Chapter Text
Swimming upwards through a lake of Orange Julius, he was drowning, too tired to keep going. Hands pulled at his shirt, trying to help. It was Reese, leaning over the side of a rowboat reaching out to grab him—
His eyes snapped open. Where was he?
He closed his eyes, faking sleep until he could figure it out. He was in a strange bed, not his, wearing... a t-shirt and sweatpants, also not his.
He turned slightly on his pillow. John. Reese, the pillow smelled like Mr. Reese. Safe. He moved slowly to sit upright, his body protesting every move.
He was alone in a cheap studio apartment he’d never seen before, but from the state of the pillows and the sheets he hadn’t spent the night alone. He tried to think around the hammering in his head as he shifted awkwardly sideways to sit on the edge of the bed.
A blurred kaleidoscope of memories hit him. He’d met with Carter— Been on his way to meet Denham for dinner— Abducted off the street— phone call— drugged— Reese driving the heel of his boot into Barrett’s bleeding shoulder—
Why was everything so muddled? He raised his hands to rub at his temples before looking for his glasses. Luckily, they were on the bedside table and under them was a note in Reese’s familiar scrawl: Don’t go anywhere. Laptop and cell phone on the table. I’ll bring you some clothes from the library.
What could have possibly happened to his clothes? How had he ended up sharing a bed with Reese again?
He started to stand up only to drop back down.
He’d been drugged. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the avid expression on Barrett’s face as he’d pushed the plunger. What had he told Reese? What hadn’t he told him? What would Reese have asked? Everything, he’d have asked about everything.
Why had he ever allowed Reese to seduce him? His lip quirked at the mere thought of calling something as subtle as being hit by a Mack truck ‘seduction.’ He was being ridiculous. He knew why he’d allowed it to happen, couldn't afford to lie to himself about it, and hadn't been able to forget it in the days since.
He’d gone into it willingly, with eyes wide open, no, not seduction. He shook off the memory of Reese straddling him. He had work to do.
When Reese walked into the apartment an hour later, carrying a suit bag, a drinks tray with two cups in it and a bag of pastries, Finch had showered and was working on the laptop.
“Good morning, Finch.” Reese’s voice was oddly gravelly even for Reese. He put the drinks and pastries down by Finch and hung up the suit bag.
“Are you getting a cold, Mr. Reese?”
“No, just didn’t get enough sleep.”
He just managed to stop himself from looking at the rumpled sheets on the bed. “There’s no new number as of yet, so I’ll just change my clothes and leave you to it.”
“I brought your navy suit the one with the grey chalk stripe. Hope I matched everything to your satisfaction.”
“Anything would have been fine, Mr. Reese, as long as it fits me.”
He was very self-conscious in Reese’s sweatpants which had the bottoms rolled up to stop him tripping over them. He went and unzipped the suit bag. It looked like Reese had remembered exactly how he’d last worn the suit, right down to the red pocket square. There were even clean boxers and socks in the bottom of the suit bag.
He thought he should probably just change in front of Reese, take the opportunity to demonstrate how little he cared about the whole thing, but he felt frozen in place just thinking about it. Instead, he took the bag down from the hook. “May I use your razor?”
“Knock yourself out, Finch.”
He took the suit bag into the bathroom with him.
When he came back out of the bathroom, wearing his suit and feeling less vulnerable for it, Reese was perched on the edge of the bed.
His shoes were sitting by the solitary chair, obviously freshly polished. He sat down to put them on.
“No questions for me, Finch?”
He had hundreds of them. “Only one, Mr. Reese.” He finished tying his shoe laces and stood up. “Where was the warehouse located exactly? My memory is still a little fuzzy about many of the details.”
Reese looked relieved, which was very suspicious in and of itself. “Red Hook.” Reese stood and handed him a piece of paper with the address written on it. “I assume you’re going to destroy any surveillance footage?”
“You assume correctly. I’ll see you later at the library.”
“If you’ll wait a minute—”
“I have a driver waiting downstairs. I have a few errands to run.” He’d texted the driver from the bathroom, using GPS to direct him to a street corner a block away.
Reese stared at him for a moment and then turned back to the table and handed him the cup of tea and the pastry bag before crossing the room to hold the apartment door open for him.
At the library, he made sure to drink a bottle of water, the drugs seemed to have dissipated but he was still dehydrated, before taking a second bottle to his desk. Having the address made short work of finding the security footage from the warehouse complex. He watched Reese making his usual understated entrance, just to make sure he’d found the right feeds, and downloaded the rest to his computer before deleting it from its original storage site. He replaced it instead with a loop of pre-Reese footage. Luckily, the police would still be tied up with dead bodies and live suspects caught red-handed at the scene and the search for incriminating footage would come later.
He had several texts from Denham, concerned about his failure to meet him for dinner, but he’d led Denham to believe that he had a very irregular schedule due to being a trader in international markets, so it was easy enough to come up with a plausible excuse.
He’d always hated loose ends, but with them all tied up and no new number he had far too much time to think about what he might have told Reese while drugged. And then there was still the question of the rumpled bed sheets. He was mortified to think he might have thrown himself at Reese, on top of telling him all his secrets.
It was difficult to judge precisely what might have happened from his brief contact with Reese that morning. Reese certainly hadn’t had any of his usual bravado when he’d found out something new about Finch’s past. In fact, Reese had seemed guilty about something, but it was his state of being to be guilty, something they unfortunately had in common.
Try as he might, he couldn’t remember anything past Reese shooting Barrett and then telling him they had to move before the police got there. When he started getting random thoughts about walruses and The Village People he knew that trying to force the memories to emerge wasn’t going to work. Coding and reading were his only reliable sources of distraction. With no new number, he briefly considered picking up the copy of 1984 he was currently reading, but a niggling headache discouraged him from proceeding.
Carter. He’d promise her some more information on the DeLuca brothers’ financial records. That shouldn’t be too difficult to find.
Carter didn’t seem that surprised to find Finch sitting in the passenger seat of her car when she came out of the coffee shop. She just got in the car and raised one inquiring eyebrow.
“I found some information on the DeLuca brothers for you.” Finch handed over the file and she nodded her thanks, stashing it in the car door as he ran a hand across the dashboard. “Nice car, Detective, is it new?”
“How’d you know it was mine?”
He smiled at her and she looked exasperated for a moment.
“You’ve ridden in it before, but I’m not surprised you don’t remember.”
“Excuse me?” Was she pulling his leg?
“With John.” She turned in the driver’s seat to face him, obviously trying to hold back a smile. “When Sir Galahad rode to your rescue. Well, drove straight through a security fence and shot up half of Brooklyn.”
“You say tomato...”
“So where’s your guard dog?” She glanced into the back seat like Reese might be curled up back there without her knowing.
“I’m not sure what you mean, Detective Carter.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “John. You should have seen him. I’m still surprised he didn’t actually start growling. It was gone midnight when I smuggled you guys out from the warehouse under a blanket in the back seat. There he was, bleeding, and he still wouldn’t let go of you.”
He knew that most people wouldn’t even notice the increased tension in his shoulders but she wasn’t most people and he had to be very careful around her. “I was not myself, Detective. Whatever I might have said—”
“You didn’t get chance to say anything much. Reese wouldn’t stop talking, never would have guessed he even had that many words in him. You’d start to say something about your past and he’d just drown you out.”
“Harold, can you hear me? You’ve got to be quiet now.” Reese’s fingers brushing across his temple had been so incredibly gentle.
“Mommy promised me an Orange Julius. You want me to be good, that’s what I want.”
Finch blinked at the vividness of the memory, as he drew his own fingertips across his temple.
“Made quite the pair. You, high as a kite, and Mr. One Syllable rambling on about his childhood and his army days.”
Finch leaned forward slightly. “He actually told you about himself?”
“Believe me, I don’t know any more about him now of real use than I did before he started talking. Little League baseball uniforms that didn’t fit properly and the drill sergeant from hell don’t build a profile.” She smirked at him over her coffee cup. “Still, he’s a decent tenor, got to give him that. He sings a mean YMCA.”
“I thought I’d imagined that.” Reese had rocked him slightly in his arms as he’d sang, arms carefully bracing Finch against the jarring of potholes as Carter had driven them back to Manhattan.
“I can’t quite believe it myself and I’m still sad he didn’t make the gestures.” She put her coffee cup in the cup holder and raised her arms as far over her head as the car roof would allow, in the rough shape of a ‘Y.’
Now Finch was the one who was grinning. “How very disappointing.”
He could hear her humming the song under her breath. Finch took a few calming breaths, still anxious not to appear too anxious. “So John didn’t… ask me any questions?”
“Not in front of me he didn’t. Wouldn’t let me either and believe me there are a few I’d have loved to get answered.”
“And I didn’t volunteer a bunch of information anyway?”
“Like I said, you didn’t get a chance, as hard and fast as John was talking I’d guess he’s hoarse today.”
“Thank you, Detective. I hope the file helps.”
He climbed out of the car and watched while she drove away before checking his phone. Still no number. He did have a text on his phone from one of the many booksellers he did business with, notifying him they’d acquired a signed first edition of To Kill a Mockingbird and wanting to know whether he was interested. Mr. Gull immediately hailed a cab to go and buy his book.
After the bookstore, he checked his phone again, still no new number and even more curiously no message from Reese. He couldn’t remember the last time Reese had been out of contact for so long while not actually working undercover on a number. He regretted, momentarily, that he hadn’t had time to install a camera in Reese’s latest apartment, but he’d promised himself that he’d never actually check the camera feeds unless he believed Reese to be in trouble and he didn’t believe such to be currently the case. If anyone was in trouble, it was him.
He went to Antonio’s for lunch, apologizing profusely to a bemused Antonio for having missed his dinner reservation. Antonio found it difficult to mind when Mr. Fringuello was the one who'd financed Antonio opening his own restaurant in the first place.
Over an excellent lunch of risotto allo zafferano, he pondered his conversation with Carter. Reese had wasted the perfect opportunity to get him to answer any question Reese had. Why? Was it just because Carter had been there? It did explain why Reese had been hoarse that morning, he must have talked for hours… or had he?
Perhaps Reese just hadn’t wanted to share any of it with Carter and had planned instead on interrogating him once they got back to his apartment. He wanted to believe that Reese had protected him, but he had an all too personal knowledge of just how far Reese was prepared to go to get information. It was strange to have a set of memories so very pleasant and unpleasant at one and the same time.
He could so easily be in love with Reese, a traitorous part of his mind whispered could?, but while he’d had his reckless moments, no matter how unlikely Nathan may have thought it, he tried not be stupid. He resisted the zabaglione and headed out to hail a cab.
Twenty minutes later, traffic had been bad, he stopped to pick out the fabric for three new shirts at Alfred’s, arranged to have them delivered to Mr. Jay’s address, and then decided to go back to the library and write code, something that always centered him.
Reese was sitting in a chair, feet up on the edge of the desk, reading Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There.
Something tugged at the edge of his mind, but wouldn’t stick. “I would have contacted you if there was a new number, Mr. Reese.”
Reese closed the book, tapping on the cover. “I assume you’ve read it?”
“Of course. Not as good as the first book, but still an interesting read.”
Reese was looking at him expectantly, but he had no idea why.
It was maddening. What had been said? What had been done? “If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does.”
Reese smirked. “And that’s from Alice in Wonderland. You’re not really at your best, Finch.” He rose to his feet, setting the book down on a nearby shelf. “If you remember anything— you need me to do, call me.”
He sat and listened to Reese’s footsteps recede down the hallway.
He was staring into space, holding a cup of green tea long gone cold, when his mind finally put two and two together and made four. He really couldn’t believe it had taken him so long. Reese was right, he wasn’t at his best.
Carter said she’d picked them up after midnight. The police had initially got the call a little after ten. Reese must have had them holed up somewhere in the warehouse complex during that time. The warehouse footage. He easily found the footage again of Reese storming the warehouse, but within a few minutes, and after producing a small stack of bodies, Reese disappeared from view.
He opened a facial recognition program, entered Reese’s picture, and went to make a fresh cup of tea.
A few minutes later, just as the kettle was boiling, the computer pinged and he started the film again, seeing Reese half carrying him, disappearing around a corner. The next ping yielded Reese taking him into an office for Watson Shipping, the company name clearly visible over the door. He let the recognition software continue, but it ran out of footage without finding anything further.
Next, he hacked effortlessly into the Watson Shipping network, such as it was. There were notes about a potential sexual harassment lawsuit, the result of which had been the manager installing a security camera in the offices. He downloaded the film for the night in question and then deleted it from Watson Shipping’s server. He sat there for five minutes, steeling himself to watch the film, not sure where he and Reese would stand after he’d watched it.
The footage was grainy and had no sound. Still, it was easy enough to follow events through interpreting actions as he watched himself try to tend to Reese’s wound, but once Reese had him seated in the corner, his back against Reese’s chest, there were no more visual cues to go by, he only knew they were still talking. He was gesticulating wildly until Reese caught his arms, wrapping his own arms around him, one hand flat against Finch’s exposed stomach.
He was frustrated, and not only because he couldn’t remember the touch of Reese’s hand.
If only Watson Shipping had bothered with sound in their surveillance plan. Sound. Reese’s phone. Like the cameras he installed in Reese’s cheap apartments, he’d promised himself he would never use the embedded program unless he had to, but now he had to know. He accessed the relevant sound files and worked on syncing them with the grainy digital images.
“Tell you everything, donwanna.”
He watched himself struggle against Reese’s arms, like he was trying to stand up again.
“You’re slurring your words.” That was Reese’s talk the madman in to handing over his Uzi voice, extra low and soothing as he explained why digital-Finch needed to stay put.
He watched Reese rub slow comforting circles on digital-Finch’s stomach, getting just a trace of sense memory this time, enough to shorten his breath.
Reese slowly adjusted digital-Finch against his body, his concern for digital-Finch’s condition palpable.
He would have laughed at his attempt to separate himself from ‘digital-Finch’ if it wasn’t quite so pathetic.
“The time has come, Harold, to talk of many things.”
So much for Reese’s concern, it was just another fake out to get digital-Finch calm enough to answer questions.
“Did I ever tell you about the time the USO talked me in to dressing up like a Rockette?”
“What?” He and digital-Finch blurted out, in perfectly synchronized astonishment.
“They said I had the legs for it and they were right, if I say so myself.”
Digital-Finch slid one hand suddenly from Reese’s knee up towards his hip. Only Reese catching hold of his hand stopped it from going any higher.
“You don’t wanna fuck? Could ask me anything, John.”
So he had embarrassed himself.
Reese spoke so softly in reply Finch had to back up the digital file and turn up the volume to hear him. “I want to, Harold, believe me, I want to, but not while you’re in this condition.” He went back to drawing those soothing circles on digital-Finch’s stomach. “Do you want to ask me anything?”
“What was your Rockette costume like?”
Reese laughed. “Really short-shorts, falsies, a curly blonde wig and lots of make-up. At least they let us keep our boots, said it made it funnier.”
Finch was having a lot of problem getting past imagining Reese in those short-shorts.
“Want you, John. Tell you anything you want to know.” Digital-Finch started shifting again, like he was trying to turn to face Reese.
“You don’t really, Finch, that’s just the MK-ULTRA talking, lowers inhibition and affects judgment. I’m the last person in the world you want.”
“You’re wrong.” Again he spoke in unison with digital-Finch.
Reese gently turned him back, obviously at such pains not to injure digital-Finch that he ached to change places with his digital self.
“Being a Rockette was fun, who’d have guessed it?” Reese had a lascivious smile on his face. “Later that night, Dave suggested—” digital-Finch squirmed against him and the smile abruptly disappeared “We play cards.”
Finch was willing to bet ‘playing cards’ was just a really bad euphemism. He could almost see the cogs turning over in Reese’s brain that given digital-Finch’s current condition adult topics of conversation should be firmly off the menu.
“Did I ever tell you about my childhood, Finch? You may think you know everything about me but there are probably a few details you still don’t know. I grew up in Washington State but my mama was from—”
“Georgia.” Digital-Finch was grinning like an idiot.
He told himself again, to ease his embarrassment, that he’d been drugged.
“That’s right. But did you know she had the best laugh I’ve ever heard?”
There it was that full and open smile that he loved but hardly ever got to see on Reese’s face.
“She’d get tickled about something and couldn’t stop laughing, would barely be able to stand up. You couldn’t see her like that without wanting to laugh too.”
Finch was grinning too, one hand stretched out to touch Reese’s face on the screen. There was no cure for how he felt about this man, none, he was just going to have to learn to live with it, like he’d had to do before.
Thirty minutes later the film ran out but he kept listening to the phone recording. Reese talked more about his mama and his sisters, skillfully avoided talking about his father when digital-Finch asked (Finch knew why) and talked over digital-Finch any time he started trying to offer information of his own, even when it was only about his own parents and brothers. He stopped listening and closed the files after Reese called Carter to come and get them.
Not only had Reese failed to take a golden opportunity to interrogate him but Reese hadn’t even let him volunteer the most innocent of information. The same Reese who’d slept with him for information. The same Reese who hadn’t seemed the least bit guilty after he’d made it clear that he knew what Reese was up to, now appeared to feel guilty when he’d done nothing wrong. It just didn’t make any sense.
“Finch.” Reese was standing in front of his desk.