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meme_of_interest2013-03-28 06:03 pm
the_machine_mod) wrote in meme_of_interest2013-03-28 06:03 pm
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Prompt Post 01
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Finch, Reese, using Finch to lure Reese out, h/c
(Anonymous) 2013-07-29 06:56 pm (UTC)(link)Fill: Be Still (Harold/John) [Teen] [Graphic Violence (maybe)]
"Finch, I left Jacobs with Fusco at the safe house. What about your end?"
Harold taps a key, tabbing across to a new window. "Almost done," He says, surveying the digital records of the altered books Jacobs had attempted to inform the police of. The office is abandoned, monitors powered down; the walls flicker with streetlights and headlights from two floors below. "I'll be down shortly." He says.
"I'll be there in five."
The bar flashes green. "Harrison and the rest of his associates are not going to give up. They'll keep trying to find Mr. Jacobs."
"Just get me a location."
"Bringing one up now." He uses one hand to pull the thumb drive from its port as he runs a GPS track on Harrison. "Oh."
"What's wrong?"
Because of course John can tell that something is wrong from the single syllable, they know every meaning to a hitched breath or an edged word, either given or received across the line: they have to. It's how they stay alive.
"It seems," Harold says, watching the dot converge on his own, "that they're here."
"I'm coming--"
Cold, against the side of his neck. He freezes.
"Give me your phone." A man's voice, smooth and pressed as his suit. Harold reaches into his pocket and extends it. "And your ear piece."
Harold shifts in his chair, slowly. Six men, all armed and well-dressed; shadows glance off them as traffic rolls past below. Harrison crushes the ear piece under his foot, keeps the phone in his hand.
"Where's your partner?" Harrison asks. "I'd like a word with him. He caused injury to quite a few of my associates today." His knife-- his knife?-- glints in the half-light.
Blurred noises are coming from the phone's speaker. Harrison places it on the edge of the table and shifts closer to Harold.
"It's on speaker," Harrison says, toying with the knife. "He can hear you. Call to your partner."
Harold has his fingers clenched tight around the edge of the swivel chair. His eyes flick to the phone, then off.
It's fast, the switchblade flashing and the pain, spiking through his shoulder, warm spread of heat and blood. Harold is too shocked to cry out.
"Call to him," Harrison tells Harold, "call to your friend," and the blade twists. Harold chokes back a moan. The man closes in, closer than the distance of the blade in his shoulder. Harrison presses the phone into his hand. "I know it hurts." He says, hand settling back onto the handle of the blade. "Call for your partner."
"He doesn't have to." John's voice is barely above a whisper, but Finch hears it. The men turn in one swift motion and then Reese is moving, except moving is barely the right word, not when he's blurring past the tables with that predator's grace, one hand on a gun and the other reaching for the nearest man, twisting him in front of himself, using him as a shield.
The bullets plow into Harrison's man. John drops him, spinning behind a cabinet. "Down, Finch." John shouts, and Harold dives to the floor.
It hurts.
His elbow slams into the swivel chair a moment before Harrison hits the ground, clawing at his shoulder-- which Harold might put to ironic coincidence, except it's John, so of course it isn't. Harrison still has his gun. He rolls, aiming it as John ducks a blow from another man. Harold latches onto the chair and shoves it forward, over Harrison's hand; he's rewarded with a yell of pain when John's next shots takes Harrison twice in the other shoulder.
Harold knows the second shot is redundant.
The last man darts out of cover, gun arcing up. John turns, not fast enough. The four bullets hit John in the chest.
"Reese!" Harold shouts, and John squeezes off two shots as he falls, behind the line of monitors. "John--" Harold pulls himself to his feet, can barely even feel the pain under the tight raging void of no in his head, scrambles around the tables and drops to his knees. John's still, on his side. Blood seeps through his shirt. "John, J--"
He rolls over, coughing. "Relax, Finch. It's just a graze." A grimace as he probes at his ribs. "Good thing I put on a vest this morning."
Harold crumples the excess of John's shirt in his hands. "Good thing they didn't aim for your head." He hisses.
"You're shoulder." He says, reaching out, coming away with blood; the knife is gone, must have been jostled out in the fall, which explains the pain. "It's not too deep. Messy." He blinks, like a wince.
There are sirens wailing, far-off.
"I called Carter." John comments. "In case I didn't make it out, you'd have back-up."
Harold looks at him, because those words-- unacceptable, they are simply unacceptable. His hands are still fisted in John's shirt and he's hanging on to him; he's been doing so long enough now that there's no way not to notice.
There's a stirring there in John's eyes, something Harold thinks he already has decoded. But the sirens are still in the air and then John has his hand girded around Harold's arm, angling himself so Harold can barely see the men and the blood on the floor past John's figure. He knows what John's doing. He lets him anyway. They leave the office, reach the street.
"Must have lost my keys back there." John says, patting his pockets as they stand under the streetlight. He fishes out a wire-- apparently he carries mangled coat hangers around with him, which is amusing if not alarming-- and presses it against the lock.
Harold sighs and produces a key from his coat. They have copies to each other's cars, to apartments, to safe houses: yet more precautions.
John holds his hand out.
Harold glares at him. "You're not driving. You were shot, Mr. Reese."
"Your shoulder's worse." Which is probably true. But it's the ease with which he writes off his injuries that irks Harold.
John shrugs, under lamplight and shadows, and Harold's skin aches with want. Possibly need. When exactly those two words became equivalent expressions is a dangerous uncertainty. "Unless it actually penetrates skin," John continues, "I'm not sure it can be counted as shot--"
Harold grabs John's coat by the lapels and pulls him close, kisses him hard. And it tastes frantic and desperate and afraid, because in their line of work, maybe fear replaces ardor. And Harold hates that. He really, really hates that. It occurs to him that he's made an uncertain move, which is something he does exactly right next to never-- but it's too late to backpedal now, he can see it in John's eyes: a dozen things clicking into place like a lock, or maybe they're locks being opened. A ragged noise emerges from John's throat. He leans in, winding his arms around Harold's shoulders and waist and pulling him forward, impossibly closer.
When they draw back, John's expression is one that Harold has only ever been able to classify as his "spade for a spade" look: a tilt of the head and half-raised eyebrows. "Okay," John says, resolved, and then kisses him again, draws him deeper, as the fear plows in strong as a riptide-- but it's more than that this time, Harold was right: it's past want. He knows he needs to stop. He needs to simplify this equation. Except he has loved and learned and lost, and he knows that there is no simplifying this.
The sirens drift through the night and John breaks away, snagging the keys out of Harold's hand on an giddy hitch of a breath, and swings the door open for him. Harold climbs in; his hands are shaking hard enough that he doubts he could drive if he tried.
They park six blocks from the safe house, Harold insists. "Predictability is vulnerability", and he has a clenching, dreadful feeling that he has just began a vulnerability that surpasses all others. Or perhaps, Harold thinks, as John brushes against his uninjured shoulder, it's been a predictability, all along.
The first aid kit is within easy reach. John lays out disinfectant and gauze and a needle and a bag rattles as Harold fixes an ice pack; they pull up two chairs and sit in front of each other, knees to knees.
Harold hands John the ice. The graze arcs wide enough to require stitches; Harold runs the needle through the sub-dermal layers, fingers sure and disconcertingly practiced at this point-- he's learned how to do a lot of things since their venture started. He's relearned just as many or more.
John patches up his shoulder, nimble and careful; more Lidocaine, he asks, and Harold shakes his head. They've done this, far too many times. But suddenly every lingering touch that had been passed off as accidental before means infinitely more now: John's fingers brushing against Harold's collarbone as he moves away from his shoulder, Harold's hands flitting along John's side as he deals with the graze, and what have I done is just an voidless little regret that isn't. It should be, and it isn't.
They clean up quietly. John bins the bloody bandages and gauze and Harold slowly, as slowly as he reasonably can, returns the first aid kit to its original state. The kitchen hums with silence.
Harold latches the kit, a sharp final snap through the room. He stares at it; John is looking at him: he can feel the graveness of it, the waiting eyes. Harold raises his head. "This is exceedingly unadvisable."
He meets his gaze with a terrible, terrible acceptance. "Yeah," John agrees, "I figured." and turns and heads towards the bedroom.
They are tight rope walkers living on the decision to never look down.
He's waiting for Harold at the doorway.
Harold is stepping inside when he stops, places the flats of his palms against John's chest: pushing him away, needing him close. One last-ditch effort to keep the night from upending. Because it makes no sense: to love, only to lose; except that makes no sense either, it's the same as saying there's no point in living, just to die. But knowing and logic and reason are nothing, those are data and circuitry, the easy parts. It's John who makes him feel all too alive.
He envelops Harold's wrists in his hands. "I can't offer you four years," John says, "but I can give you tonight."
Harold's throat is so tight that it hurts. "Never took you for a man who opted for one-night stands."
A flicker of a smile. "For as many as we have."
The room is spare; there are neither calendars on the walls or planners in the drawers. Harold isn't sure he believes in such things anymore. He isn't sure he believes in anything but "now".
He lets one of his hands slide down to tangle around John's, and then Harold pulls them towards the bed.
Re: Fill: Be Still (Harold/John) [Teen] [Graphic Violence (maybe)]
(Anonymous) 2013-08-26 04:24 pm (UTC)(link)Because it makes no sense: to love, only to lose; except that makes no sense either, it's the same as saying there's no point in living, just to die. But knowing and logic and reason are nothing, those are data and circuitry, the easy parts. It's John who makes him feel all too alive.
*snuffles* You can hijack any of my prompts, whenever.
Re: Fill: Be Still (Harold/John) [Teen] [Graphic Violence (maybe)]
Re: Fill: Be Still (Harold/John) [Teen] [Graphic Violence (maybe)]
(Anonymous) 2013-08-28 06:10 pm (UTC)(link)-> cue John's action theme from the soundtrack playing in my head :-) Great.
And it tastes frantic and desperate and afraid, because in their line of work, maybe fear replaces ardor. And Harold hates that. He really, really hates that.
Love this, great observation.
Re: Fill: Be Still (Harold/John) [Teen] [Graphic Violence (maybe)]