Zaniida's Writing Prompts

“Put the gun down, John,” the man says calmly. “It won’t do you any good, anyway. Unless you want your partner here” -- and Harold drops a few inches before being yanked to a stop, his gasp anxious yet groggy -- “to reacquaint himself with gravity.”

Glaring up at the balcony, John carefully lowers his gun to the floor, and kicks it away as soon as he gets back to full height. He doesn’t take his gaze off their enemy, although it’s hard not to stare in horror at Harold’s bruised and bleeding back, at the thick welts that cross the skin.

Suspended in some kind of seated harness, Harold hangs above a two-story drop, his hands tied to the rope about a foot above his head. The back of his suit has been cut off, leaving ragged edges along the sides, including where his sleeves bunch up around his stretched shoulders. The pressure of the harness on his wounds is surely agonizing, yet John knows that the far greater pain for his partner is the vulnerability and humiliation of his bare flesh on display.

Perhaps it’s a mercy that he’s been drugged. At least, that’s John’s first guess: Harold’s head keeps bobbing, slowly relaxing down and then jerking up again, as if fighting off sleep. How else could he be so close to passing out? Has the pain gotten to be too much? Has exhaustion taken over, from hours spent fighting back fear and uncertainty, trying to cling to the hope that John will get there in time?

It will all be over soon, he promises, silently, continuing to keep an eye on his partner with just his peripheral vision.

He keeps his gaze centered on their enemy, whose mouth twists up into a cocksure grin. “Now,” the man says, “since I don’t for a moment trust that I just disarmed you, you can leave your clothes behind as well. Take ’em all off. Unless your dignity is worth his life?”

The agony hits him before he’s quite able to make out where he is or which parts of him actually hurt. His shoulders are stretched uncomfortably, pushing his neck to an angle it almost can’t manage anymore, but when he tries to reposition, he finds that his arms are stuck in that position, stuck above his head, the fingers numb.

That doesn’t alarm him as much as it perhaps ought to. Blinking muzzily, he feels a rough pressure against his cheek, but he can’t much move that either.

Wintry air whistles across his back, and it takes him a moment to realize that there’s something strange about that. He’s wearing his suit, he’s obviously wearing his suit, it’s bunched up around his shoulders, but… it feels like his back is bare. The comforting pressure across his back is just… gone; in its place, bands of heat and pain, and something dripping along the skin.

The floor drops out from under him and then catches him again; he gasps. There are—words, but he can’t make them out. An accent, close and above him. A growl, familiar and somehow heartening, distant and below.

Below? The world is… swaying. He’s… he’s hanging, somehow, tied. His breath comes faster, his body chanting danger, danger, danger, he’s helpless but he can’t, his mind won’t—

“If I let go of this rope, he falls.”

Harold tries to look up, to see more of his predicament than a patch of crumbling masonry, but the motion sends a stab of pain through his neck and he moans.

There’s a BANG! and the world jerks and falls out from under him. A fraction of a second to gasp before he hits something unexpectedly soft and rolls, dizzyingly, sometimes weight on top and sometimes not, his arms hitting hard things, something binding up around his body.

When the motion stops, he’s lying on his side across an uncomfortable pile of sharp corners, ropes across his back, bound half on top of something… squishy. His head pillowed on an open book as he stares at a blur just a breath away from his face, unrecognizable.

But… that smell. Gunpowder, gun oil, fear-sweat, and… the cologne that John had worn that one day, the one that Harold had visibly scented the air over, given a barely noticeable smile. John had ever after worn only that scent.

“John?” he slurs. There’s no answer, but the rise and fall of John’s chest against him makes it clear that John’s alive. And if John found him, doubtless the others will be here soon enough.

He’s still too muzzy to be truly distressed; that will come later, he suspects. But here he lies, surrounded by silence and the familiar smell of musty books, cradled in John’s arms as the pain fades away to a kind of pleasant numbness.

He’s bound to John’s side, and that doesn’t seem like such a bad fate after all.

Blindly, Harold clutches John’s hand as they creep along. If they lose each other now, they might not find each other again, not when they’re forced to be this quiet. And they’ve got to keep moving -- get out of here before it’s too late.

John’s firm grip keeps him from panicking, at least -- for the moment -- and John doesn’t go any faster than Harold can follow. With his free hand on the wall, Harold can mostly keep his balance, but it’s difficult. Even on his best days, staying upright is a challenge, and that’s when he can observe the world around him; with no frame of reference, his inner ear is having trouble compensating for the weakness of his gait.

Having spent most of his years in the city, he’s used to the ever-present light pollution, to sleeping with street lights streaming in through the window. But as he thinks back to more rural surroundings -- his farm-boy childhood -- he can’t recall a time when he’s ever been this blind. Even moonless nights let you make out some level of detail. It’s disorienting, being in darkness this complete.

When John stops short, Harold bumps right into him, struggles not to fall over, and, ultimately, has to grab John’s suit jacket to maintain his balance. John stays solid as a rock; Harold does his best to stay silent through all of his terrified flailing. If their enemies knew they were here, this would all be over very quickly; even John’s remarkable skill with combat wouldn’t fare too well against goons with guns, not now.

They’ve only got a few floors to go, to get out of this basement -- and at most an hour before the power comes back on, at which point, if they’re still on the property, the mission is screwed.

John starts moving again, and Harold follows his lead, blindly.

Darkness closes in again, suffocating. He fumbles forward, reaching for anything, a wall, a railing, a tree branch, but his grasping fingers find only air. Quiet air, empty air, nothing around him, nothing to ground him. He can’t find Nathan, he can’t—

No.

It’s not Nathan. It’s John, he has to find John. John will know where Nathan is. John can get them out of the darkness, out of the blinding light—

No.

That was… that was the explosion.

Blinding light, and then darkness.

Waking to find Nathan gone.

He only met John because Nathan was gone.

Lying in the darkness, Harold gasps in breaths of warm, musty air as hot tears make tracks along his skin and pool in the folds of his neck, soaking the pillow. The realization of Nathan’s death hits him as strongly as the first time—maybe even more so, as there’s no hazy veil of denial to hide behind. Nathan is well and truly dead, and nothing can bring him back. Those who killed him will never be made to pay, and ultimately… ultimately, it’s Harold himself who is to blame.

For ignoring his friend’s concerns. For not impressing upon Nathan the kind of people they were dealing with, and the lengths to which they might go if they felt their secrets threatened.

For bringing him onto the project to begin with, a warm shield to hide behind when Harold had been too paranoid to let more than one person in the world know that he was even involved. Justifiably paranoid, to be sure, and yet… if he’d taken on that risk himself, been the front man instead of Nathan, then Nathan would still be alive.

And Harold would be in a hidden cell somewhere, tortured until he gave up the code.

It’s such a vivid scenario that for a moment he freezes, wondering if he’s not in a cell, but… no, there’s a comfortable bed beneath him, the custom pillows that support his neck, the soft Merino wool that has somehow gotten tangled around his upper body during the night. The dull hum of a heater. The musty air lacks the familiar scent of the library, though there are certainly similarities. An unfamiliar location, set up for his needs… a safe house. Right.

One he hadn’t checked on in months, given the dust in the air. After he’d concluded the case (three hours of quick and dirty hacking, and a pair of key phone calls) and then checked on Shaw (she hadn’t noticed any tails, and the van was safely on the other side of Manhattan), he’d trundled off to get his room ready for the night, only to find that John had beaten him to it. The room was warm, the blankets and pillows removed from their plastic covers (now stacked neatly in the corner), the bed made up just how he liked it.

Given that he’d been bleary-eyed and exhausted beyond measure, he’d been touched even more than usual by John’s evident thoughtfulness. He hadn’t even noticed John sneaking off long enough to do it; as far as he’d been aware, John had spent the past three hours keeping careful watch through the blinds.

Now, though, he’s left staring into the darkness, the adrenaline rush leaving him jittery, unable to fall back to sleep. It must be, what, maybe two or three a.m.? And he needs the sleep; there’s no telling what the morning might bring. On the few days they don’t get a new number, Harold has a laundry list of chores to keep up on, everything from maintaining his aliases to airing out his safe houses to updating their equipment to double-checking his safeguards. If anyone’s been snooping into their affairs, he needs to send them on a wild goose chase and ensure that they won’t be able to double back. And if he has any time left after all of that, he likes to check in on previous cases, see to it that the ones they’ve saved are doing all right.

Efficiency matters, if he’s to get everything done in a timely manner, and he can’t be efficient if he’s deprived of sleep.

Knowing all that doesn’t make it any easier to doze off again, so he sighs and gets to his feet, shuffling along the carpet until he finds the door. It opens without a sound, and he moves out into the hallway, the air much cooler than in his room. Yes, this will help.

Rather than bother with the lights, which would only make it harder to sleep again (and possibly wake John), he follows the hallway, one hand on the wall, until he finds the kitchen. Briefly, he considers making some tea; the warmth might help him relax, but the effort feels like too much to bother with right now. A glass of cool water brings his temperature down a little more.

Moving on into the living room, he locates the sofa and takes a seat, closing his eyes and running easy equations through his head as his body quiets down again.

John? John!

He vaults to his feet in the darkness with another surge of adrenaline, but there’s nothing around him, nothing to correct his balance, and he lurches forward—into strong arms.

“Careful, Finch,” an all-too-familiar voice rumbles, and Harold takes a deep, grateful breath as he uses John’s arms to help him right himself.

When finally he feels like he’s not going to fall over, he takes a breath. “Thank you, Mr. Reese.”

A hand runs up his arm to squeeze his shoulder. “Trouble sleeping?”

“That obvious?” He scrubs his face with his free hand, and between the exhaustion and the adrenaline he finds himself being unexpectedly honest: “Every time I close my eyes, it feels like… like you’re missing, and I desperately need to find you. Silly, I know, but…”

John hums. “Seems like your brain’s still sorting through losing me in the basement.”

“That was only for a few minutes, John, it’s… hardly something to ruminate over like this.”

“So tell me why my dreams had me chasing after Root again—convinced that you’d been taken, that I had to find you before it was too late.”

“Is that what—why you’re out here?”

“Couldn’t find you in your bed, and nearly panicked,” John admits. “Glad I was awake enough to reason out where you might have gone. Found your glass, and then heard you snoring.”

“So then… both of us had bad dreams. From a few minutes in a dark basement.”

“Brains can do funny things sometimes,” John says calmly. “We can discuss the cause tomorrow, Finch. In the meantime,” he adds, taking Harold by the upper arm, “since we both need our sleep, I think there’s an easy way to convince your brain that it hasn’t lost me.”

Confused, Harold follows John’s lead down the dark hallway and back to his bedroom. At John’s prompting, he goes to use the bathroom, and returns to find that John has moved his pillows a little closer to the side of the bed than the middle where they normally are.

It only makes sense after Harold has settled in, when John slides under the covers from the far side.

“Mr. Reese?” Harold queries, though with none of the defensive outrage or anxiety that would have been his first reaction barely a year ago. The arm that gently snakes over his chest is still clothed, for one, and John seems just as tired as Harold feels.

“Just rest, Finch,” John murmurs. “I’m right here. Not going anywhere.”

A while later, on the cusp of drifting off, two sleepy voices give breath to the same thought: “I’m glad you found me.”