~Protection~
"The machine gave us a new number," Harold murmurred into John's ear.
"The machine did," John repeated with a soft, knowing smirk, his hands lingering over the sides of Harold's neatly pressed dress shirt.
"Yes." Harold trailed caressing fingers down over the small triangle of skin left exposed after undoing John's uppermost buttons. The light of his workstation's monitor was all that illuminated the slow beginning to their evening.
John's gaze crossed over Harold's shoulder while he offered the curve of his neck just as Harold liked it. He spotted the hanging photo in the soft, electronic glow. "This is the guy. Handsome fella. The machine sure knows how to pick 'em sometimes."
Harold relieved him of the feathery brush of his lips along his throat and collarbone, raising them back up to fill his ear with hot breath and familiarity. "He needs your protection, Mr. Reese."
Two hours later, John had the attractive young man bent over the straying wheeled cabinet of a dim, windowed office.
"Don't forget, Mr. Reese," Harold's insistent voice purred over the hidden transmitter which spoke for only John to hear.
John smirked, wider this time, knowing that Harold would see it from his intent perch in the hotel across the street.
This was how Harold wished it to be between them. Only the most teasing, the most maddening of intimate suggestions when they were alone together in his sheltered lair.
But here, out in the rest of the world, what John could do and have done to him by proxy found no limits to Harold's desire. Far from his touch, but where Harold could always, always see him.
And ever the vigilant one, Harold was determined to keep John safe from even the most mundane of human predicaments.
John fixed his eyes unwaveringly on the bare pinpoint of light from the distant scope locked onto him, determined that the smolder of his gaze would cross a thousand city streets if needed to reach the amazing enigma of a man who called his every shot.
He tore the condom open.