A/N: This is a Rinch story and dedicated to:
- scully1138 (without her help and encouragement and kindness this story would have not be written!)
- Blue-Finch/TimelessDreamer2/SeveRemus/shibarifan01 (whose "Rinch" admiration is highly contagious)
- Mamahub/Blacktop and all the girls on the POI discussion forum who were kind enough to let me in their world
-mithrel and Wuchel1 and poi922
for inspiring me to give up on commenting and starting to write!
Disclaimer: I don't own or make any money from Person of Interest.
Chapter one: John
He woke up in the middle of the night, exhausted again like an infinite loop. He couldn't tell what hurt the most: his heart aching from being alone, his body tired from too many sleepless nights, or his restless mind leaving him no peace.
Sighing, he got up from the king-size bed - the only luxury he allowed himself here - and went into the kitchen for some water. He was still not used to this little two-room-flat under the roof of an old house in Brooklyn. And though it was much more discreet and actually more to his taste, he somehow missed the windows of his old loft and the open space.
The loft he got as a present from Harold. And there it was again - the hurt. The helplessness.
For a moment John leaned on the sink and closed his eyes, remembering the last moment, the last look he had a chance to take of Harold and Bear, breaking inwardly to see them disappearing from his life, not being able to do anything.
He missed them both so much sometimes that the only way for him to survive this was...to run, to run until he was so spent that he could go back to work without his hands shaking. Knowing that it was the only cure for his longing to see Harold again - although not really acknowledging that fact precisely to spare himself even more hurt - he integrated the run into his daily routine.
It left him in better shape than the months before they had run from Samaritan. And it earned him a lot of admiring looks when he showed up in a t-shirt and blue jeans under a black apron to start his shift as a barista in the coffee shop around the corner. Looks of course that he ignored.
The coffee shop was old and very well-known in Brooklyn. A lot of customers came by in the morning, which left John without much time to ponder his life while working the busy early shift he always preferred - much to his manager's astonishment.
The owner of the coffee shop was an elderly woman named Tilda who had grown up around the corner and knew many of the people who frequented the café by name - and she was all hands-on. When not standing behind the counter she would always overlook her cafe and chat with the customers. Without her, the shop would probably not exist.
Though he was accustomed to slipping into different roles, John found that joining in with the team was not that easy. Brewing coffee was a simple task with the older Italian-imported machines, and he favored standing behind the counter and being separated from the other folks. That's where he differed a lot from the younger team who liked to stay in contact with the numerous guests.
But he was used to being on his feet for long periods of time and he never got tired of doing all the jobs - including cleaning and whatever else was asked of him - just as long as he wasn't required to handle the register or serve. And because of his hard work these wishes were quickly respected.
He gradually adjusted to his new life - running first in the morning, starting work with a fresh cup of coffee in his hands, and having so much to do that thinking was out of the question. When he started work early and had his afternoons free, he began spending time in the nearby Botanical Garden.
John realized that he had started earning a lot of questioning looks from Tilda. He had worked for her for over half a year with steadiness and stoicism and nothing threw him out of balance - not even some young college students who had made offensive comments to another customer - so she had no complaints about him. But she seemed to sense that there was much more behind his quiet face and silent behavior, though she had too much life experience to broach the topic as long as John himself had not brought it up.
John had been more than thankful for that. He was always very polite, always smiling just a tiny little bit (since Tilda counted much more than the female customers in her coffee shop!). He was always reserved and never crossed a line, just like the quiet before the storm.
But the storm came one day in form of a dog.