A/N: Sort of a follow-on to my first Person of Interest story, "The Box"; this one has a more somber tone, and is more pre-slash. Marginally set during season two, though it doesn't reference any of the events directly, except adopting Bear. Please enjoy.
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The Apartment
The apartment was dark and still, just as he'd left it. John entered first and left the lights off as he moved silently through the twilight rooms, listening for any rustle of movement or breath above the pensive hum of the high-end refrigerator. The short silver-black hair he'd wedged between the door and the frame on his way out that morning had been undisturbed, and John was relatively sure there were no uninvited guests lurking in the shadowed rooms; all the same he made his usual rounds, checking the hairs stuck in each of the closet doors, too, the angle of the file folders stacked on the end table. Relatively sure wasn't a chance John cared to take even when he was by himself, but certainly not when he had the rare pleasure of company.
He was double-checking the lock on the balcony door when the light came on in the entryway behind him, and John turned to find Harold illuminated under the frosted bulb, his finger on the switch. His expression was essentially blank, as usual, but John thought he could detect just a hint of exasperation beneath that unflappably calm demeanor, the softest betrayal of lines creasing Harold's brow. He was pleased to have noticed, more pleased to be the source of the exasperation. John smiled at his guest as he crossed the room again, taking the water-flecked umbrella from his enigmatic companion's hand.
"Just a few old-fashioned security measures," John explained as he braced the umbrella upright against the wall beside the closet, shucked off his wet coat and then held out a hand for Harold's jacket, too. Harold pursed his lips, like he was considering stubbornly hanging on to his—but the sudden downpour that had caught them unawares in this part of town had been too severe, too thorough, and in a moment he had slipped out of it, the coat joining John's in the otherwise empty closet. John offered him another smile. "Can't be too careful in this neighborhood," he said, nodding toward the carefully arranged end table. "Tea?"
He didn't wait for an answer, preceding the other man into the kitchen and filling the chrome teapot for two. Harold's footsteps followed, his particular out-of-step rhythm that John had come to know so well, the sound stuttering as Harold paused to wipe his glasses on a dry patch of his sleeve.
"This neighborhood is almost exclusively populated by bankers and Wall Street traders," Harold remarked in his usual dry way. John caught a glimpse of those intelligent blue eyes, unobstructed for once, peering up at him with an edge of what might have been amusement in the second before the glasses settled onto Harold's nose once more. "And while I'm not making any insinuation that those people aren't crooks, they don't really seem the type to lie in wait in your walk-in closet."
John only had one kind of tea. Harold's tea. He lifted the little tin of matcha green powder out of his sparse cabinets and then leaned toward Harold with his hands braced on either side of the stovetop, feeling the soft heat from the warming burner on the underside of his chin. "Bankers aren't always who they seem to be," he replied easily. "I've been a banker once or twice."
Harold was too sophisticated to roll his eyes. John thought that was probably to only thing that stopped him. "How very Fleming of you," the other man murmured. Then his eyes drifted away to settle on the wide pane of the sliding door to the balcony, the rain and the city lights wavering on the glass like bleeding watercolors.
The light wrinkle across Harold's brow made him look preoccupied, as if he didn't quite know what he was doing here, why he had acquiesced to John's invitation to come up when the weather caught them without warning a few blocks from the apartment. But John knew. He was here because John had asked him to be, and John wasn't trying that hard not to let it go to his head.
The teakettle began to moan, warming up to a whistle. John lifted it off the heat and poured in the powder; he had learned to brew it slowly, the way they did at Harold's favorite coffee cart in the park. He'd learned not to give Harold any excuse to turn him down.
John knew what he wanted to say in return, but he waited, held the words in his mind until he could pour the tea into two mugs and cross the few steps to stand next to Harold, a little closer than necessary for the handoff. It was a game they played in millimeters now, past the stage when the distance between them could be measured in steps forward and back—and if John still lost more than he won, he felt nonetheless like recently he'd been gaining ground. He raised an eyebrow as Harold reached for the mug.
"I didn't know you had a thing for spies, Finch," he said, his lips quirking into a little smile.
Harold blinked three times, surprised, processing, and his fingers faltered, hovering over John's above the ceramic handle. He looked up at John with eyes that were vastly intelligent and just slightly narrowed, eyes that knew exactly what he was trying to do. John held his distance just the same. Harold opened his mouth and it seemed to John he could have said anything—I don't or didn't you? or only the one all equally possible in the instant before he spoke. But in the end all he said was, "Actually, I find Ian Fleming's style somewhat pedantic;" then his fingers slipped deftly under John's and lifted the mug away without touching him, and Harold drew back half a step, pivoted, and headed for the couch. John's smile widened at the corners.
It was a game they played in millimeters, and by far the best part was that Harold had started playing too.
With a little effort to keep his tea balanced, Harold settled onto the couch and leaned into the backrest, closing his eyes. The couch was one of very few things John had changed about the apartment since Harold handed over the keys to the luxurious, fully furnished space; the original had been fine for him, but John wanted something with more back support, something that would take the pressure off Harold's fused spine. He'd bought an expensive therapeutic couch with a high backrest at just the right angle for recovering spinal surgery patients—and though Harold made a point of rarely coming over, hadn't been over, actually, since he'd had the couch delivered, John had found the couch worked wonders for him after such mundane traumas as being clubbed in the back or rolling down a flight of stairs. Now, he studied the relief Harold couldn't keep off his face as he leaned into the couch with his warm mug pressed against his lips, every exhale ruffling the surface of the tea. The couch seemed to be doing its job.
John crossed the few steps to stand behind him and settled a hand on Harold's shoulder, felt the tension there, but did not rub. He knew better than to try a one-handed massage over the back of a couch. He was always careful when he touched Harold's shoulders, though he wasn't quite sure what he was proving—that he could be close to the damaged parts of Harold without bruising anything, maybe. Harold's eyes flickered open and he regarded John flatly, if practically upside down.
"If you're hungry, I could make you something," John offered. Out of old habit, he didn't cook often, but that didn't mean he didn't know how. And recently, John had found he wasn't just shopping for his staples anymore—the fridge was full of things that Harold might eat, too, Harold who didn't eat like a bird, exactly, but seemed to favor light fare: Roma tomatoes and spinach and yellow-white Emmental cheese, snow peas and julienned zucchini. Sometimes John felt like everything in his apartment was just waiting for Harold to come around.
"No, thank you," Harold said, dropping his eyes taking a sip of his tea. John raised an eyebrow.
"No, you're not hungry, or no I can't make something?" he pushed, just so that Harold would have to look up at him again. Though it meant releasing Harold's shoulder, he reached across the couch to set his tea on the end table and then walked to the kitchen and pulled open a drawer, holding up a fan of takeout menus. "Because if it's about me cooking, we have other options. Chinese, Japanese, Ethiopian…" Harold took a deliberate sip of tea but said nothing. "If you don't give me a hint, Harold, I'm just going to order from all of them."
Harold's expression was now definitely perturbed. "I'm not sure that makes financial sense," he replied.
John shrugged. "I have a very generous boss."
Even Harold couldn't help cracking a little smile at that. He pulled his eyes back to the window and pressed the rim of the mug to his lips. "Perhaps we could finish our tea first, before you start devising ways to frivol away your paycheck."
John considered him for a moment and then set the menus down, crossed the room and sat carefully next to Harold, sinking into the couch slowly so he didn't jostle him. To a degree, pushing was likely to get him what he wanted with Harold, but there was always some point at which Harold would no longer budge, and pushing any farther meant Harold disengaging, giving up the game for the day. John assumed today it was because the other man couldn't decide how long he was staying. He picked up his own mug and took a drink, long past wincing at the bitter flavor. Perhaps they could revisit the issue in a little while, if it was still raining.
For a long time, they sat in silence except for the sound of the rain, loud on the balcony outside, louder, John was sure, down in the streets, pounding on the procession of black umbrellas invisible from this high. Harold was shifting a little at a time, or he was, and soon John found Harold's arm was pressed against his, the last of the muted cold and lingering damp leaving Harold and coming into him, the badge of the weather so tangible, where their bodies met, that John wouldn't be surprised if the marks were still there hours later, after it was all over, mottled like birthmarks. He wondered if Harold could still feel that, too, the living memory of the rain. Harold breathed in and then out, slowly, and lowered his half-empty mug into his lap, staring into the middle shadows across the room, the light in the entryway the only one either of them had thought to illuminate.
"I'm glad to see this location is treating you well, Mr. Reese," he murmured after a long moment.
"You treat me well, Harold," John replied, refusing the distance, the drop back to last names. Harold shifted a little, but not away. His expression was asking not to be pushed, but John pushed anyway; he had waited too long to have Harold here to let it slip away a one-time thing. "It's nice having you here," he began, more softly, and offered his companion a little smile, but Harold was already shaking his head.
"I'm afraid we shouldn't make a habit out of it. The people we're supposed to be…well, it wouldn't make much sense for their paths to cross."
The words felt deeper than themselves, as if Harold wasn't just talking about their covers, the thousands of split identities he created at a moment's notice—as if he was talking about the core of them, too, John and Harold, a schism in the marrow. John leaned his head back into the crown of the couch and let his hand drift down over Harold's knee, to reassure him or to hold him in place, he didn't bother to decide.
"We don't have to be anyone in particular here," he said, and then didn't say anything else, just watched Harold close his eyes and grip the mug of tea tightly between his hands, the stark light of the stormy city making his fingers bone white against the ceramic. John brushed a thumb across his knee and back. They were just specters, two ghosts haunting the same room—but it was nice, nicer than he'd ever imagined, not to be haunting alone anymore.
"In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity." Harold's voice was soft, almost shaky, as if he'd had to fight to get it out. John wasn't sure if Harold was disagreeing with him or if their thoughts had just wound in the same direction, toward ghosts. "Erikson," Harold added as an afterthought, as if the name would mean something to John. Maybe it should have. He was admittedly poorly read for someone who spent half his time in a library. Harold raised his eyes to meet John's, and John was surprised to see they lacked their usual distance; there was always something opaque and hard to read in Harold's eyes, but for once John felt as if he was being let in, allowed to glimpse something that Harold usually kept to himself. He didn't know what it was, but that didn't worry him. There had never yet been a riddle about Harold Finch that John couldn't solve, given enough time.
John set his cup down on the coffee table and leaned forward, gave Harold's knee a small squeeze. "We could bring Bear along next time. He doesn't have any qualms about my cooking."
Harold raised an eyebrow. "I'm sure he'd like that," he said, hiding his smile against the ceramic rim—and John smiled, too, because Harold didn't realize he'd said yes.