Work Text:
Arlo has the unfortunate luck of walking by an alley at the exact same time a certain man falls against a dumpster. He normally would’ve ignored something like this, and he doesn’t know why he didn’t this time. Chalk it up to that unfortunate luck, he supposes.
Regardless of the reason, he looks. And who else would he see if not—
“—John?” he mutters before he can even think about it.
John (because it is him, Arlo doesn’t need to look at him any longer than half a second in order to be sure) looks up suddenly, stumbling with the action. It’s then, even in a poorly lit alley in the middle of the night, that Arlo can get a full view of all of his injuries.
“Wha—“ Arlo’s grocery bag gets completely discarded in favor of dashing towards John before he hits the ground. He lets him fall on him, taking the full brunt of his body weight. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Don’t act like you care… damn bastard…” Arlo ignores the meaning of John’s words in favor of how they come out—slow and quiet, like he’s barely conscious. Shit. Arlo wouldn’t have heard him if John wasn’t essentially talking into his ear, and quite clearly making an active effort to speak with vitriol.
Arlo decides in an instant that returning it will be the easiest thing. “I won’t. Now what happened? ” he hisses, trying to rearrange his hold on John in order to better assess the damage.
“None of your business.”
“You know damn well that it’s exactly my business. Now tell me— “
“I’m not telling you shit,” John says, managing to put more venom in his voice even in his condition. Typical. “Now let go of me. ”
“Not a chance.”
“Let me go, or I’ll make you.”
“Go ahead,” Arlo says bluntly, unafraid. He knows from experience that John could beat him at 100 percent, but he isn’t at 100 percent. It also doesn’t help his case that he’s unable to stand without leaning on something, in this case the very person he's trying to threaten.
John glares intensely, but Arlo doesn’t waver. He lets out a shuddering breath and leans against him with no small amount of reluctance. “Whatever… ‘s not like you can hurt me any worse…”
Arlo ignores the fact that John is far too cold and tries not to think of what he's was actually referencing with that comment.
“I’m taking you back to my apartment.”
“Like hell you—“
“You need medical attention now, and I’m the best you’ve got. I’m sure you have some way to get in touch with Seraphina on hand?” John doesn’t acknowledge that, so Arlo assumes that he's correct. “If that’s the case, then let where to find you after you’re off your death bed. Can you walk?”
“…Well enough.”
“Where am I going now?” John asks as Arlo shuts the door behind them. He leans against a wall for support as Arlo puts in a series of codes and locks.
Arlo’s apartment is as impersonal and minimalistic as John remembers. From the nook at the entryway, John can see a bit of the bookshelf, the only specifically 'Arlo' thing he has. Everything else serves a purpose. If something doesn’t serve that purpose, it gets discarded. (John had been the same once.)
“Bathroom. If you get blood on my carpet, I’ll kill you myself. Do you remember where it is?”
“Mmh…”
“Don’t pass out. Do you remember?”
“Second door on the right,” John groans, wincing as he pushes himself to stand.
Arlo notices this and rushes to finish the last code, cursing under his breath and grabbing John’s arm before he can start to stumble. “If you can’t walk, then tell me."
“Why? So you can knock me down yourself?”
Arlo scowls but doesn’t say anything. “Let’s go. I’ve already got supplies in there,” he says, suddenly losing any fight he has left.
John doesn’t question it. He doesn’t care.
Arlo and John walk to the bathroom (well, it’s more like Arlo holding John up and walking him to the bathroom, but he’s not thinking about that right now) and the latter gets settled on the edge of the tub. He faces away from Arlo by design, although in the next minute he regrets it.
“Take off your shirt. I can see the stab wounds from here.”
John’s head whips around and he regrets moving at all as pain fires off throughout his whole body. “You’re not doing my stitches,” he tries to hiss, but it comes out strangled.
“Yes, I am. At least the ones on your back. You’re not going to be able to reach those, and like I said, I’m not letting you bleed all over my carpet.”
“You said you’d kill me if I got blood on your carpet.”
“That’s semantics. You need stitches, and I’m better at them than you anyway.”
Arlo stares unwaveringly with a first aid kit clutched in his hand. John tries to glare back, but he isn’t sure it comes out nearly as effective as it otherwise would be. He feels like shit.
“ Fine. I’ll let you do the ones on my back, but only those. I can handle the rest,” he lies. They’ll be messy as hell and leave ugly scars, but that’s better than letting Arlo do it.
If Arlo realizes that’s a lie, he doesn’t say anything about it. He sighs and starts getting settled on the ground behind him.
Arlo hates everything about this.
He hates that he’s with John again. He hates how panicked he is over him. He hates seeing John like this, and he hates that he hates that.
It’s been six months. He should be over this by now, and over him.
He was supposed to be an assignment, so why did I…
He hates that he ever started to care about him, and he hates that he betrayed him. He hates hating that.
A hiss through teeth snaps Arlo out of his thoughts. “Be more careful, would you?”
“Right,” Arlo agrees, realizing he’d been so out of it he nearly messed up the stitches. He refocuses on the work and doesn’t think about the new scars scattered along John’s back. Thread through the skin and pull the needle in a fixed pattern. That’s all.
That’s all.
After Arlo finishes his part of the stitches, Arlo leaves John to his own devices and starts pulling together some necessities. A blanket, painkillers, and other things like that. John won’t touch half and he’ll probably want to burn the other, but that’s too bad for him. Arlo isn’t going to let his apartment get marked as a places that John Doe has been if it hasn’t already. He’s on thin enough ice with Val as things stand.
(And if he leaves like that, an annoying little part of Arlo’s mind whispers, he’d be easy pickings for whoever drove him to that alley in the first place.)
After everything is gathered, he tries to think about what he plans to do next.
“Hey,” John says from behind him, prompting him to turn around. “I got in touch with Sera, so I'll head out n—“
“You can’t,” Arlo interrupts. “I’m not going to be accused of associating with you because you were seen too close by.”
“You think I’m that much of an amateur?” John scoffs. “I can get out of here without being seen, easy. Don't go acting like I’m a greenhorn.”
“You’re also injured, badly. You could be knocked down by a light wind right now. Leaving would be a bad idea.”
“Maybe, but staying is a worse idea.”
Arlo resists the urge to scowl again. “…Would I be correct in assuming that you’re not meeting Seraphina tonight?” John says nothing, so Arlo takes it as confirmation. “Then stick around for the night. Just that long.”
John looks like he wants to say no again, but he thinks about it this time. Arlo ends up anticipating his response more than he would like to, and lets out a relieved breath when John finally answers. “Just tonight.”
“Alright. Here,” Arlo says, handing him the pile of necessities. “I’ll take the couch.”
John still looks upset, but doesn’t say anything against that. “Do you have any spare clothes? I’d rather not have to deal with you only to get killed for bleeding on your precious silk bedsheets.”
Something occurs to Arlo. He didn’t exactly want to acknowledge that… whatever. It’s not like he has to. It’s fine.
“I’ll bring you some.”
John looks at the clothes he’s just set on the bathroom counter and realizes that as much as he’d like to, he can’t deny that Arlo has just kept his clothes stored somewhere for the past six months.
Why didn’t he just throw them out? It works out for me right now, but…
His mind starts to run wild with possibilities. What if Arlo had planned this somehow? What if he’s planning an ambush? Or is he trying to get information out of him?
(What if he regretted it?)
John hates himself for thinking that. Arlo betrayed him; there’s no coming back from that. He can’t trust him anymore. Regrets won’t change a damn thing.
And yet John still cares. It’s a small, nagging feeling that can’t deal with any of this. John doesn’t just let people in, and there are few other people in the world that have gotten as close to John as Arlo did.
He shakes his head as if that will make any thoughts of Arlo that aren’t cursing him fall out. It doesn’t work, but it does get him out of his haze. He ditches the bloodied suit—and good riddance, honestly, he’s always hated them—and puts on the new set of clothes.
After he gets dressed, he manages to get to Arlo’s bedroom without stumbling over himself enough to draw any attention. Once he’s inside, he locks the door behind him without a second thought.
John climbs into the bed and lies down carefully to avoid aggravating any of his injuries. He goes to the right side out of habit and settles in on his mostly uninjured side, which happens to have him facing the empty half of the bed.
The second John takes a breath, he’s done in. The thoughts he’s been trying to keep at bay come flooding in.
It’s his bed. Of course it’s going to smell like him. Idiot.
Yeah, you’ve been here before. You’ve also been plenty of places before. It doesn’t mean anything. Stop freaking out.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
Don’t think about him.
His mind ignores his orders, and there’s no one to blame but himself. There are too many memories here. Memories of Arlo.
John can recall falling asleep to the sound of Arlo’s breathing, or the way he’d looked haloed as morning light shined in through the crack in the curtain. He remembers the way Arlo had smiled in those rare, sleep addled moments that only John had been allowed to see.
At least, he thought he’d been the only one. But if everything else was a lie, then that almost certainly was, too.
None of that was even real, John thinks, clenching his teeth. He’s a piece of shit for lying to me and I’m stupid for believing him. I’m not going to make the same mistake again.
John shuts his eyes and tries to sleep. The blood loss makes unconsciousness come easily, but peace is harder to come by these days.
Arlo plucks his phone off of the coffee table and sighs when he sees the time. It’s just past 3 AM and he hasn’t slept at all. Saying it’s because he wants to make sure John doesn’t run off in the middle of the night is partially true, but not completely. His presence alone is enough to throw Arlo entirely off balance.
He followed his orders. He did what was right for the Organization. He did what Val told him to do, just like he’s always done.
So why do I regret so much?
John is one of those regrets. He makes him regret doing the thing he’s supposed to live for. No one should have that kind of power over him, but John does, and Arlo can’t deal with that.
Regrets of the past lead to doubts in the present. And doubts… doubts are the reason why John is still alive, even though he was supposed to have died six months ago.
The way Val looked at him after he gave his report is still etched in his mind. Arlo doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forget.
The memory compounds onto his preexisting discomfort and makes it into a weight on his chest. Anxiety, shame, and stress all mingle into a single, suffocating feeling. Thoughts Arlo can hardly control come rushing in.
As is the norm on nights like this—though he can’t recall ever having a night quite like this —Arlo decides to make tea.
John wakes up in the middle of the night, unsure of how much he’s slept but confident that it wasn’t enough. It takes his brain a few seconds to catch up with the situation, but to his credit, he doesn’t panic when he sees his current location again. His memories are a little bit spotty, likely due to the blood loss, but he has a decent enough understanding of what happened.
His first instinct is to go back to sleep, but that doesn’t seem possible at the moment. John’s… well, his everything still hurts like a bitch, even when he isn’t moving. The ache is dulled for now, likely due to the painkillers, but it’s irrefutably there.
This leads to a dilemma—laying around in the dark, or leaving the room and inevitably passing by Arlo on the way to the kitchen in order to get something to make it easier to sleep?
As much as John would prefer to not be anywhere near Arlo, he hates the idea of laying awake in his bed even more.
The lesser of two evils is very clear. John makes the very poor decision to sit up without bracing himself, sending sharp pain through his—you guessed it—everything. He bit back the urge to start swearing on the off chance that Arlo wasn’t already (or, knowing him, still ) awake and would hear him.
With no small amount of reluctance and a very small amount of caution, he drags himself out of the bed and heads for the door. He doesn’t bother with any lights in the room or in the hallway, confident in his familiarity with the space as well as his ability to navigate through the dark. Keeping his footsteps near silent is second nature by now, so he hears nothing as he walks.
When John gets to the living room, although he knows no one will see it, he scowls. Arlo is nowhere to be seen. It could mean any number of things, but what it makes clear to John is that Arlo is awake. He won’t necessarily have to interact with him, but he would prefer if it weren’t a chance at all.
John considers locking himself in the bedroom again until morning, but he doesn’t. His sleep is more important than Arlo.
Sure enough, John steps into the kitchen, he sees Arlo’s silhouette in the dark off to his left, standing near the counter opposite to the stove. He looks over to him, not a trace of surprise visible on his face as he lets out a sigh. “What are you doing out here?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
“This is my apartment. That makes it something for me to worry about. And regardless of that, you should be resting.”
John scoffs. He doesn’t need to be babied, and he needs it even less coming from Arlo. “I’ll be perfectly fine, but thanks for the concern.”
Arlo returns the distaste with some of his own. “If ‘perfectly fine’ equates to being unable to walk, then yes, I suppose you were.”
“And that matters to you, why? ” John hisses back. The show becomes more irritating than anything else once you know it’s a lie.
“It—” There’s something John is blind to etched into Arlo’s face. “You can’t go getting into trouble around here. I don’t want to be associated with you, like I said. If I let you die, it could cause problems for me.”
John notices the problem in that statement almost instantly. “If you don’t want to get tied to me, then why did you bring me back to your apartment?”
“Because you would have died otherwise. What does that have to do with—”
“There were plenty of other things you could’ve done, leaving me to die actually being one of the easiest. You bought me back here, you stitched me up, and you let me stay—no, made me stay, actually, because I pretty clearly remember telling you to fuck off,” John says, finding himself more confused and more frustrated as he goes on. “So why."
“I already answered that.”
“Yeah, and your answer was bullshit.”
“You’ve made it abundantly clear that you want nothing to do with me, so why do you care? We aren’t going to see each other again after tonight.”
“I don’t trust you, and I need to make sure this isn’t going to bite me in the ass. Now stop dodging the question. Why did you help me?”
“Because I was worried about you!”
John is the one to stumble over himself this time, but the misstep goes blissfully unnoticed thanks to a sharp whistle. John looks towards the stove and realizes that there’s a kettle with steam rushing from the spout.
While John is still frozen, stunned to silence, Arlo shuts off the stove and walks off to the cabinets. John doesn’t pay him any mind.
Back when they were… close, Arlo had a habit of making tea when he couldn’t sleep at night, and that was never an uncommon thing given their line of work. John never spared it a thought after their falling out—none he considers worth bringing up again, at least—but considering how they ended up spending a lot of those nights together, John assumed that it had been another way to get information out of him.
And now, coincidentally, when they’ve met again, he’s doing it again.
“Do you really—” John’s voice starts off low, shuddering. He doesn’t intend to lose himself over Arlo, but keeping himself in check isn’t easy. The strain comes through in his voice. “Do you really think I’m so pathetic that I’ll fall over myself just because you act like you care?”
There’s a quiet clink of ceramic on polished marble. Arlo turns around after that, glaring. “What?”
“There’s no way that anything you just said was true. You’re trying to use me for something again, aren’t you?”
“Believe whatever you want, John. I’ve already told you everything,” Arlo says, but somehow his expression looks wrong, seeming more defeated than he has any right to. It only fans the flames.
“Like hell you have,” John hisses. “What’s the real reason you helped me?”
A scowl crosses Arlo’s face then, but he seems to force himself to swallow it down. He walks towards and then past John, towards another cabinet.
“I told you that. What good would it do for me to say that again?” The way he says it would fool most people, but John isn’t most people. He can make out the faint uncertainty Arlo masks with his usual confidence, even through the distance between them and the darkness in the kitchen.
“Because it isn’t true,” John replies, and he forces himself to sound sure.
Arlo doesn’t say anything back; just pulls something out of the cabinet and walks past John again. This time, John doesn’t let him pass. John grabs his arm and looks him in the eye, giving him no choice but to face him.
“I know you don’t give a shit about me, Arlo, so why are you doing this?”
He’s still angry, but his voice has dropped lower for a different reason this time. Along with that anger, there’s a need.
John needs to be able to keep hating Arlo for this. It’s not like he needs that as his reason to keep moving forward with his plans—his former employer has given him an assortment of reasons to want her dead all on her own—but he needs it so he doesn’t hold him back. John has been acutely aware of the fact that the two of them are on opposing sides from the moment Arlo betrayed him. This is the last night they’ll see each other on a safe enough playing field, most likely. If John ends up having to choose between Arlo and his mission, he needs to make the right decision, and he needs to do it without hesitating. If he still cares about this bastard, then there’s no way that that’s going to happen.
So, John looks him in the eyes. Light blue and dazzling even in as mundane a setting a stupidly pristine, barely used, unlit kitchen. He isn’t going to let him look away until he confirms what John believes, filling in the half-empty space where unwavering hatred should be. Anger is the only thing he can let himself feel towards Arlo.
“I’m telling the truth, John,” Arlo says, and this is small and almost pained. It’s infuriating.
"Dammit, Arlo, can you be honest with me for once!?” John snaps back. He realizes he forgot entirely about their proximity and how stupid it was to forget that in the same moment, as he tightens his grip on Arlo’s arm unconsciously and ends up forcing the two of them closer together.
“For god’s sake, John, can’t you see that I care about you!?” Arlo shouts. He doesn’t give John the chance to retort as he continues without any semblance of his usual composure. “I was worried about you because I care about you, and I can’t stop hating myself for it! You’re a blight, a thorn in our side, and you’re trying to tear everything I live for apart! I knew better from the start, but I still let myself get close to you—even when I was supposed to cut you loose, I couldn’t do that right! I—”
He stops short and groans, running a hand through his hair. Arlo takes a breath and looks away like he can’t bear to meet John’s gaze any longer. He seems reluctant to say another word. “Everything is worse than it ever would’ve been if I just hadn’t given a shit about you like you’ve convinced yourself I do. I wish I didn’t care about you, that I’d never even met you. But I did, and I do. I regret things because of you, and I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do about it,” he finally says, his voice dropping lower.
The two stand in silence for a few moments. Arlo stares like he doesn’t know what to say.
John doesn’t know either, until he does.
“So you regret everything,” John starts off, keeping his anger under wraps even though part of him wants to scream. Arlo isn’t worth that. “So fucking what. Your regrets don’t change anything. You’re still working under a bunch of power hungry maniacs, and you still screwed me over. If you want something different for the future, then at least try to change something before you go crying to me about any of it.”
Something flashes across Arlo’s face too quickly for John to read. He tries not to think about it.
“If that’s all, then I’ll head back to bed,” John says curtly. He can barely deal with everything in his head right now, and he isn’t going to do that in front of Arlo. As per usual, he’s the source of all of his problems.
The offender doesn’t say anything at first, but he seems to catch up with the present and nods. “Alright.”
John turns around and leaves, maybe a bit too quickly, but he can’t really be bothered to think about that right now. He crosses the apartment and heads back to the room, once again locking the door and shutting it.
When he lies down this time, it’s harder to sleep regardless of the blood loss. He keeps thinking about what Arlo told him. If he was being honest, and he thinks he was… he hopes he was, and it’s frustrating.
But, he reminds himself in just the same way he had Arlo, nothing has changed.
John steels himself and shuts his eyes. As long as things stay like this, he’s still an enemy. Just act like it. You’re leaving in a few hours anyway.
You’re not going to see him again anytime soon.
That was the wrong thing to use. It sends John in a spiral that isn’t likely to end for a few hours.
In the kitchen, Arlo drinks a steaming cup of chamomile tea and glances at one set on the counter across from him, prepared with honey unlike his own.
“If you want something different for the future, then at least try to change something before you go crying to me about any of it.”
That phrase plays over in his head a few dozen times over the course of the night.
A few hours later, at a time when Arlo is sure there aren’t going to be many people likely to see him in the building, he goes to wake up John. He knocks on the door and waits patiently, having a feeling that John might already be awake.
Sure enough, the door opens a few minutes after the first knock.
“Slept pretty well, huh?” John says, very clearly mocking Arlo’s lack of just that.
So we’re back to this, then.
“So the pot’s calling the kettle black now, is it?” Arlo replies, falling into step with their usual routine. That’s easier than… whatever it was that happened last night. This is probably the best that he can hope for in their last moments spent together.
John hums, moving past the comment as he leans on the doorframe. Arlo thinks in passing that it might be more due to him having difficulty staying upright than just having bad posture. “So, what do you want? I doubt you’re here to be the bearer of any good news.”
“I think it’s a good time for you to get going, that’s all.”
John hums in acknowledgement of that as he steps out. The two of them walk together, and although Arlo doesn’t have any good excuse for why he’s acting like he’ll see him off, John doesn’t have any good excuse for not telling him to leave him alone.
They stand at the door in an uncomfortable silence for a moment, neither knowing what to say or if anything should be said at all, but John is the first one to make a move.
“I, um…” he starts, the picture of eloquence. Arlo might’ve picked at that fumble if he weren’t, for whatever reason, anxious to hear what he has to say next. “I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing, and I meant everything I said last night. You can’t just throw yourself to whatever side pulls you over and expect that to work out how you want it to.” He takes a deep breath. Shuts his eyes for a second, like he can’t even stand to look at Arlo when he says it. “I also don’t want you to… I mean, even if you’re… I still…”
“Get on with it,” Arlo insists, partly to keep up the act and partly because he really can’t deal with this.
“Goddammit. I… just try not to get yourself killed too soon, okay?”
Arlo blinks a few times. “Did you just…”
“Not a damn word.”
As instructed, Arlo doesn’t say anything. They share one last look before John turns around and walks out the door.
Something in Arlo’s chest aches for John to come back, and at the same time, to never see him again. John and contradictions to Arlo’s way of living seem to go hand in hand.
Regardless, there’s nothing else for him to do now but lock the door. His sleep deprived, stressed, emotionally overloaded mind has the passing thought that leaving everything behind and walking through that door now might not be such a bad idea.
Wait. What? No, I— I’m going to stay with the Organization, with Val, I’ll…
Arlo’s thoughts descend into a nebulous mass of you want, you don’t want, you can’t want, just like they had months ago, in the days before he betrayed John.
Now that he’s alone again, he lets himself fall apart a bit. He knows from experience that even if the pieces aren’t put together properly, he can make it look like they are.
Arlo sighs heavily and walks off towards his room. He didn’t sleep at all last night, and his next assignment isn’t for a few days, so he can sleep all he wants for now. He realizes the flaw in this plan when he lies down and gets hit with the smell of iron, smoke, and ever so faintly underneath it all, John.
He’ll blame it on the sleep deprivation later when he remembers that he curled further into the blankets. But for the moment, he doesn’t want to think. Just for a bit longer.
As the first rays of morning light peek in through his curtains, Arlo finds himself lost in stolen memories of dark hair and a warm embrace. Just as he falls asleep for the first, blissful time in far too many hours, he imagines what it might be like to have another moment like that, without anything to hold him back.
It’s a nice dream. It’s only a dream, but it’s there, and a greedy, selfish part of him that wants, wants, and wants everything it can’t have desires nothing more than to feel that dream in waking hours once again.