he pulls a screwdriver out of his pocket and opens the remote up on a hinge, peering inside it with a frown.
He hasn't noticed John, so John does what he's good at and pretends to be invisible. This is a trick he's learned, both for protection and for being a witness to interesting things that normally get him sent to his room. He picks up a book and opens it, pretending to read, all the while observing the strange librarian over the top of the pages.
The strange librarian keeps pulling tools from his pocket: an even smaller screwdriver, tiny tweezers, a thin stick with a glob of something tacky on the end. He tinkers with his device, frowning and occasionally muttering to himself using really long words. John edges closer, still holding his book, hoping to see inside the device.
"You realise that book is upside down," the man says while he works.
John starts, flips the book round the right way, and then gives up. "I'm not really reading it," he admits. He points at the device. "Is it broken?"
The man grimaces. "No, but it needs calibrating." He sees that John doesn't understand the word. "It has bad aim," he explains with a quick smile.
That, John can understand. "Like the bb guns at the carnival." At the last county fair, his dad showed him how to compensate for a gun with a slightly bent barrel. John won an enormous pink teddy bear, which he was very proud of, but kindly gave to his older sister. "You gotta fire a test shot and see where it hits. Then you adjust your aim."
"That could work," the man says. "Thank you –" he reads the name sewn onto John's book bag, and his expression changes, becomes complicated. John can't tell if he's happy or angry or sad, so he takes a couple of steps back and looks to Sophie for reassurance.
Sophie is there in a moment, horse book tucked under her arm. She takes the book bag and gives the man a guarded glance, then John feels her hand slip into his. "We should go find Mom."
"I haven't got a book yet," John says, returning to his original dilemma. "I don't know which one to choose."
The man stands up slowly from the tiny yellow chair, moving carefully as he limps to the shelf. He selects a book and passes it to John. "It was a favourite of mine," he says, before he walks to the exit.
John touches the crackled plastic cover of the book, which is old and battered. There's a young boy on the cover, much younger than John, who is not a baby. The corners of the book are stubby and wrinkled from being bumped and thrown over the years. The title is drawn in a wavy purple line. John puts his finger on the words to sound them out.
"Harold and the…" The next word is long and it has a lot of the letter P in it. John gets confused by the letters with tails.
"Harold and the Purple Crayon," Sophie reads for him. "You don't have to take it. It's old, and he was weird."
John is intrigued by the mystery of the encounter, so he says, "It's okay. I want to read it." He lets Sophie help him put it in his bag and then they both walk to the checkout.
John is on meal break, sitting on a fallen slab of sandstone, picking the chicken chunks from his MRE and watching his section of village wall. He hears a sizzling pop, and a cloud of dust erupts from the previously empty landscape in front of him. When the dust settles, there's a little American guy in a three-piece suit standing there, like he just stepped out of his office on Wall Street and into the fucking Iraqi desert.
"You lost, buddy?" he says, putting his MRE down beside him and easing his rifle off his shoulder. The stray dog that hangs around this part of the wall creeps a little closer on its belly, and John gives it a gentle poke with his foot. They're kinda friends, this dog and him, but not so much that it would resist the chance to steal his dinner. Once the dog has backed off, John walks towards the man, keeping his rifle ready but pointed down.
The man blinks at him in the late afternoon sun, then shades his eyes with his hand. "Possibly," he says, drawing the word out long and slow. "But I think I'm on the right path now."
The whole thing is weird as fuck, but the man doesn't seem to pose a danger to John. The dog certainly isn't troubled by him. That's a good sign; the street dogs here are generally good judges of character.
"You wander off from a press pack?" John says, though he doubts it. Even allowing for the sudden appearance out of nowhere, not many journalists venture outside Tikrit, and those that do are obsessed with their own rugged appearance as they file their reports to camera. The suit the man wears is pale and summer weight, but designed for civilian life, not for a warzone.
The man doesn't answer. Instead, he consults an electronic device, pressing his fingers to the glass face in different patterns. John wonders for a moment if it's a detonator of some sort and reaches for it.
"If you'll excuse me, Private." Offended, the man yanks it away, continues scanning the glass surface. His eyes are blue, watering in the sunlight. John feels a tug of recognition. He's seen this bespectacled face before.
"Do I know you?" he asks. The memory is old and vague. He wonders if the guy is from Puyallup, then rejects the idea. Nobody in his family knew anyone with a suit this nice. Then he remembers the funeral, the long drive to the state cemetery, the people in suits he didn't know. His gut clenches and he stares off at the shimmering edge of the dunes until his eyes are watering behind his mirror shades.
The silence draws out and the man eventually notices and looks up from the device. "No, Private, we don't know each other. I promise that I'm doing my best to rectify that. I'm a little closer than I was last time."
That's threatening enough for John to grab his radio and call the encounter in. He hears movement on the ground and glances away long enough to see the dog running away with the MRE foil bag in its mouth. When he turns back to the stranger, the man is gone.
John's head is thumping by the time he steps inside the hotel room, and he wonders if he has the energy to take a shower and wash off the grave dirt, or if he's just going to flake out on the bed with his boots on. It's been a steep learning curve, working with Kara Stanton.
He rubs his hands over his eyes, smearing dirt into sweat and decides he doesn't want to sleep smelling of someone else's blood. He steps out of the shower more hopeful, skin scalded pink, eyes stinging from more than just the soap, dripping as he wraps the towel round his waist.
There's someone in the room. John is moving before his brain has fully processed this information, leaving the towel somewhere on the floor. He has the stranger thrown onto the bed, is straddling the man to immobilise him, has the gun pressed to his temple. John's wet skin soaks into the pale suit, and his hair drips steadily onto the checked shirt, turning the fine cotton transparent.
"Don't move," John says, nice and low so Kara doesn't hear him. He wants to know how he got in here so quietly and whether Kara sent him as some kind of test.
The man winces. John notices he's turned very pale. "I promise, moving is more difficult than you realise," he says. The way he speaks, soft and wry, oddly unafraid, is familiar and John remembers a blazing afternoon outside Tikrit, a stray dog and a man in a very fine suit.
John pushes upright to view him from a distance. The suit is the same, a light summer weight, though now John knows enough to appreciate the bespoke tailoring and the eccentric line of colour in the weave of the fabric. John leans over him, close enough to catch the smell of him, gets a whiff of cologne, old books, clean dog. There's also a band of sunburn across the man's nose and a hint of the salt-smell of the desert. It's as though he's taken two steps off the sand and into this hotel room in Prague.
Inches beneath him, the pink of the sunburn has deepened into a blush, and the man's breathing has become shallow. John thinks at first it's fear catching up with him, but then he notices the parted lips, the pupils gone large, and he realises the man is hard against John's thighs.
He laughs, and grinds back a little, just to fuck with the guy's mind. "I didn't realise this was a date," he says.
The man arches under him, and John gives a satisfied smirk. This is the man's freaky personal mission, he decides, nothing to do with Kara's program of self-improvement.
"Mr Reese," the man says. "This is not the time."
John doesn't stop the slow grind back and forth against the man's cock. "It's been a while since Tikrit," he says. "Kinda imagine you'd be all for getting down to business."
The man laughs softly, then rests his fingers over John's forearms, holding firm but not enough that John would take it as restraint. "You have no idea, John." His fingers move, pressing into the muscles, a gentle action, obviously so familiar that the man does it without thinking. He closes his eyes as he does it, which says a lot to John. It says "I am safe with you, even when you have a gun to my head." It's disturbing.
They lie there quietly for some time. John's hair keeps dripping, making a soft pat-pat-pat onto the man's sodden shirt. The man lies still beneath him, apparently untroubled by John's nakedness or the gun. His face is incredibly peaceful, John thinks, as if there's nowhere in the world he'd rather be. John doesn't understand it. Why does this man feel safe with a killer? John barely feels safe with himself these days.
"What's your name?" he says, not to fill the silence, but because he wants intel. Whatever rapport this stranger thinks they have, the right thing to do is exploit it. That is what Kara would do.
The man takes a deep breath and opens his eyes, looks into John's face with the most incredible tenderness, with love even. John wants to move, to do something: push him away, pull the trigger, shout or strike out at him, to make him stop looking at John that way.
"I promise you'll know my name quite soon," the man says. "What I'm doing is precarious, and I am hesitant to interfere too much. But John, please believe I'm doing my very best to bring you home." He puts a hand flat on John's chest to push him away, then distracted, he spreads his fingers, exploring the smooth skin there. After a moment, though, he clears his throat. "May I get up?"
John steps off the bed and watches as the man struggles upright, tugging his damp shirt into position.
"You need to tell me what's going on," John says. "You obviously don't realise how much danger you're in, being here."
The man cups John's cheek briefly, and the touch is so much a surprise that John freezes in place, eyes going wide. "With you? Never," he says. "But I do appreciate that this could put you in a difficult situation, so I'll move along. I know this is confusing, but I assure you that it will make sense one day." He gazes at John again. "I wish I could convey how good it is to see you, John."
John shakes his head. "I don't understand."
The man takes out his electronic device. "You will," he says, and switches the phone on, then taps a sequence onto the glass screen. "I think, from my calculations, that the next time we meet will be different – I would appreciate you not mentioning these encounters."
John opens his mouth to ask what the fuck that means, when the man dissolves into thin air, right in front of John's face. John blinks, breathes in an odd burnt odour. He should be shocked, or reeling with the impossibility of it, but John is surprised to find himself offended. The man didn't even say goodbye.
It catches him by surprise, the next time they meet. Admittedly, John isn't feeling particularly well when he steps onto the muddy ground by the bridge to meet this mysterious employer. It's the same man, but a different suit.
"You can call me Mr Finch," the man says, and John just stares at him, waiting for him to do something weird. Weirder than offering a homeless man a job, at least.
He and Finch work their first number, and the whole time, John watches him, waits for him to acknowledge those few strange visits. Finch stays carefully distant, rarely makes physical contact, and never mentions anything about Tikrit or Prague. He does make some very sneaky exits that John ascribes to the ability to fade into nothingness, even if he doesn't actually see it. John is intrigued and charmed.
His first theory is that Harold has a twin somewhere, someone who has wrangled John's situation in a way that brings him into Harold's orbit. That becomes less and less plausible as John gets to know Harold, learns his body language and his sense of humour. By the time they're sleeping together, John is certain it was Harold that day in Prague, and probably in the desert five years before. There's no denying the physical connection, the way Harold touches him, the way they trust each other completely.
It's mildly frustrating that John can't find a satisfying solution to the enigma that is Harold. The mystery doesn't impact on his day-to-day life much, but John hauls the puzzle out some nights to work on it in his mind. It's fascinating, as all things about Harold tend to be.
The day after he brings Harold home from the railway station, John puts it all together. He arrives at the library to find Harold assiduously ignoring Bear even though there are dog hairs on his legs where Bear has been resting his head. This is a boundary drawn in time, he realises. On one side stands Harold who didn't have a dog, and on the other is Harold with dog hair on his suit. This Harold is one step closer to the man who closed his eyes while John put a gun to his head.
The next clue comes when John steps out of the hotel in Rome, kisses Holly goodbye and walks up to Harold at the outdoor café. Harold is wearing the suit, the lightweight summer suit with the orange thread in the weave, the same suit he wore in the desert, the same he wore in Prague. John sits in the opposite chair and watches him, listens to his explanation of how the Machine works. He doesn't understand what Harold was doing that time in Prague, in Tikrit, but it has to be something huge, bigger than the Machine, even. Harold would move the universe aside if the need is great enough. John can't walk away from someone with vision like that.
John gets to the top of the building with the Machine's help, with Root's voice in his ear guiding him past security teams and locked doors. He knows this is a one-way trip, but there's a sense of peace to his decision, and it lends assurance to every step. He is fast and accurate and the roof is there before he's had too long to think about it. He and the Machine have made sure that Harold is safe, and that's the best possible outcome he can imagine. She promises to stay with him until the end. It's okay, he tells himself and her. It will be fast. He's okay with it.
Harold is waiting for him on the roof. John's heart nearly stops, then he realises. This is Harold from Tikrit, from Prague. It's not just the suit. There's a heightened awareness to Harold's steps, a determination in the way he shoulders past John to the satellite terminal.
"Don't worry, I'll be done before they arrive," Harold says as he types lightning fast on the flimsy plastic keyboard. "I've done some preparatory work to make sure the uplink is more efficient than Samaritan anticipates." When he closes the keyboard, he stares up at John, pale with anxiety and adrenaline. "You'll have to take a bullet, Mr Reese. I'm very sorry, but if it doesn't appear authentic, I won't be given the impetus to take the next step. Please do your best to not die."
On the rooftop below, a door slams open, and Harold staggers out, wearing the suit he'd put on this morning, his hand pressed to his belly.
Beside John, Harold takes a step to the left, makes sure his entire body is shielded from the view of the Harold below.
"I've arranged a small amount of protection," he says, and from behind the cooling tower, drags a waist-high screen of thick steel mounted on castors. It's not much, but it will protect John's abdomen and legs. John takes up his stance behind it, his heart beating fast. The certainty of the outcome is suddenly and unexpectedly less conclusive. Hope is upsetting, when a few moments ago you were at peace with dying.
"Remember, Harold has believe you're dead, or he won't take the next step and I won't be here to help you." Harold takes John's free hand and squeezes it hard. "It won't be much longer. Please, Mr Reese, be careful." Then he kisses John's knuckles, and slides to the ground to hide behind the shield.
John has a few seconds to process this before Samaritan's men come thundering up the access stairs, then he's in the middle of a firefight.
The first bullet catches the edge of his vest, punching in under his collarbone and out through his scapula. He doesn't register pain, just impact. The second, terrifyingly, skims his temple. Ridiculously, that one stings like hell. There's blood trickling down his face as he shoots. He ducks behind the steel screen to reload, and shoots again.
"Just a little longer, Mr Reese," Harold says. "Hold on." He's tapping long and complex numbers into his phone with confidence, never stopping to backspace or correct himself.
The Samaritan agents are coming in force now, stepping over the bodies of their fallen comrades: ten, eleven, twelve of them blocking every exit point. John's arm is starting to go numb, and he's down to his last clip. He chances one quick glance down to the building below and sees that Harold is walking away. His stomach is churning with confusion and adrenaline but he can think about that later. If he's not dead.
The moment the door on the roof below slams closed, the Harold who is sitting beside him reaches out to grasp John's wrist and pull him down. He throws his arms around John's body and kisses him on the mouth. "This will feel strange," he says, while John's brain tries to process the whistling roar of the missile approaching and the sound of boots thumping towards them.
"I'll bet," John says, then the world turns itself inside out.
The next thing that happens is ungraceful and unpleasant: John starts barfing before his vision even has cleared. Someone has kindly placed a bucket in just the right position to catch the mess, and it seems oddly familiar. Harold holds him up, supports him with one hand on his chest and another on his back, rubbing in gentle circles.
"I know," Harold says. "It's very upsetting at first, but it will pass."
John heaves up his last meal and possibly the three meals before that, and then, as Harold promised, the nausea settles and he can stand.
"You done?" Shaw stands in front of him, gloved and ready for surgery. "You could keep going and barf the bullet out. Then I could take an early lunch."
Harold guides John to a low sofa, soft and comfortable. "Please, Ms Shaw, have a little patience. It was very close." He stands above John, kisses him on the head, leaves his lips there for much longer than he normally would. John drapes his good arm across Harold's shoulders and holds on tight. He feels oddly light, as if he could fly off the surface of the planet.
He realises after a moment that they're in the library, a library that has been cleaned up and reassembled after Decima smashed it to pieces. This is not the same sofa, though to be fair, it was past its prime long before Samaritan came online. The glass has been restored, the walls replastered in places, the floor swept and polished. It smells like home: old books, clean laundry and dog.
The table is once again groaning under the weight of many monitors. John sees a pair of bunny slippers under the table. A wheelchair rolls out from behind the wall of monitors and sitting in it, gaunt and pale but undeniably alive, is Root.
She gives him a crooked grin. "I was the guinea pig," she says. "You're welcome, by the way."
John closes his eyes, turns his head to press it against Harold's body. It's too much. Fortunately, before anyone he loves gets to see him cry, Shaw runs scissors up the sleeve of his shirt and gets to work on his shoulder wound.
Later, drowsy on painkillers and high on relief, John dozes next to Harold on the sofa, his arm bound into a sling, a dressing taped onto his temple. Root and Shaw have vanished to do whatever it is Shaw likes to do after operating on her friends. John never wants to move again, and for now he doesn't have to.
"It took a few months to create the technology," Harold says, softly. "And there were some technical issues with hitting the right point in time."
John has a sudden memory of another library, another set of books. "Harold and the Purple Crayon," he says, connecting what he thinks is the final piece of the puzzle. He hopes Harold didn't go any further back than that. Nobody should have to see their future lover in a highchair.
"That was the first point in your timeline," Harold admits. "It was a shock to see you there, I have to admit, but at the same time it felt a little miraculous."
John kisses the part of Harold he can reach at the moment, which is the curve of his shoulder, still in that pale lightweight suit. "So what happens next?" he asks. "I presume the numbers never stop coming?"
"They don't," Harold says. "Ms Shaw is taking care of the numbers herself right now, so I thought perhaps we could work on our own project." He passes a folio to John.
John flips it open awkwardly one-handed, and stares at the photographs there: Carter, Jessica, Nathan. He glances up at Harold's face, amazed.
"We're going to find them all," Harold says. He smiles, kisses John slowly as if he might break. "I built this technology to save the best of us, after all."
Fandom:
Rating:
Words:
Characters/Pairings:
Warnings/Content: Time Travel, Character Invents Time Travel to Save Dead Loved One, Character’s Suspicious Actions Get Them In Trouble With The One(s) They’re Trying To Help, Unashamed Happy Ending, The Most Indulgent of Fix-Its
Notes: Written for
talkingtotheskySummary: The man in the suit is familiar, but John can't figure out what he wants.
Also at the Archive
The library is as quiet as church, and John finds it a little intimidating. He stands next to Sophie while she browses a display of books about horses. John peers at the pages, but there aren't any pictures and the print is small. His sister is in fourth grade, and her books are really hard. He tugs on her elbow.
"Can I go over there?" he says, voice carefully soft, and points to the children's section.
Sophie glances over to the small coloured chairs and reading mats. "Okay," she says. "Stay where I can see you, though."
John nods and wanders over to the shelves lined with rows and rows of picture books. There he stands still, holding tight to his book bag that his mother sewed for him. He's only just started to be able to read alone, and there's so many books here that he's paralysed for choice.
Suddenly the air seems to sizzle, and a gust of air washes over John, smelling of hot machinery, like when the brakes burned out on his dad's truck. Then there's someone standing in the middle of the reading area holding a rectangular device. A TV remote, maybe. They've recently got one at home, and John is fascinated.
John glances across the library to see if this appearance is as startling to other people as it is to him, but Sophie stays engrossed in her horse book, and their mom is talking to the librarian lady at the desk.
This man might be a librarian too. He's really old and he has glasses. His pale suit seems old-fashioned, with a vest and a fancy handkerchief in the pocket. John knows to be careful of strangers but he doesn't think this counts. Librarians belong in libraries after all.
"For heaven's sake," the man says to himself. He limps to one of the tiny chairs and sits down slowly, like John's grandma does when she says everything is hurting. Then, unlike John's grandma, he pulls a screwdriver out of his pocket and opens the remote up on a hinge, peering inside it with a frown.
He hasn't noticed John, so John does what he's good at and pretends to be invisible. This is a trick he's learned, both for protection and for being a witness to interesting things that normally get him sent to his room. He picks up a book and opens it, pretending to read, all the while observing the strange librarian over the top of the pages.
The strange librarian keeps pulling tools from his pocket: an even smaller screwdriver, tiny tweezers, a thin stick with a glob of something tacky on the end. He tinkers with his device, frowning and occasionally muttering to himself using really long words. John edges closer, still holding his book, hoping to see inside the device.
"You realise that book is upside down," the man says while he works.
John starts, flips the book round the right way, and then gives up. "I'm not really reading it," he admits. He points at the device. "Is it broken?"
The man grimaces. "No, but it needs calibrating." He sees that John doesn't understand the word. "It has bad aim," he explains with a quick smile.
That, John can understand. "Like the bb guns at the carnival." At the last county fair, his dad showed him how to compensate for a gun with a slightly bent barrel. John won an enormous pink teddy bear, which he was very proud of, but kindly gave to his older sister. "You gotta fire a test shot and see where it hits. Then you adjust your aim."
"That could work," the man says. "Thank you –" he reads the name sewn onto John's book bag, and his expression changes, becomes complicated. John can't tell if he's happy or angry or sad, so he takes a couple of steps back and looks to Sophie for reassurance.
Sophie is there in a moment, horse book tucked under her arm. She takes the book bag and gives the man a guarded glance, then John feels her hand slip into his. "We should go find Mom."
"I haven't got a book yet," John says, returning to his original dilemma. "I don't know which one to choose."
The man stands up slowly from the tiny yellow chair, moving carefully as he limps to the shelf. He selects a book and passes it to John. "It was a favourite of mine," he says, before he walks to the exit.
John touches the crackled plastic cover of the book, which is old and battered. There's a young boy on the cover, much younger than John, who is not a baby. The corners of the book are stubby and wrinkled from being bumped and thrown over the years. The title is drawn in a wavy purple line. John puts his finger on the words to sound them out.
"Harold and the…" The next word is long and it has a lot of the letter P in it. John gets confused by the letters with tails.
"Harold and the Purple Crayon," Sophie reads for him. "You don't have to take it. It's old, and he was weird."
John is intrigued by the mystery of the encounter, so he says, "It's okay. I want to read it." He lets Sophie help him put it in his bag and then they both walk to the checkout.
John is on meal break, sitting on a fallen slab of sandstone, picking the chicken chunks from his MRE and watching his section of village wall. He hears a sizzling pop, and a cloud of dust erupts from the previously empty landscape in front of him. When the dust settles, there's a little American guy in a three-piece suit standing there, like he just stepped out of his office on Wall Street and into the fucking Iraqi desert.
"You lost, buddy?" he says, putting his MRE down beside him and easing his rifle off his shoulder. The stray dog that hangs around this part of the wall creeps a little closer on its belly, and John gives it a gentle poke with his foot. They're kinda friends, this dog and him, but not so much that it would resist the chance to steal his dinner. Once the dog has backed off, John walks towards the man, keeping his rifle ready but pointed down.
The man blinks at him in the late afternoon sun, then shades his eyes with his hand. "Possibly," he says, drawing the word out long and slow. "But I think I'm on the right path now."
The whole thing is weird as fuck, but the man doesn't seem to pose a danger to John. The dog certainly isn't troubled by him. That's a good sign; the street dogs here are generally good judges of character.
"You wander off from a press pack?" John says, though he doubts it. Even allowing for the sudden appearance out of nowhere, not many journalists venture outside Tikrit, and those that do are obsessed with their own rugged appearance as they file their reports to camera. The suit the man wears is pale and summer weight, but designed for civilian life, not for a warzone.
The man doesn't answer. Instead, he consults an electronic device, pressing his fingers to the glass face in different patterns. John wonders for a moment if it's a detonator of some sort and reaches for it.
"If you'll excuse me, Private." Offended, the man yanks it away, continues scanning the glass surface. His eyes are blue, watering in the sunlight. John feels a tug of recognition. He's seen this bespectacled face before.
"Do I know you?" he asks. The memory is old and vague. He wonders if the guy is from Puyallup, then rejects the idea. Nobody in his family knew anyone with a suit this nice. Then he remembers the funeral, the long drive to the state cemetery, the people in suits he didn't know. His gut clenches and he stares off at the shimmering edge of the dunes until his eyes are watering behind his mirror shades.
The silence draws out and the man eventually notices and looks up from the device. "No, Private, we don't know each other. I promise that I'm doing my best to rectify that. I'm a little closer than I was last time."
That's threatening enough for John to grab his radio and call the encounter in. He hears movement on the ground and glances away long enough to see the dog running away with the MRE foil bag in its mouth. When he turns back to the stranger, the man is gone.
John's head is thumping by the time he steps inside the hotel room, and he wonders if he has the energy to take a shower and wash off the grave dirt, or if he's just going to flake out on the bed with his boots on. It's been a steep learning curve, working with Kara Stanton.
He rubs his hands over his eyes, smearing dirt into sweat and decides he doesn't want to sleep smelling of someone else's blood. He steps out of the shower more hopeful, skin scalded pink, eyes stinging from more than just the soap, dripping as he wraps the towel round his waist.
There's someone in the room. John is moving before his brain has fully processed this information, leaving the towel somewhere on the floor. He has the stranger thrown onto the bed, is straddling the man to immobilise him, has the gun pressed to his temple. John's wet skin soaks into the pale suit, and his hair drips steadily onto the checked shirt, turning the fine cotton transparent.
"Don't move," John says, nice and low so Kara doesn't hear him. He wants to know how he got in here so quietly and whether Kara sent him as some kind of test.
The man winces. John notices he's turned very pale. "I promise, moving is more difficult than you realise," he says. The way he speaks, soft and wry, oddly unafraid, is familiar and John remembers a blazing afternoon outside Tikrit, a stray dog and a man in a very fine suit.
John pushes upright to view him from a distance. The suit is the same, a light summer weight, though now John knows enough to appreciate the bespoke tailoring and the eccentric line of colour in the weave of the fabric. John leans over him, close enough to catch the smell of him, gets a whiff of cologne, old books, clean dog. There's also a band of sunburn across the man's nose and a hint of the salt-smell of the desert. It's as though he's taken two steps off the sand and into this hotel room in Prague.
Inches beneath him, the pink of the sunburn has deepened into a blush, and the man's breathing has become shallow. John thinks at first it's fear catching up with him, but then he notices the parted lips, the pupils gone large, and he realises the man is hard against John's thighs.
He laughs, and grinds back a little, just to fuck with the guy's mind. "I didn't realise this was a date," he says.
The man arches under him, and John gives a satisfied smirk. This is the man's freaky personal mission, he decides, nothing to do with Kara's program of self-improvement.
"Mr Reese," the man says. "This is not the time."
John doesn't stop the slow grind back and forth against the man's cock. "It's been a while since Tikrit," he says. "Kinda imagine you'd be all for getting down to business."
The man laughs softly, then rests his fingers over John's forearms, holding firm but not enough that John would take it as restraint. "You have no idea, John." His fingers move, pressing into the muscles, a gentle action, obviously so familiar that the man does it without thinking. He closes his eyes as he does it, which says a lot to John. It says "I am safe with you, even when you have a gun to my head." It's disturbing.
They lie there quietly for some time. John's hair keeps dripping, making a soft pat-pat-pat onto the man's sodden shirt. The man lies still beneath him, apparently untroubled by John's nakedness or the gun. His face is incredibly peaceful, John thinks, as if there's nowhere in the world he'd rather be. John doesn't understand it. Why does this man feel safe with a killer? John barely feels safe with himself these days.
"What's your name?" he says, not to fill the silence, but because he wants intel. Whatever rapport this stranger thinks they have, the right thing to do is exploit it. That is what Kara would do.
The man takes a deep breath and opens his eyes, looks into John's face with the most incredible tenderness, with love even. John wants to move, to do something: push him away, pull the trigger, shout or strike out at him, to make him stop looking at John that way.
"I promise you'll know my name quite soon," the man says. "What I'm doing is precarious, and I am hesitant to interfere too much. But John, please believe I'm doing my very best to bring you home." He puts a hand flat on John's chest to push him away, then distracted, he spreads his fingers, exploring the smooth skin there. After a moment, though, he clears his throat. "May I get up?"
John steps off the bed and watches as the man struggles upright, tugging his damp shirt into position.
"You need to tell me what's going on," John says. "You obviously don't realise how much danger you're in, being here."
The man cups John's cheek briefly, and the touch is so much a surprise that John freezes in place, eyes going wide. "With you? Never," he says. "But I do appreciate that this could put you in a difficult situation, so I'll move along. I know this is confusing, but I assure you that it will make sense one day." He gazes at John again. "I wish I could convey how good it is to see you, John."
John shakes his head. "I don't understand."
The man takes out his electronic device. "You will," he says, and switches the phone on, then taps a sequence onto the glass screen. "I think, from my calculations, that the next time we meet will be different – I would appreciate you not mentioning these encounters."
John opens his mouth to ask what the fuck that means, when the man dissolves into thin air, right in front of John's face. John blinks, breathes in an odd burnt odour. He should be shocked, or reeling with the impossibility of it, but John is surprised to find himself offended. The man didn't even say goodbye.
It catches him by surprise, the next time they meet. Admittedly, John isn't feeling particularly well when he steps onto the muddy ground by the bridge to meet this mysterious employer. It's the same man, but a different suit.
"You can call me Mr Finch," the man says, and John just stares at him, waiting for him to do something weird. Weirder than offering a homeless man a job, at least.
He and Finch work their first number, and the whole time, John watches him, waits for him to acknowledge those few strange visits. Finch stays carefully distant, rarely makes physical contact, and never mentions anything about Tikrit or Prague. He does make some very sneaky exits that John ascribes to the ability to fade into nothingness, even if he doesn't actually see it. John is intrigued and charmed.
His first theory is that Harold has a twin somewhere, someone who has wrangled John's situation in a way that brings him into Harold's orbit. That becomes less and less plausible as John gets to know Harold, learns his body language and his sense of humour. By the time they're sleeping together, John is certain it was Harold that day in Prague, and probably in the desert five years before. There's no denying the physical connection, the way Harold touches him, the way they trust each other completely.
It's mildly frustrating that John can't find a satisfying solution to the enigma that is Harold. The mystery doesn't impact on his day-to-day life much, but John hauls the puzzle out some nights to work on it in his mind. It's fascinating, as all things about Harold tend to be.
The day after he brings Harold home from the railway station, John puts it all together. He arrives at the library to find Harold assiduously ignoring Bear even though there are dog hairs on his legs where Bear has been resting his head. This is a boundary drawn in time, he realises. On one side stands Harold who didn't have a dog, and on the other is Harold with dog hair on his suit. This Harold is one step closer to the man who closed his eyes while John put a gun to his head.
The next clue comes when John steps out of the hotel in Rome, kisses Holly goodbye and walks up to Harold at the outdoor café. Harold is wearing the suit, the lightweight summer suit with the orange thread in the weave, the same suit he wore in the desert, the same he wore in Prague. John sits in the opposite chair and watches him, listens to his explanation of how the Machine works. He doesn't understand what Harold was doing that time in Prague, in Tikrit, but it has to be something huge, bigger than the Machine, even. Harold would move the universe aside if the need is great enough. John can't walk away from someone with vision like that.
John gets to the top of the building with the Machine's help, with Root's voice in his ear guiding him past security teams and locked doors. He knows this is a one-way trip, but there's a sense of peace to his decision, and it lends assurance to every step. He is fast and accurate and the roof is there before he's had too long to think about it. He and the Machine have made sure that Harold is safe, and that's the best possible outcome he can imagine. She promises to stay with him until the end. It's okay, he tells himself and her. It will be fast. He's okay with it.
Harold is waiting for him on the roof. John's heart nearly stops, then he realises. This is Harold from Tikrit, from Prague. It's not just the suit. There's a heightened awareness to Harold's steps, a determination in the way he shoulders past John to the satellite terminal.
"Don't worry, I'll be done before they arrive," Harold says as he types lightning fast on the flimsy plastic keyboard. "I've done some preparatory work to make sure the uplink is more efficient than Samaritan anticipates." When he closes the keyboard, he stares up at John, pale with anxiety and adrenaline. "You'll have to take a bullet, Mr Reese. I'm very sorry, but if it doesn't appear authentic, I won't be given the impetus to take the next step. Please do your best to not die."
On the rooftop below, a door slams open, and Harold staggers out, wearing the suit he'd put on this morning, his hand pressed to his belly.
Beside John, Harold takes a step to the left, makes sure his entire body is shielded from the view of the Harold below.
"I've arranged a small amount of protection," he says, and from behind the cooling tower, drags a waist-high screen of thick steel mounted on castors. It's not much, but it will protect John's abdomen and legs. John takes up his stance behind it, his heart beating fast. The certainty of the outcome is suddenly and unexpectedly less conclusive. Hope is upsetting, when a few moments ago you were at peace with dying.
"Remember, Harold has believe you're dead, or he won't take the next step and I won't be here to help you." Harold takes John's free hand and squeezes it hard. "It won't be much longer. Please, Mr Reese, be careful." Then he kisses John's knuckles, and slides to the ground to hide behind the shield.
John has a few seconds to process this before Samaritan's men come thundering up the access stairs, then he's in the middle of a firefight.
The first bullet catches the edge of his vest, punching in under his collarbone and out through his scapula. He doesn't register pain, just impact. The second, terrifyingly, skims his temple. Ridiculously, that one stings like hell. There's blood trickling down his face as he shoots. He ducks behind the steel screen to reload, and shoots again.
"Just a little longer, Mr Reese," Harold says. "Hold on." He's tapping long and complex numbers into his phone with confidence, never stopping to backspace or correct himself.
The Samaritan agents are coming in force now, stepping over the bodies of their fallen comrades: ten, eleven, twelve of them blocking every exit point. John's arm is starting to go numb, and he's down to his last clip. He chances one quick glance down to the building below and sees that Harold is walking away. His stomach is churning with confusion and adrenaline but he can think about that later. If he's not dead.
The moment the door on the roof below slams closed, the Harold who is sitting beside him reaches out to grasp John's wrist and pull him down. He throws his arms around John's body and kisses him on the mouth. "This will feel strange," he says, while John's brain tries to process the whistling roar of the missile approaching and the sound of boots thumping towards them.
"I'll bet," John says, then the world turns itself inside out.
The next thing that happens is ungraceful and unpleasant: John starts barfing before his vision even has cleared. Someone has kindly placed a bucket in just the right position to catch the mess, and it seems oddly familiar. Harold holds him up, supports him with one hand on his chest and another on his back, rubbing in gentle circles.
"I know," Harold says. "It's very upsetting at first, but it will pass."
John heaves up his last meal and possibly the three meals before that, and then, as Harold promised, the nausea settles and he can stand.
"You done?" Shaw stands in front of him, gloved and ready for surgery. "You could keep going and barf the bullet out. Then I could take an early lunch."
Harold guides John to a low sofa, soft and comfortable. "Please, Ms Shaw, have a little patience. It was very close." He stands above John, kisses him on the head, leaves his lips there for much longer than he normally would. John drapes his good arm across Harold's shoulders and holds on tight. He feels oddly light, as if he could fly off the surface of the planet.
He realises after a moment that they're in the library, a library that has been cleaned up and reassembled after Decima smashed it to pieces. This is not the same sofa, though to be fair, it was past its prime long before Samaritan came online. The glass has been restored, the walls replastered in places, the floor swept and polished. It smells like home: old books, clean laundry and dog.
The table is once again groaning under the weight of many monitors. John sees a pair of bunny slippers under the table. A wheelchair rolls out from behind the wall of monitors and sitting in it, gaunt and pale but undeniably alive, is Root.
She gives him a crooked grin. "I was the guinea pig," she says. "You're welcome, by the way."
John closes his eyes, turns his head to press it against Harold's body. It's too much. Fortunately, before anyone he loves gets to see him cry, Shaw runs scissors up the sleeve of his shirt and gets to work on his shoulder wound.
Later, drowsy on painkillers and high on relief, John dozes next to Harold on the sofa, his arm bound into a sling, a dressing taped onto his temple. Root and Shaw have vanished to do whatever it is Shaw likes to do after operating on her friends. John never wants to move again, and for now he doesn't have to.
"It took a few months to create the technology," Harold says, softly. "And there were some technical issues with hitting the right point in time."
John has a sudden memory of another library, another set of books. "Harold and the Purple Crayon," he says, connecting what he thinks is the final piece of the puzzle. He hopes Harold didn't go any further back than that. Nobody should have to see their future lover in a highchair.
"That was the first point in your timeline," Harold admits. "It was a shock to see you there, I have to admit, but at the same time it felt a little miraculous."
John kisses the part of Harold he can reach at the moment, which is the curve of his shoulder, still in that pale lightweight suit. "So what happens next?" he asks. "I presume the numbers never stop coming?"
"They don't," Harold says. "Ms Shaw is taking care of the numbers herself right now, so I thought perhaps we could work on our own project." He passes a folio to John.
John flips it open awkwardly one-handed, and stares at the photographs there: Carter, Jessica, Nathan. He glances up at Harold's face, amazed.
"We're going to find them all," Harold says. He smiles, kisses John slowly as if he might break. "I built this technology to save the best of us, after all."