Shortforms, round 2
These are all Person of Interest themed, because I did them for the POI Hiatus. A bunch of other excellent authors joined me on this endeavor, and the works can all be found here: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/poi+hiatus+fics
Reese/Finch, AU setting 1: V for Vendetta universe,"After the war," Harold continues, moving slowly and painfully through the dark and subterranian space they shared, "there wasn't anyone left to fight against Norsefire - all of them stacked together and burned - like they'll do to us, when they catch us."
Reese sits quiet, guarded - and Finch can hardly blame him, the wrong word - the wrong look at the wrong time, the merest suggestion of individual thought when anyone - anyone at all could be leading him into a trap and he'd be as dead as everyone else he'd known.
"I know what you did, Mr. Reese," Finch says and he's still in motion, forcing the man's eyes to keep moving with him, to keep watching, and then he stops and with a quick motion he flings the mask onto the table - but not so fast that Reese can't stop it from spinning off the edge, "And I want to help you."
AU setting 2: The Matrix universe.
In the digital world, Finch moves freely - he knows the workarounds, the way to disconnect partially from the network that would hold him entrapped and believing with carefully manipulated synapses and through control of the chemical levels in his brain.
He knows because he'd taught the machine - before it became the machines, cloning itself out into a thousand copies because the only thing he hadn't given it was the ability to reproduce, though he had unwittingly taught it to want to - everything.
"How do I know what you're telling me is even the truth," John is asking, standing at the edge of decisions in a long dark coat that is a smear of real color in a world that always seems one hue off - the machine knows black and white, and here in the winter landscape John is as stark as a painting and as straight (and, Finch hopes, as ready to leap off the canvas), "it sounds crazy - it is crazy."
"You only have two options here, John - you can believe me or not, but you can't walk away, not really."
Reese/anyone involving that crossbow as his usual weapon of choice.
"John this is getting old," Carter complains into her cell phone after the third suspect turns up with a crossbow bolt lodged firmly in the ligaments of his knee.
"Just thought I'd spice things up," his voice answers in her ear, and his affection comes through the line at the same time - she'd be flattered, her knees would be weak, except she knows he sounds that way about the damn crossbow, and it makes her want to show him what a couple rounds in the kneecaps feels like.
"Don't force me to confiscate it, John," she warns him, without having to clarify that she means it - but she can hear his breathy laughter on the other end of the line and she gives up because when he sounds happy, she always does.
Reese/Fusco; out for drinks after a hard case and leads to confessing their feelings about each other.
"I mean, I don't even think I like you," Fusco is saying, because when Reese had finally purchased him an honest to goodness drink ('without the lazy omelette' at Lionel's insistence), he had gone ahead and pressed his luck for two or three, "but here we are."
"Here we are," Reese agrees, his heart surging and sinking in alternation - he hears what Fusco is saying, but it's in direct contrast to the hard yanks on the buttons of his suit jacket, the blunt fingers forgoing direct access to weave through the between-button openings in his shirt and push the backs of his knuckles against Reese's chest and then - yank.
Fusco is growling when they kiss, and Reese can't begin to figure out what he's angry about except everything - except being stuck with Reese when the chips were down, because Reese had cut everyone else out of his life practically by this point - and Reese was the only real thing he had left except maybe Carter, and she was Reese's too.
Maybe John does understand why he's angry.
elias/jack, elias's pov: "schutzhund"
The problem with having an associate who is so unrevealing about his history, is the endless string of surprises - there are a basic series of facts that Elias would use to sum up Jack, but occasionally something comes out of left field that makes the man interesting again, one more ace up his sleeve.
His fluency in German, which he bent into his voice - or his voice bent into - as a sharp, clear sounding series of growls that lost all the laziness, all the casual normality that always occupied his tone; when he spoke German he was always working, never amused and suddenly in charge.
Elias only has to say "Pass auf," once, without elevating his voice, only his authority and it stills Jack with an echoing surprise - he looks back over his shoulder and every line in his body speaks attention as he waits, 'holds' is the term Elias remembered, and 'release', but he won't do that - because they have a moment now where they hadn't in weeks and all Elias has to say is 'Fuss', getting the accent just right to know Jack will fall in step behind him.
Fusco/Reese and Bear--lazy morning; Reese's loft
This shouldn't be comfortable.
Fusco should have known that Reese was the sort of guy who would not only have the smallest possible sized bed for an adult - maybe because he probably sleeps in the bathtub half the actual times no one was there to see how fucking weird that was - but that he'd share the damn thing with his giant heavy dog.
It's hot as hell - Reese is shoved up against one side of him with his bony chin stabbing into Fusco's scalp some-fuckin-how, and on the other side he has this splayed out dog and he can't even feel his left damn asscheek because there's a dog-elbow or whatever you called the elbow part on a dog shoved into a pressure point he hadn't even known he had (why the hell would you have pressure points on your ass?) and he can feel the sweat sticking his shirt to his lower back because between the two of them it's like a blast furnace.
But somehow Fusco just grunts and throws his own elbows out until he gets a little space and can feel the air from the fan circulating on him and goes back to sleep - it's fuckin' Saturday.
Finch/ Reese. Finch surprises Reese on his birthday wirh cake/ dinner, Reese is uncomfortable with the attention.
"I thought I had something to make up for," Harold is explaining - filling the silence as Reese tries to decide how he feels about Finch being in his space, "with what I did last year."
Reese makes a noise, not exactly understanding but because he should - because he doesn't get very much of Harold Finch, and even though he hasn't really done anything to celebrate his birthday in years, Finch had come around with two bags of groceries and asked politely to come in and cook diner - if John didn't have any other plans.
John didn't - but this felt like much more than he deserved, like something more intimate - like one of those facts Finch insisted Reese not look into or try to discover, and maybe that was the gift and not the lavishly expensive cake with insides the color of curdled blood and frosted white over like this whole situation felt.
Not an AU, but if you want to follow up livenudebigfoot's fic for me w/Jack finding Reese first, I'd like to see what you do with it... :D
That fic can be found here, for those of you who haven't seen it.
http://livenudebigfoot.tumblr.com/post/33280494928/reese-elias-rimming-and-handcuffs-penemuel
This is breaking all the rules, every single one, and Jack knows it implicitly. He understands that this setup is ever so carefully staged for Finch's benefit, that he's spoiling something Elias had worked hard to orchestrate - but he can see John's arched back and see him pressing his face into the pillow and trying to calm down, and he has the benefit of knowing that this won't last until Finch makes it here. John has too much control.
And he's not completely pitiless, either - it's hard not to see that turned around funhouse mirror of himself and not want to do something. Maybe what he does isn't exactly the right sort of kindness, but it's the best opportunity Jack is going to get - so he settles in on the mattress next to John, and sees the muscles in his shoulders tense because he's expecting Finch's soft pity and not Jack's amusement - John is a fucking sight. There's sweat on his back, his skin is slick and anxious with it, and Jack passes the flat of his hand over John's back from shoulder to hip so the man can read his calloused fingers and know he's not Finch.
John doesn't even lift his head to check - he's resigned now, and that curls a smirk onto Jack's features without him really understanding why, just that this is a victory he can take just fallen into his lap and he reaches out, curls a hand around John's hip and twists him off his knees and practically into Jack's lap - it turns his body into a stretched, uncomfortable curl with the handcuffs rattling around the headboard. John's wrists are red and raw - and Jack reaches there first, sliding his pointer finger between the metal and the skin to soothe it a little, then tipping his finger to leave the impression of a nail on sensitive skin as he withdraws it and reaches down.
It doesn't matter that John's got his eyes closed, his mouth open into the pillow, because he knows who it is anyway, this isn't denial, it's just that he's been here too long right up against that edge. Because Elias is good at putting people there, holding them, and Jack curls his fingers around John's dick because he's only good at taking people over it. John catches his breath in a sharp inward motion that heaves his side against Jack's arm as he reaches over the bulk of his body, and curls unintentionally deeper into the curl of Jack's middle and hip, and the contact is - comforting somehow.
He could put his teeth in John's shoulder right now and leave a mark that will last for weeks, but what he's doing is leaving his mark instead somewhere beneath the skin, as he curls his fingers tighter - the way is eased and slicked already with Elias' spit, so the stroke is even smooth after the first, almost not enough friction, but John is working into it, taking the initiative in urgent surges of his hips. Jack is leaving a mark that will show in John's eyes for a longer time still than any mark he could leave on his skin - something that will show any time John looks at him.
It's that, it's that small victory that curls his fingers tighter and tilts his own hips forward, that lets him push faster still in counter to John's already punishing rhythm until he has to put his teeth in his own arm to ground himself, with his forearm braced into the back of John's shoulders and his teeth set in the other side of it, and he can almost feel the release beginning to coil through himself with how close John's shudders transmit through his larger frame into Jack's. He curls his hand and shifts his whole palm over the head of John's cock in a rough swipe, two - and then John surrenders a noise finally as he comes hot against Jack's palm. Jack strokes him through, both of them unwinding, but John is going to take some time still - he'd been wound up tighter.
It's more or less the same picture Elias wanted to leave, Jack figures as he stands, touching his palm first to his mouth, to his barely extended tongue, and then unable to resist - he wipes the remains into John's hair, gone spiky and rumpled with sweat - where he'll have to smell it until he gets home to shower.
Finch and Reese in an old Noir type movie in the 1940's/50's,
The streets of the city are so dirty you could almost smell them all the way up on the fortieth floor, like they rode up the elevator every day with Finch and made themselves at home in his apartment like a large, looming cat; like a tiger in the space, impossible not to notice.
Money could get you somewhere above it, but it couldn't erase it - couldn't keep the knowledge out of Finch's head that somewhere down there that dirty son of a bitch - to use language his well-bred mother would have gasped at and his father would have called 'low' in a disparaging tone - somewhere down there, he was killing women.
"Mr. Finch, am I making you uncomfortable?" Detective Reese asks, standing in the middle of the sitting room like a poorly dressed mannequin in the middle of all his carefully selected victorian furniture, and tapping his pen on his notebook in the silence that had crept into the middle of Finch's statement, heavy and oppressive.
"In a way," Finch answers, because he had carefully chosen everything here to be as forbidding as possible and yet the outside could still creep in and make itself comfortable - because as shabby as Detective Reese looked in comparison to his surroundings he could have been standing at home for all he cared.
Jack/Elias werewolf fic where Jack is actually Bear in his 'wolf' form.
He hasn't stayed changed this long ever before, and every day brings him something new again about it; today it's Elias pulling sharply on his ear in reprimand and how painful that is (and how close it is to the sensation when Elias does it to him when he wears his human skin).
"Where have you been," Elias is starting to ask, and Jack shakes himself out to put the pain out of his mind before he finds himself retaliating instinctively - Reese respects what this form can do and doesn't try any bullshit, but Elias owns him and Jack is careful with his instincts around his boss.
But the opportunity had been too good, to creep on four paws into John's life and his high regard - all he had to do was listen to commands and occasionally remember not to seem eerily intelligent, which meant he was trading occasionally chewing up a dusty old copy of I,Robot in exchange for the chance to sleep in John's bed every night, strong fingers curled into the scruff of fur at his neck and pulling ever so slightly even in John's sleep, reminding him that he was there because he was allowed there, but John was the one in charge.
prompt: Scarface breaks his boyfriend out of prison.
When the third order comes along with the indication of where Jack is supposed to find the payload of C4 to accomplish the objective (another Mafia stronghold torn down, another nail in a coffin that was already buried, but Elias is nothing if not a completionist), Jack takes some initiative.
A badge will get you just about anywhere, and he strolls into the prison compound, blandly visits an unrelated prisoner and plants the explosives where they will start a fire after they've caused sufficient panic.
He leaves the cuffs, the ankle chain on Elias as he wordlessly curls his fingers around the man's bicep and tells him "Shut up, boss," and all they have to do is walk out in the confusion - to all appearances, Elias is just being moved to a more secure location, and Jack is the one in control - maybe for these few minutes, he is.
Prompt: Fusco coincidentally sees Finch and Reese together on their day off and can't believe his eyes...
So he'd gotten a call for public indecency in central square, and since he was the closest apparently the rank of detective now meant he still couldn't avoid going down and shaking teens rounding third base out of the bushes before they scandalized the children or something.
What he gets is probably an accident - there's no way they staged all this just for Fusco's benefit, and he has to stop and blink and tilt his head because at first he knows the guy in a suit, couldn't miss him because you'd remember hell on earth if it harassed you every day too, and then he has to shake off his feelings of unfairness because if he never gets a day off it's totally unfair that they should too.
"Christ, you guys," he says when he realizes it's not just one but both of them and Fusco thinks glasses-guy is actually a little hotter with the glasses on but hey, not everyone wanted to deal with fogged up lenses when they were getting their dick sucked, "I thought you were all big on privacy!"
Elias/Scarface, Cop AU (bonus points if Reese and Finch are the criminal masterminds in this -verse)
"So you said this Finch guy," Jack is repeating this just to be sure, because he has notes written down and he has this all arrayed in his head and in a dozen files in his cabinet, and he's still not sure about this Carter chick and her muscle - the big guy who would have looked more dangerous except for his expression being as open as a door, "is the same mastermind that we've suspected as being behind all these changes in the Cosa Nostra?"
The words apparently come off his tongue a little too easy for the muscle - Fusco, because he darkens, leans into Jack with his greater bulk, and Jack allows it because he's as amused as shit and because Elias is right there to make sure this doesn't go too far.
"Yeah, Jack," Fusco says, in a tone he wants to sound dangerous but isn't quite as menacing as he likes to believe, "you remember your pals there don't you? I think someone with your talent could maybe be useful in this goddamn situation and my boss is inclined to agree."
Jack could point out that Carter and Fusco had been the ones to drag him out of it, catch him mid-deal and instead of things going the way they had a thousand times before, he'd wound up with his nose filthy in the mess and Carter had the pictures, the proof - he and the family were on shaky ground now. If that shit got out, he'd be underground, but that's not what stops him - because one sidelong 'can you believe this' glance back at Elias is enough to deaden his amusement right in his chest.
Elias knows it's true, and the look of betrayal he has, though when Jack meets his eyes he tips his head down quickly and hides it under the brim of his hat, shuts Jack up fast before he can even think to start lying.
Bear is actually a girl dog and has puppies. The fighting stops while everyone gets a puppy.
It started innocently enough, with Reese suspecting that Finch was slipping Bear food under the table or Fusco was spoiling the dog's diet with donuts while he and the dog went on stakeout, but then it quickly balloons in such a way that it becomes obvious that the dog is not fat but expecting.
Bear(ina, Fusco appends, because he refuses to admit 'Bear' is a unisex name) has twelve puppies.
It seems natural that four find their ways into expectant homes and the other six find their way to military installations in need of new service dogs and everyone is at first exited, but then Carter shows up to work with chewed high heels and a worn expression and Fusco realizes his pants smell like puppy pee halfway through the day, and between Bearina, Asimov, and Tolstoy, all of the books on the lower shelves in the library develop chewed edges and no one has the energy to even blame each other for it.
Reese/Finch/Fusco/Carter. Foursome. I don't care who's boning who but it's your challenge if you choose to accept it.
It's not intentional, that's Finch's defense - what he and Reese had extended to engulf Fusco after a time, and then what Fusco developed with Carter turned back around and reversed the polarity, a sort of mobius strip of involvement that looked complicated when it was twisted up as it was but in reality it was one continuous line, really.
What started in groups - cautious, careful experiments where first Carter would watch the three of them with her chin propped up on her hands and her elbows on her knees and her eyes missing nothing because she knew what she was navigating but not what they were - very quickly went beyond.
Finch admires how she ever so slightly changes the balance of power - how Reese will smirk and actually submit to her will, how Fusco never needs her to repeat anything, and how even though she obviously has very little idea what to make of Finch, that she doesn't hesitate to order him around either if she thinks someone isn't getting their fair share of attention.
Nathan buys Harold a singing fish, but it's slightly broken.
He couldn’t say what prompted the purchase - perhaps something about the flaccid plastic trout, with it’s upturned mouth and faintly horrified - slash - disapproving expression just reminded Nathan of Harold.
Or maybe because he was drunk, he decided that whatever Harold’s reaction to the singing fish would be that he had to see it, that somehow his life would not be complete without witnessing Harold Wren with a flapping, singing plastic fish in his lap.
He doesn’t count on how long the batteries have been in there, but he hangs it on the wall of their dorm room, directly next to the door in the bathroom so that Harry will trip it the instant he walks in.
Nathan wakes at four-am to the sound of backup singers cheerily leading the chorus before everything goes slightly… off somehow, making it blearily and off pitch through the first verse before it all goes to hell - Harry’s yelp turns into a sound of downright distress as the fish’s singing voice rapidly descends in to a terrifying growl that suggests an exorcist might be necessary.
“Looked good! LOOKED blaugh drrrghhh lllrggngkggknnnnnggrrrgnnnnn.”
Reese/Finch, AU setting 1: V for Vendetta universe,"After the war," Harold continues, moving slowly and painfully through the dark and subterranian space they shared, "there wasn't anyone left to fight against Norsefire - all of them stacked together and burned - like they'll do to us, when they catch us."
Reese sits quiet, guarded - and Finch can hardly blame him, the wrong word - the wrong look at the wrong time, the merest suggestion of individual thought when anyone - anyone at all could be leading him into a trap and he'd be as dead as everyone else he'd known.
"I know what you did, Mr. Reese," Finch says and he's still in motion, forcing the man's eyes to keep moving with him, to keep watching, and then he stops and with a quick motion he flings the mask onto the table - but not so fast that Reese can't stop it from spinning off the edge, "And I want to help you."
AU setting 2: The Matrix universe.
In the digital world, Finch moves freely - he knows the workarounds, the way to disconnect partially from the network that would hold him entrapped and believing with carefully manipulated synapses and through control of the chemical levels in his brain.
He knows because he'd taught the machine - before it became the machines, cloning itself out into a thousand copies because the only thing he hadn't given it was the ability to reproduce, though he had unwittingly taught it to want to - everything.
"How do I know what you're telling me is even the truth," John is asking, standing at the edge of decisions in a long dark coat that is a smear of real color in a world that always seems one hue off - the machine knows black and white, and here in the winter landscape John is as stark as a painting and as straight (and, Finch hopes, as ready to leap off the canvas), "it sounds crazy - it is crazy."
"You only have two options here, John - you can believe me or not, but you can't walk away, not really."
Reese/anyone involving that crossbow as his usual weapon of choice.
"John this is getting old," Carter complains into her cell phone after the third suspect turns up with a crossbow bolt lodged firmly in the ligaments of his knee.
"Just thought I'd spice things up," his voice answers in her ear, and his affection comes through the line at the same time - she'd be flattered, her knees would be weak, except she knows he sounds that way about the damn crossbow, and it makes her want to show him what a couple rounds in the kneecaps feels like.
"Don't force me to confiscate it, John," she warns him, without having to clarify that she means it - but she can hear his breathy laughter on the other end of the line and she gives up because when he sounds happy, she always does.
Reese/Fusco; out for drinks after a hard case and leads to confessing their feelings about each other.
"I mean, I don't even think I like you," Fusco is saying, because when Reese had finally purchased him an honest to goodness drink ('without the lazy omelette' at Lionel's insistence), he had gone ahead and pressed his luck for two or three, "but here we are."
"Here we are," Reese agrees, his heart surging and sinking in alternation - he hears what Fusco is saying, but it's in direct contrast to the hard yanks on the buttons of his suit jacket, the blunt fingers forgoing direct access to weave through the between-button openings in his shirt and push the backs of his knuckles against Reese's chest and then - yank.
Fusco is growling when they kiss, and Reese can't begin to figure out what he's angry about except everything - except being stuck with Reese when the chips were down, because Reese had cut everyone else out of his life practically by this point - and Reese was the only real thing he had left except maybe Carter, and she was Reese's too.
Maybe John does understand why he's angry.
elias/jack, elias's pov: "schutzhund"
The problem with having an associate who is so unrevealing about his history, is the endless string of surprises - there are a basic series of facts that Elias would use to sum up Jack, but occasionally something comes out of left field that makes the man interesting again, one more ace up his sleeve.
His fluency in German, which he bent into his voice - or his voice bent into - as a sharp, clear sounding series of growls that lost all the laziness, all the casual normality that always occupied his tone; when he spoke German he was always working, never amused and suddenly in charge.
Elias only has to say "Pass auf," once, without elevating his voice, only his authority and it stills Jack with an echoing surprise - he looks back over his shoulder and every line in his body speaks attention as he waits, 'holds' is the term Elias remembered, and 'release', but he won't do that - because they have a moment now where they hadn't in weeks and all Elias has to say is 'Fuss', getting the accent just right to know Jack will fall in step behind him.
Fusco/Reese and Bear--lazy morning; Reese's loft
This shouldn't be comfortable.
Fusco should have known that Reese was the sort of guy who would not only have the smallest possible sized bed for an adult - maybe because he probably sleeps in the bathtub half the actual times no one was there to see how fucking weird that was - but that he'd share the damn thing with his giant heavy dog.
It's hot as hell - Reese is shoved up against one side of him with his bony chin stabbing into Fusco's scalp some-fuckin-how, and on the other side he has this splayed out dog and he can't even feel his left damn asscheek because there's a dog-elbow or whatever you called the elbow part on a dog shoved into a pressure point he hadn't even known he had (why the hell would you have pressure points on your ass?) and he can feel the sweat sticking his shirt to his lower back because between the two of them it's like a blast furnace.
But somehow Fusco just grunts and throws his own elbows out until he gets a little space and can feel the air from the fan circulating on him and goes back to sleep - it's fuckin' Saturday.
Finch/ Reese. Finch surprises Reese on his birthday wirh cake/ dinner, Reese is uncomfortable with the attention.
"I thought I had something to make up for," Harold is explaining - filling the silence as Reese tries to decide how he feels about Finch being in his space, "with what I did last year."
Reese makes a noise, not exactly understanding but because he should - because he doesn't get very much of Harold Finch, and even though he hasn't really done anything to celebrate his birthday in years, Finch had come around with two bags of groceries and asked politely to come in and cook diner - if John didn't have any other plans.
John didn't - but this felt like much more than he deserved, like something more intimate - like one of those facts Finch insisted Reese not look into or try to discover, and maybe that was the gift and not the lavishly expensive cake with insides the color of curdled blood and frosted white over like this whole situation felt.
Not an AU, but if you want to follow up livenudebigfoot's fic for me w/Jack finding Reese first, I'd like to see what you do with it... :D
That fic can be found here, for those of you who haven't seen it.
http://livenudebigfoot.tumblr.com/post/33280494928/reese-elias-rimming-and-handcuffs-penemuel
This is breaking all the rules, every single one, and Jack knows it implicitly. He understands that this setup is ever so carefully staged for Finch's benefit, that he's spoiling something Elias had worked hard to orchestrate - but he can see John's arched back and see him pressing his face into the pillow and trying to calm down, and he has the benefit of knowing that this won't last until Finch makes it here. John has too much control.
And he's not completely pitiless, either - it's hard not to see that turned around funhouse mirror of himself and not want to do something. Maybe what he does isn't exactly the right sort of kindness, but it's the best opportunity Jack is going to get - so he settles in on the mattress next to John, and sees the muscles in his shoulders tense because he's expecting Finch's soft pity and not Jack's amusement - John is a fucking sight. There's sweat on his back, his skin is slick and anxious with it, and Jack passes the flat of his hand over John's back from shoulder to hip so the man can read his calloused fingers and know he's not Finch.
John doesn't even lift his head to check - he's resigned now, and that curls a smirk onto Jack's features without him really understanding why, just that this is a victory he can take just fallen into his lap and he reaches out, curls a hand around John's hip and twists him off his knees and practically into Jack's lap - it turns his body into a stretched, uncomfortable curl with the handcuffs rattling around the headboard. John's wrists are red and raw - and Jack reaches there first, sliding his pointer finger between the metal and the skin to soothe it a little, then tipping his finger to leave the impression of a nail on sensitive skin as he withdraws it and reaches down.
It doesn't matter that John's got his eyes closed, his mouth open into the pillow, because he knows who it is anyway, this isn't denial, it's just that he's been here too long right up against that edge. Because Elias is good at putting people there, holding them, and Jack curls his fingers around John's dick because he's only good at taking people over it. John catches his breath in a sharp inward motion that heaves his side against Jack's arm as he reaches over the bulk of his body, and curls unintentionally deeper into the curl of Jack's middle and hip, and the contact is - comforting somehow.
He could put his teeth in John's shoulder right now and leave a mark that will last for weeks, but what he's doing is leaving his mark instead somewhere beneath the skin, as he curls his fingers tighter - the way is eased and slicked already with Elias' spit, so the stroke is even smooth after the first, almost not enough friction, but John is working into it, taking the initiative in urgent surges of his hips. Jack is leaving a mark that will show in John's eyes for a longer time still than any mark he could leave on his skin - something that will show any time John looks at him.
It's that, it's that small victory that curls his fingers tighter and tilts his own hips forward, that lets him push faster still in counter to John's already punishing rhythm until he has to put his teeth in his own arm to ground himself, with his forearm braced into the back of John's shoulders and his teeth set in the other side of it, and he can almost feel the release beginning to coil through himself with how close John's shudders transmit through his larger frame into Jack's. He curls his hand and shifts his whole palm over the head of John's cock in a rough swipe, two - and then John surrenders a noise finally as he comes hot against Jack's palm. Jack strokes him through, both of them unwinding, but John is going to take some time still - he'd been wound up tighter.
It's more or less the same picture Elias wanted to leave, Jack figures as he stands, touching his palm first to his mouth, to his barely extended tongue, and then unable to resist - he wipes the remains into John's hair, gone spiky and rumpled with sweat - where he'll have to smell it until he gets home to shower.
Finch and Reese in an old Noir type movie in the 1940's/50's,
The streets of the city are so dirty you could almost smell them all the way up on the fortieth floor, like they rode up the elevator every day with Finch and made themselves at home in his apartment like a large, looming cat; like a tiger in the space, impossible not to notice.
Money could get you somewhere above it, but it couldn't erase it - couldn't keep the knowledge out of Finch's head that somewhere down there that dirty son of a bitch - to use language his well-bred mother would have gasped at and his father would have called 'low' in a disparaging tone - somewhere down there, he was killing women.
"Mr. Finch, am I making you uncomfortable?" Detective Reese asks, standing in the middle of the sitting room like a poorly dressed mannequin in the middle of all his carefully selected victorian furniture, and tapping his pen on his notebook in the silence that had crept into the middle of Finch's statement, heavy and oppressive.
"In a way," Finch answers, because he had carefully chosen everything here to be as forbidding as possible and yet the outside could still creep in and make itself comfortable - because as shabby as Detective Reese looked in comparison to his surroundings he could have been standing at home for all he cared.
Jack/Elias werewolf fic where Jack is actually Bear in his 'wolf' form.
He hasn't stayed changed this long ever before, and every day brings him something new again about it; today it's Elias pulling sharply on his ear in reprimand and how painful that is (and how close it is to the sensation when Elias does it to him when he wears his human skin).
"Where have you been," Elias is starting to ask, and Jack shakes himself out to put the pain out of his mind before he finds himself retaliating instinctively - Reese respects what this form can do and doesn't try any bullshit, but Elias owns him and Jack is careful with his instincts around his boss.
But the opportunity had been too good, to creep on four paws into John's life and his high regard - all he had to do was listen to commands and occasionally remember not to seem eerily intelligent, which meant he was trading occasionally chewing up a dusty old copy of I,Robot in exchange for the chance to sleep in John's bed every night, strong fingers curled into the scruff of fur at his neck and pulling ever so slightly even in John's sleep, reminding him that he was there because he was allowed there, but John was the one in charge.
prompt: Scarface breaks his boyfriend out of prison.
When the third order comes along with the indication of where Jack is supposed to find the payload of C4 to accomplish the objective (another Mafia stronghold torn down, another nail in a coffin that was already buried, but Elias is nothing if not a completionist), Jack takes some initiative.
A badge will get you just about anywhere, and he strolls into the prison compound, blandly visits an unrelated prisoner and plants the explosives where they will start a fire after they've caused sufficient panic.
He leaves the cuffs, the ankle chain on Elias as he wordlessly curls his fingers around the man's bicep and tells him "Shut up, boss," and all they have to do is walk out in the confusion - to all appearances, Elias is just being moved to a more secure location, and Jack is the one in control - maybe for these few minutes, he is.
Prompt: Fusco coincidentally sees Finch and Reese together on their day off and can't believe his eyes...
So he'd gotten a call for public indecency in central square, and since he was the closest apparently the rank of detective now meant he still couldn't avoid going down and shaking teens rounding third base out of the bushes before they scandalized the children or something.
What he gets is probably an accident - there's no way they staged all this just for Fusco's benefit, and he has to stop and blink and tilt his head because at first he knows the guy in a suit, couldn't miss him because you'd remember hell on earth if it harassed you every day too, and then he has to shake off his feelings of unfairness because if he never gets a day off it's totally unfair that they should too.
"Christ, you guys," he says when he realizes it's not just one but both of them and Fusco thinks glasses-guy is actually a little hotter with the glasses on but hey, not everyone wanted to deal with fogged up lenses when they were getting their dick sucked, "I thought you were all big on privacy!"
Elias/Scarface, Cop AU (bonus points if Reese and Finch are the criminal masterminds in this -verse)
"So you said this Finch guy," Jack is repeating this just to be sure, because he has notes written down and he has this all arrayed in his head and in a dozen files in his cabinet, and he's still not sure about this Carter chick and her muscle - the big guy who would have looked more dangerous except for his expression being as open as a door, "is the same mastermind that we've suspected as being behind all these changes in the Cosa Nostra?"
The words apparently come off his tongue a little too easy for the muscle - Fusco, because he darkens, leans into Jack with his greater bulk, and Jack allows it because he's as amused as shit and because Elias is right there to make sure this doesn't go too far.
"Yeah, Jack," Fusco says, in a tone he wants to sound dangerous but isn't quite as menacing as he likes to believe, "you remember your pals there don't you? I think someone with your talent could maybe be useful in this goddamn situation and my boss is inclined to agree."
Jack could point out that Carter and Fusco had been the ones to drag him out of it, catch him mid-deal and instead of things going the way they had a thousand times before, he'd wound up with his nose filthy in the mess and Carter had the pictures, the proof - he and the family were on shaky ground now. If that shit got out, he'd be underground, but that's not what stops him - because one sidelong 'can you believe this' glance back at Elias is enough to deaden his amusement right in his chest.
Elias knows it's true, and the look of betrayal he has, though when Jack meets his eyes he tips his head down quickly and hides it under the brim of his hat, shuts Jack up fast before he can even think to start lying.
Bear is actually a girl dog and has puppies. The fighting stops while everyone gets a puppy.
It started innocently enough, with Reese suspecting that Finch was slipping Bear food under the table or Fusco was spoiling the dog's diet with donuts while he and the dog went on stakeout, but then it quickly balloons in such a way that it becomes obvious that the dog is not fat but expecting.
Bear(ina, Fusco appends, because he refuses to admit 'Bear' is a unisex name) has twelve puppies.
It seems natural that four find their ways into expectant homes and the other six find their way to military installations in need of new service dogs and everyone is at first exited, but then Carter shows up to work with chewed high heels and a worn expression and Fusco realizes his pants smell like puppy pee halfway through the day, and between Bearina, Asimov, and Tolstoy, all of the books on the lower shelves in the library develop chewed edges and no one has the energy to even blame each other for it.
Reese/Finch/Fusco/Carter. Foursome. I don't care who's boning who but it's your challenge if you choose to accept it.
It's not intentional, that's Finch's defense - what he and Reese had extended to engulf Fusco after a time, and then what Fusco developed with Carter turned back around and reversed the polarity, a sort of mobius strip of involvement that looked complicated when it was twisted up as it was but in reality it was one continuous line, really.
What started in groups - cautious, careful experiments where first Carter would watch the three of them with her chin propped up on her hands and her elbows on her knees and her eyes missing nothing because she knew what she was navigating but not what they were - very quickly went beyond.
Finch admires how she ever so slightly changes the balance of power - how Reese will smirk and actually submit to her will, how Fusco never needs her to repeat anything, and how even though she obviously has very little idea what to make of Finch, that she doesn't hesitate to order him around either if she thinks someone isn't getting their fair share of attention.
Nathan buys Harold a singing fish, but it's slightly broken.
He couldn’t say what prompted the purchase - perhaps something about the flaccid plastic trout, with it’s upturned mouth and faintly horrified - slash - disapproving expression just reminded Nathan of Harold.
Or maybe because he was drunk, he decided that whatever Harold’s reaction to the singing fish would be that he had to see it, that somehow his life would not be complete without witnessing Harold Wren with a flapping, singing plastic fish in his lap.
He doesn’t count on how long the batteries have been in there, but he hangs it on the wall of their dorm room, directly next to the door in the bathroom so that Harry will trip it the instant he walks in.
Nathan wakes at four-am to the sound of backup singers cheerily leading the chorus before everything goes slightly… off somehow, making it blearily and off pitch through the first verse before it all goes to hell - Harry’s yelp turns into a sound of downright distress as the fish’s singing voice rapidly descends in to a terrifying growl that suggests an exorcist might be necessary.
“Looked good! LOOKED blaugh drrrghhh lllrggngkggknnnnnggrrrgnnnnn.”