Chapter Text
“Mr. Reese, I realize that you’re loath to trust her, but, in this case, there really is no choice. The two hours it will take me to get back there will be long past the point of peak efficacy—”
“All right,” John cuts in. He’s put up with worse pain, for longer — but the thought of him in needless pain is hurting Harold, and that’s not the kind of pain that John can deal with.
Root tilts her head with an indulgent little smirk to her lips. John hates this. It’s bad enough that he let himself get injured, bad enough that his hands will stay bandaged up for another couple of weeks and he can’t open a pill bottle or tip out the right dosage or even get them into his mouth without help. Even if she did all of that in his sight, his instincts would still be screaming at him that she’d managed to switch out the pills via sleight-of-hand.
And even if she gives him the right pills, the right dose, it’s still a narcotic: sleep-inducing, mind-altering. They hadn’t found anything that could touch the pain without those effects, and Harold had eventually talked him into accepting the risk, reasoning that constant pain and itching would be far worse for his recovery than being… compromised.
Of course, he’d agreed to that under the impression that Harold would be doing his usual thing, handling surveillance and hacking while sitting, at most, a room or two away from John. He hadn’t considered that being laid up meant that Harold might need to be a bit more active in the field, coordinating efforts with Fusco and Shaw while handling a few parts of the cases more directly.
This morning, before leaving, Harold gave him the first dose; Shaw dropped by for the next around noon. With both of them busy on the case, his babysitter is Root — because Harold has gotten to the point where he trusts her not to take advantage of John’s vulnerability. She’s holding a glass of water and a little cup of pills, waiting to see if he’ll accept them from her hand.
Narcotics should be taken on a schedule. They’re long-acting; the whole point is to keep a steady level of medication in the body at all times. If you wait until the pain is back, they’re less effective; he knows this. Waiting for Harold to get back, for someone he trusts to be there, is putting John at greater long-term risk. Which puts the team at risk, which puts Harold at risk.
Putting Harold at risk is never acceptable.
Holding Root’s stare, John opens his mouth. Fights back his own instincts as he lets her pour them in, and then sips the water and swallows them down.
“There,” she says, still with that smirk. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Maddeningly, she spends the next forty minutes just sitting there, watching him, as if she knows his fears — knows that he’d sooner sleep with a rattlesnake than with Root in the building. But he’s been up too long, and he knows he’s lost it when he blinks and she’s suddenly at the table, typing away. Giving in, he lets himself doze off long before Harold (grimy, but intact) returns.