Archive of Our Own

John finds himself humming the song, muttering the chorus even, on one particularly boring stakeout. Finch pauses in his typing for a moment, and then there is a concentrated burst of it. “A particularly gory song, don’t you think Mr. Reese?”

He chuckles. “You know it, Finch?”

Finch doesn’t say anything.

“You looked it up, didn’t you?”

Long pause. Whether or not Finch does know it, it’s not like it matters. He himself learnt it at Fort Campbell, but he’s heard versions sung at kids’ camps. He won’t be able to trace who Finch is through it. He doesn’t say anything, though, and ten minutes later: “We have a new number, Mr. Reese.”

David Browne is seven years old and his mother tried to kill him. Reese saw her mix a cocktail of drugs into his orange juice. He got there fast enough to stop the kid drinking it, but not fast enough to stop the mother. He pulls the kid away carefully, one hand over his eyes.

“The father wanted to divorce, I think,” Finch says as Reese pulls out into traffic, Dave in the back with his nose pressed against the window. “He has just finished his last deployment in Afghanistan and will return in four days.”

“No re-enlistment?” (Dave’s father is in the Marines.)

“No. I think he wanted to wait until he was done with the Marines and then he would have a chance of getting full custody of his son. She previously had many affairs behind his back...”

“What do I do with the kid?” He cuts Finch off.

“Keep him in a safe house,” says Harold. “The mother went to a motel to do this, told people they were going on vacation. Return David to his father in four days, tell him the truth...Go to this place, Mr. Reese.” The GPS console bleeps in the car and there’s a small buzz of static in the earpiece as Harold turns his off.

“Were you talking to yourself?” The kid kicks the back of his seat.

“No.”

“It’s okay if you do,” says Dave. “I used to. I used to have an imaginary friend called Finlay Marshmallow. Mom says it’s okay.” He kicks the back of Reese’s seat again. “Is Mom gonna be okay?”

(No.) “We’ll see.”

“Okay.” He seems satisfied, but only for a minute. “What’s your imaginary friend’s name?”

He doesn’t have an imaginary friend. “Finch.”

They persuade Dave to call them Uncle John and Uncle Harold, prove that they are alright with Stills’ badge and take him to the park.

“Undiagnosed ADHD, I think,” Finch says when John comes back from pushing the kid on the swings. “I read his school reports.” John wouldn’t expect anything less of Harold.

Harold looks at him quite seriously. “Do you think you can handle him for four days?”

“Not me alone, Harold.” John says when Dave (with pink cheeks - he is happy) comes back and demands hot chocolate. “Not me alone. It’s your Machine.”

Finch calls Dave ‘David’ and feeds him spaghetti. Predictably, Dave likes Finch but when he’s finished with dinner, he comes over to the table and sits across from Reese. “Are you a Marine?” he asks, wide-eyed as John cleans his guns. He smiles at him openly with a gap-toothed grin when John looks up at him. (John thinks he sees himself, it’s like he’s been winded.)

“No,” he says a little while later, Dave’s eyes still fixed upon him. “I’m army, Special Forces. I used to be 101^st Airborne as well.”

“Dad says Marines are cooler.”

“My father was a Marine.” Harold’s glasses flash when he looks up from the laptop. It’s not news to Harold; Harold knows everything. About him, about his father. More than John, probably.

Back at the table, Dave pushes a  white toy truck forth, something he guilted them into buying (after the hot chocolate, but before the muffins). “Well,” he says. “Why aren’t you a Marine then, Uncle John?”

(Because he hated his father: his father hated the Army, so he joined it. His father despised officers, he went to West Point.) “We all serve the same country, that’s what matters.” Well, it used to.

“Okay.” Dave begins to hum a song. He overshoots pushing the truck and John catches it. “Where did you learn that song?”

“Uh...Boy Scouts.” The kid fidgets, eyes the truck. “Dad says it’s a good song, for the Army.” Grinning, he holds out a grubby pink palm. “Can I have my truck back please?”

Dave sings the chorus as John packs up his guns. The words are not the same, but he recognises the tune.

Dave sings the chorus:

Glory, glory, what a helluva way to die,

When you’re wearing frilly knickers

And you don’t know how to fly.

Glory, glory, what a helluva way to die,

And he ain’t gonna jump no mor-or-ore!

In his head, John sings along.

On the second day, John makes them hot-dogs out of a jar and halfway through his, Dave asks (with a smudge of ketchup on one cheek): “Are you two boyfriends?”

“Yes,” Harold says quite carefully, not looking at John.

“Were they mean to you?” Dave asks later as John cleans his face with a wet cloth.

“Mean to me? Why?”

“’Cause you were gay. Dad says they’re mean to gay people, in the army an’ the navy an’ the air force.”

John does not correct him that he’s bisexual and says instead: “I didn’t tell them. They’re not mean anymore, anyway.”

“That’s nice.” Dave squirms out of his grip and runs off.

He read about the repeal in the paper the morning it was official and went for a walk. Ghosts, old memories seemed to dog his footsteps as he went, but the main one was Pikey. James Pike Junior, JJ they sometimes called him. He was an ordnance specialist, good at card tricks and gay. First his long-time boyfriend dumped him and then they found out. He went off, back to Louisville and then two years later he tried to stop an armed robbery he was a bystander in and took three to the chest.

(John would’ve gone to the funeral, had he not been in Belarus on Company business, chasing an arms’ dealer.)

He’d come back from the walk hours later, dazed and a little light-headed. He’d lain on the couch, head in Harold’s lap while Harold read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader to him. Harold never said anything else the entire time, just read, one hand curled protectively (possessively) in John’s hair.

Harold has insisted no sex, because ‘David is just down the hall’. John tried seduction and promised they would be quiet, but it didn’t work.

So John curls around Harold and is just drifting off when Harold says quietly, “Staff Sergeant Browne” – Dave’s father – “has no history of abusive behaviour, John.”

(Neither did Reese’s father.)

Harold can probably tell what he’s thinking because he goes on. “I see none of the indicators of abuse...do you?”

Harold is asking him because, well, he does not have enough data. He is asking John because if one grows up knowing/practising/surviving certain things, they generally are more adept in spotting them in other people.

“No,” John swallows. “No, I can’t see them” – (see me, not really) – “in him.”

The third day, they take him to a public library. While Harold works on a computer nearby, Dave insists on reading to John, sitting in his lap with Gooseberry Park. Any word he doesn’t know, the book gets shoved in John’s face and he’s a bit too big to be sitting in John’s lap.

It feels a bit like home, though, with Harold tapping away nearby.

It isn’t their library, but it’s close.

The handover is easy. Browne promises not to tell anyone and Finch calls Carter to make sure that the body is handled properly at her end. Dave says goodbye, hugs them both around the middle, waves and walks off. He holds his father’s hand and doesn’t look back, too busy chatting.

On the drive back from the base, Harold says, “I set up a trust fund that he will inherit when he’s eighteen. It should be enough to get him through college.”

John says nothing.

“Are you alright, Mr. Reese?”

“Yes,” he says, because it’s the truth.