Work Text:
In the midst of his self-indulgent staring at the screen, Harold caught himself thinking a photograph is no substitute for reality.
Reality was entirely the wrong word, of course; everything about his current situation was several degrees too real. Corporeality was more like it. Bodies, touch, sensation. Or temporality: despite the sad premise inherent in the knowledge of time passing, change and eventual loss would be far better than gazing at a Grace frozen in time. She'd already aged past this moment; she had lines in her face that hadn't been there when the photo was taken, perhaps gray hairs, though she'd probably colored them away. If he was still living with her, he'd have asked her to leave them alone. Age was a reality he'd welcome and embrace, along with her rediscovered, time-touched body. Hands, sliding from shoulders down to hips, soaking in warmth, molding to fit over breasts and flattening across her stomach; palms like a sculptor's in reverse, formed and tutored by her corporeal solidity, fed data and programmed for an exchange of pleasures. Lips, meeting in quiet communication and communion…
No. Don't think about it.
The reprimand was automatic, an echo of his earlier words, though fragmented as if returning to him from the hills across a wide valley. One last indulgence: he touched her cheek on the cold screen before closing the window, and in that second an audible exhale was released behind him.
"Mr. Reese," he said, keeping his voice expressionless.
"Harold," came the answer, equally empty and equally easy to read, and then, "You know, you could--"
"No, I couldn't," he said firmly. "And I'd rather we didn't speak of it."
"How do you know what I was going to say?" and then John was leaning on the table next to him, looking down with an odd little smirk on his face. "Maybe I was about to tell you to go work off your frustrations somewhere else. Isn't there some high-class brothel or call-girl empire among your many corporate holdings?"
"No, Mr. Reese; there isn't."
"You sure? Must be hard to keep track."
"I think I'd remember."
"It is the sort of thing that sticks with you. Well, there's got to be some trustworthy place you know of to go to, or to order in from. I wouldn't ask Leon for a recommendation, but beyond that--"
"I don't require assistance with my frustrations, Mr. Reese." He got a raised eyebrow in response to that, sighed and went on, "Sex is not the problem, or not the primary--"
"I know." Another easily-read piece of reticence: volumes behind it. "But it's a problem you can fix."
"It's also very much none of your business."
John watched him briefly, then abandoned the support of the table, said, "You're right," and walked away. At a distance of ten feet or so, his voice added, "But if you ever want--"
"If I ever want what, Mr. Reese?" Harold said without turning. When he got no answer, he shifted himself around to look at John. The words fatal curiosity popped into his mind, what seemed a full minute later and was probably five seconds: like a bird mesmerized by the sway of a snake, he couldn't pull his eyes away. The snake wasn't striking. But he'd never understood that whole suicidal pantomime better.
Finally, John's lips thinned into a pained grimace pretending to be a smile; he ducked his head and left the room, and Harold let out a breath and clutched the table edge, completely uncertain of what had just happened.
*
The next day, in the Library without John and without a new number, and without much to keep him occupied other than the routine monitoring of his holdings and assets and an unnecessary review of failsafes and alarms, he found himself growing restless, pacing, fidgeting, until Bear caught his agitation and lifted his head expectantly.
"Walk?" said Harold, and Bear let out a whine that might have come from Harold's own throat.
The wind was cold, and Harold buttoned his coat to the neck, turning up the collar. He refused to know where he was going, but his feet led him unerringly to Washington Square Park, and Bear seemed agreeable: there were no doubt smells that required checking on. It was a method of information gathering that fascinated Harold: no remote sensing, for dogs; no internet, no ghostly Machine. What the nose didn't smell might as well not exist, but Bear selected sites to sniff without hesitation, as though he recalled where the good stuff had been last time. Which had been months ago, Harold suddenly realized.
He was always aware of Grace and her doings, of course, but something stopped him from watching her except when he was physically present here in the park. His needs, in this respect, were much like Bear's. He wished he could go up and smell her. But being close enough to see her (if never closer than a hundred yards) gave him the same secondhand satisfaction that he supposed Bear got from scenting a squirrel or another dog that was hours gone. Some of the smells made Bear wag his tail and some perked up his ears with alertness, sensing danger or the promise of the chase. Harold couldn't chase anything, but being near Grace excited him in what was likely a similarly simple way.
He chose a bench with a view of her house, and Bear flopped down next to it. They wouldn't stay long today; it was cold for sitting, and his hip ached. The pain stole away some of the pleasure of proximity, made him think about what had changed since he'd lived here. If matters altered miraculously and he could offer himself to Grace once again, he'd never considered that she would reject him because of his injuries; that cruelty was contrary to her nature. But she might well turn him down for the secrecy, because he'd hidden himself from her. It was a moot point, anyway; he wasn't going to get to try again.
He'd taken a chance on seeing her, hadn't checked her schedule before he left, but after he'd waited ten minutes her door opened and she emerged, locking it behind her. Bear lifted his head from his paws, sensing something: Harold's speeded pulse, telegraphed down the length of the leash.
"I'm such a fool, Bear," he murmured, wanting to get up and limp away; but this was always the moment in which he had to stay very still, for fear of attracting her eye. She was going to walk down the street and out of his range of vision, and then they'd go back into hiding, the homeless pair with a roof over their heads and a box of dog treats in a drawer.
Grace turned, scanning the street and -- Harold froze, shielding himself mentally -- the park, and then from behind him came the chatter of two female voices. "And I said, if all you want is to match the couch, maybe you should just splash blood on the wall, and would you believe it, she walked out the door? Oh, what a cute dog."
Harold looked up. A pale blonde and a dark-skinned brunette, nice coats, tasteful makeup, sensible low-heeled boots, both giving Bear assessing looks. Bear sat up and returned the favor. "Can I pet him?" the blonde said.
"Yes," Harold said after a second's hesitation, trying not to look over his shoulder to locate Grace. He felt horribly exposed, sensitive to being watched in a way that hadn't affected him for years. And then the very worst happened: as the blonde bent to stroke Bear's head, the brunette shielded her eyes with a hand and then raised it to wave.
"There she is," she said. Harold stole a glance, and froze: Grace was waving back. The brunette turned to her friend and said, "Gracie, stop being such a puppy-tart, and come on; I'm hungry. Sorry," she added to Harold, "but she just can't resist an adorable mutt. Not that yours is one, I mean; he looks purebred."
"He is, as far as I know," Harold said, "but ladies, I really need to--"
"My friend has a purebred Dalmatian, and let me tell you about high-maintenance--"
"What, him or the dog?" the blonde interrupted, smirking. "Gray's taste in men is legendary," she added to Harold, who had no idea why he was part of this conversation and wanted the Library's walls around him badly. "The last guy was like something out of Greek myth--"
"I'm very sorry, but Bear and I have to--"
"Is that his name?" the blonde said. "It suits him. You look fierce but I bet you're a big softie," she added to Bear, rubbing his ears; his tongue lolled out. An unmitigated flirt, is what you are, Harold told him. This would be a good time for unprovoked biting. He tried to shield his face with the high collar of his coat, while spying on Grace out of the corner of his eye; yes, she was walking this way. In a second he would have to run as best he could, knowing that his exit would draw her attention; he'd just hope that the limp and the dog and the additional gray hairs would disguise him well enough, but she knew him so thoroughly. The blonde was chattering on. "Where did you get him? I'd feel safer, walking the street with protection like that--"
Harold's phone alarm started to buzz; his heart pounded, his breath came fast; he tried to rise and found himself unable to, and then a deeply familiar voice interrupted.
"He's a rescue dog." John bent over the back of the bench, blocking Harold from Grace's view, and kissed him on the corner of his mouth. "Go," he whispered. "I'll handle this," and then louder, "Did you forget about your appointment, love?"
"Oh," said Harold, "yes. I did; I really have to--" and then his body took over and he was up and walking, listening to John explain that Bear had had a sad life full of abuse and misery until his partner had found him in a shelter and brought him home, and then he was too far away to hear anything except the blonde crying out, "Grace! Look at this sweet dog," and Grace saying, hesitantly, "Don't I know you? Detective?"
*
John and Bear returned to the Library about an hour later. "Hi, honey, I'm home," John said, and put two brightly-colored slips of paper down in front of Harold. "Tickets to the Rainbow Ball," he announced. "Five hundred each, but I figured you could afford it. Gray's catering it," he added, and, interpreting Harold's silence as a question, "That's the brunette. They call themselves the Three Graces. A graphic artist, an interior designer, and a chef: I think they're poised to take the city by multihued storm."
The hot acid mix of emotion bubbling up from Harold's gut surprised him: it was at least half jealousy. He tried to keep focused on annoyance. "Why did you do that?" he said, his voice harsh to his ears.
"Why did I do what?" John waited for an answer, didn't get one, and added, "You mean this." Hands on Harold's shoulders, he bent and replicated the kiss. Harold tried to shrink away and didn't manage to. "It seemed like a good idea at the time?"
John straightened but didn't let go; his grip was cold and firm. "I'm sure it was," Harold said. "It was a distraction and a disguise; certainly she wouldn't have…" He trailed off.
"Seen her dead fiancé in Detective Stills' dog-rescuing lover? No. She didn't. Did you want her to?"
Harold turned as quickly as he could, breaking the contact between John's hands and his shoulders. "What do you mean?"
"Did you want her to recognize you?"
"Of course not. I told you--"
"That you can't let yourself be near her, yes. And yet you keep putting yourself there. So I wonder if you're waiting for her to see you."
"Don't be ridiculous," Harold said, found his feet, and limped away into the space between two bookshelves. John followed him, and he suddenly knew he'd walked into a trap: the bird and the snake all over again.
"You know," John said, looming in the dim light, "if I didn't know you so well, I'd call you a stalker."
"It's for her protection."
It was a flimsy excuse, if true, and John knew it; he leaned closer, his mouth quirking just slightly at the corner. "Well, I'm fine with that, but then I like being stalked. Of course, I know you're doing it. That makes all the difference, actually being aware that you're watching me. It can be kind of… stimulating."
Harold could feel himself flushing. "The Machine watches you all the time, Mr. Reese. I don't."
"That's even better, because I never know when you're there. I'll do something I don't want you to see, and then I'll realize that I did want you to see it, and I'll wonder whether you did. It's like Schrödinger's cat." Harold must have looked surprised; John added dryly, "There are some good books here, Harold."
"So I'm a dead cat?"
"You seem pretty lively to me," John said, edging further inside Harold's personal perimeter. "Of course it's not watching, mostly, is it? It's listening. What sounds do you like to hear coming out of my mouth? Do you think about Grace when you hear them? Or just about yourself? I do try to sing out for you. Mr. Finch."
"John--" Harold began, but then couldn't think of anything to add.
"I don't mind, Harold. I like being useful."
It was impossible to say he'd never heard… anything intimate over the open phone line; he'd told John he wouldn't lie to him. But neither was he spying as actively, as intrusively as John seemed to think. "You are more than useful, Mr. Reese, in many ways. And I hope I've given you as much privacy as I possibly could have."
"I don't want privacy from you. And you already know everything about me. You know where I come from; what I've done. You know you saved me, and that I'm grateful. There are ways I could pay off some of that debt."
He was very close now, breathing Harold's breath. Harold ducked, tried to bolt; John seized his arm. A confusion of panic, lust and anger stormed through Harold's body and brain: the Three Graces, he thought wildly, and then the last of them sucker-punched the other two and triumphed. Incandescent with fury, was the phrase; if he'd been able to tear his eyes from John's and look down at himself, he was pretty sure he'd be glowing.
"And if I say no," he gritted out, "what will you do? Bounce me off the bookshelves? Kneecap me?" He glared at John's offending hand. "Twist my wrist until it breaks?"
John's face turned to ice: a glacier at full throttle, a frozen river of self-hatred and rage. The dam would fail in seconds, and they'd both be carried away in the torrent. Calling back his words would do no good, nor would qualifying them. I didn't mean it; it's not the same; I know you're not like that--
An insistent cold nose pushed against Harold's leg, then addressed itself to John's; and then Bear's slim body slipped between them. They both looked down, then back at each other, and then John released Harold's arm and let out a single bark of laughter.
"Blessed are the peacemakers," Harold said sardonically, "for theirs are the treats in the special drawer." Bear's ears pricked forward. "He's learning more English all the time, have you noticed?"
"I don't think he needed English to understand what was going on there. Harold, I am so--"
"Don't."
John hesitated, then nodded. "He was a complete attention hound in the park," he said, reaching down to scratch Bear's ears. "I thought Gracie, the blonde one, was going to ask me to look the other way and then run off with him. And he would have gone, wouldn't you? If she'd offered pancakes."
"Never," said Harold. "There's such a thing as fidelity, John. Even when pancakes are involved."
"Mm." John leaned on the bookshelf, giving Harold an inscrutable look. "I learned all about Gracie's wife and Gray's string of unsuitable boyfriends. Grace didn't say a thing on the subject."
"I've tried not to know," Harold said. "But obviously if she found someone, if she wanted to move on, I would have no standing to object. She's always had free choice in the matter, and that's even more true now."
"Well, I haven't been in her living room lately, but when I was there she had that photo of you" -- John nodded in the general direction of the computer lab -- "prominently displayed. It would be kind of off-putting for a new man in her life. Unless he was seriously into self-abasement."
Like you, Mr. Reese? Harold almost said, but kept silent. "But you're wrong," John went on. "About Grace having free choice. You've taken that away from her."
"She's free to choose someone--"
"She's not free to choose you, Harold. I think you ought to let her."
"No. Absolutely not."
"She has the right to--"
"I don't have the right to hand down a likely death sentence. Which is what it would be. We save people. Grace is one of them."
John opened his mouth to speak, reconsidered, and shut it again. "Yesterday," he said finally, "before we ended up discussing prostitutes for some reason, I meant to say… you should take her away, Harold. You know how to create new identities, how to hide from the world. Do it. Take her somewhere and don't tell me where. Stop doing this job; I'll take over for you, for as long as I last. I'll think of you on a beach, drinking cocktails with umbrellas while Grace paints the sunset."
"Cocktails, Mr. Reese?" Harold said, in a tone of disbelief that totally failed to match the surge of… it wasn't just longing, though the picture John had drawn was a tempting one. But the fading rays of sun in his mind's eye weren't lighting sand and ocean; the sun was setting over New York, and John was alone in the Library, older, grayer, Bear gone… it was really not to be allowed.
"It's my job, John," he said. "I created it; I can't just retire. And you're not suited to undertake my end of things. On a temporary basis, certainly, if I'm indisposed--"
"I don't know; the Machine and I got on great while you were… away, and I've been getting a lot of the numbers since. I know I don't have your knack for data, but I'd have help. Think about it, at least."
"I have. And the answer is no." He put a hand on Bear's head, to anchor himself. "I should have sent her away, ages ago; I could have found her the perfect job in Italy or France. It was selfishness to keep her here, like buying a beautiful painting and hanging it in a closet. Though of course she has friends; she has a life. I'm the one who--"
"Lives in a closet? You have friends, Harold."
"Yes, yes; I do. I'm very grateful." He paused, then added, "You're more than a friend, John. I hope you know that."
"But she's the one you love."
"Love is… a complicated emotion." He looked into John's face; he wouldn't say the words, but there was no sense hiding what he felt. "And an overly simplistic one."
"Huh." John studied him for a moment, then leaned forward. "I'm sorry I surprised you before, in the park. If there'd been time, I would have asked permission."
"Under the circumstances--"
"Yes. By the way, this is me asking permission."
Harold knew that somehow they were skipping several logical steps, but he didn't feel like reviewing the sequence just now. There was, he decided, a great deal to be said for proximity. "Granted," he whispered, and met John's mouth as it descended onto his.
Apparently neither of them wanted to give the other time to consider the sudden realignment of their relationship; he had John backed up against the bookcase in seconds (Bear yelped and scurried out of the way), and John's tongue was thrusting at his, John's hands sliding down his back and grabbing his ass, pulling them together, insistent but careful of his bad hip. John had known his body intimately from the beginning, Harold recognized; it was the kind of assessment he made reflexively, noting power and capability. They kissed, fervent and unrestrained, and ground against each other for a delicious eternity, then John pulled back and spread his right hand across Harold's mouth and cheek.
"I shook hands with her," he murmured. "I haven't washed it yet."
Harold stroked his lips against the palm of John's hand, desperate to express a mix of turbulent desires. Thank you, he wanted to say, and this is very, very odd, and what, if anything, are you getting out of this? It occurred to him, fleetingly, that if they hadn't just established Detective Stills as preferring men -- not that the distinction mattered too deeply, it seemed -- they might manage to pull off a sort of Cyrano de Bergerac scenario; it was disturbing that the idea of John in bed with Grace aroused rather than alarmed him, but his moral compass swung back to north in time, along with his sense of practicality, and he dismissed the notion. Other ideas were more immediately compelling. He kissed John's right hand again, and then, hoping the gesture expressed what he wanted it to, seized the left and placed it over his fly.
John groaned, a sound heard once before in an earpiece late at night, and immediately familiar. His mouth dove onto Harold's once more; his fingers rubbed and circled, bringing Harold to an even more dangerous pitch of desire, and then left him bereft for a moment to begin fumbling with his belt.
"No, Mr. Reese," Harold gasped, the absurdity of the formal address realized only after it left his lips. "The books."
John pulled back and gave Harold what would have been a dryly amused look if it hadn't been drenched in lust. "Then we'd better find a bed right away, Mr. Finch," he said.
*
Later, in the narrow bed he'd providentially tucked into an alcove, Harold ran three fingers along the warm flesh of John's shoulder, marveling at the perfection of skin, bone, tendon and muscle: very real, very present, and all of it, in some sense at least, his. He leaned in and kissed the shoulder, then nudged it with his nose. "Wake up," he said.
John opened one eye and regarded him lazily. "Don't tell me it's time for breakfast already." He turned on his side, both eyes open now. "Sorry. I didn't get much sleep last night."
They had plenty to keep them up nights; Harold was pretty sure this iteration of wakefulness had been dedicated to him and Grace. "Then I'll be sure you do tonight," he said, "though preferably in a larger bed."
"My place or yours?" John said, and yawned.
"Mine," said Harold, and then, thoughtfully, "It wouldn't be all bad, being Schrödinger's cat. If you had another cat in the box with you."
"Bear would really hate that. But I think we tunneled out through the side a while ago."
"Spoons?" said Harold, thinking vaguely of Edmond Dantès.
"Large quantities of explosives. But if you want to go with spoons, that's fine with me. I wonder if the Machine can see the cat in the box?"
"The Machine can see everything."
"You have no idea how comforting that is," John said. There actually wasn't a camera of any sort within range of the bed, but Harold suspected what had happened there was already part of an algorithm. Had been for a long while, in fact. He'd pretty much given up on free will as soon as he realized why Grace's name kept popping up as he quizzed the developing mind.
They lay still for a while, contemplating each other, and then John said, "It may be the spoons talking, but I could go for some dinner."
Harold's stomach growled in response. "Shall we take Bear, then--" and the dog must have been only feet away, because the claw-scrabble was immediate, and the cold nose not far behind.
"The Machine wasn't the only one watching us, it seems," Harold said, and then, "Yes, Bear, we're getting up. I hope it didn't traumatize him."
"I hope it didn't give him ideas. Though at least we know someone now we can foist puppies on. One of us should get to have children, I suppose."
A thin, cold tendril of regret caressed Harold's face, and withdrew. He sat up and reached for his shirt. "We'll pick up some takeout on the way," he said. "And a good bottle of wine. I think it's a night to celebrate. Splendor, mirth and good cheer. The Three Graces," he added to John's inquiring look. "We're meant to enjoy ourselves, I believe. At least until the next number comes in."
"Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die? Also a heart-warming thought, Harold." John's face went blank for a second, and then he pulled Harold down for a kiss. When he released him, the smile was back. "I think I can manage a little more merrymaking before I fall asleep."
"Then I suggest you get dressed, Mr. Reese, and let's be on our way."