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“Wow, Finch. Going somewhere?”
Harold sighed and limped over to grab his bowtie.
“Grace has another one of those gallery events to attend.”
“At least it’s not the screaming cats you saw last time.”
“Verdi, John. It was Verdi.”
Harold turned, checking his watch, ignoring John muttering “screaming cats,” behind him. He walked into the living room where Grace was waiting for him, her eyebrows raised in appreciation. She wiggled them once at him, eyes bright and clear. It was rarely hard to shore up a smile for her.
“Ready to talk to some old, rich farts all night?”
Harold laughed. “I suppose I count as one?”
She opened her mouth in faux surprise and shook her head at him slowly. “Harold! Never!”
He laughed again and took her arm, turning back once to see a smiling John following them out the door.
At the gallery, after Grace had long been spirited away by eager colleagues and even keener employers, Harold did what he always did. Drank multiple glasses of champagne and strolled around the room, rebuffing any overtures for conversation with a blank expression.
Harold found himself stopping almost involuntarily by the artwork in front of him. His eyes had caught the painting before he had consciously decided to stop, the exquisite lines, the careful detailing, and above all, the emotions. Harold took a deep breath and let it out slowly, smiling softly at the work. He spoke without turning to the man beside him, just slightly behind his right elbow, half his body still facing the crowd at Harold’s back.
“It’s a Degas.”
“Bless you.”
Harold rolled his eyes, and then glanced at John out of the corner of them, unsurprised to see him making a face at it. His head was cocked to the side, as if the painting would make more sense at an angle. His nose was scrunched up in distaste, and his mouth was turned down in a petulant frown. He looked absurdly like Bear when he had to go to the bathroom. Harold looked back at the Degas to contain his smile.
“Looks terrible. What are those liney things?”
“They’re art.”
John flopped his head sideways to look over at Harold, half deadpan, half like a bored toddler about to throw a tantrum. John still had the restraint of the CIA in him, proud shoulders, stiff back, expression still mostly blank. So to anybody else, the gesture may have looked benign. Harold knew far better.
“Oh, alright, alright.
The genius of Degas was the interplay between opposing forces: light and dark, fatigue and action, reality and representation. See the woman there, she’s in all black, she’s restless. But the ballerina in white next to her, she’s just exhausted, she’s not glamorous, or restrained, or elegant. She simply is who she is. The warmth around them, the way he’s cocooned them in it. It’s like that one moment just goes on forever. Just waiting. Waiting...”
He trailed off, almost too overcome to continue. They stood in silence for a while, both of them just staring at it.
John’s voice was never startling, it was too soft, too familiar to do that. It slid like butter into Harold’s awareness.
“The woman in black, she reminds me of you.”
It was Harold’s turn to scrunch his nose. He turned to John, baffled.
“What?”
“Well I’m pretty sure you have that hat…”
Harold raised one pointed eyebrow at him.
John shrugged, made his “who could possibly know” face, in the way he did when he didn’t want to answer a question. But he wasn’t tense enough for Harold to leave well enough alone. John would answer, given some time.
Like clockwork, John loosened his shoulders, sighed slightly and stuck an arm out, waving his hand around inelegantly, like he was swatting a geriatric fly.
“It’s kinda like us. Back when we started. In the library.”
“Oh.”
And, yes. Harold remembered.
The library when the setting sun shone through the windows, warm and bright. Dust floating gently in the beams of light that fell on the floors, across Harold’s desk, over John’s hair. They had rarely spoken in those moments, just sat there, together. Neither of them willing to leave in case a number came up before the day ended.
John would stretch his muscles on the floor, or clean his guns, or stock his weapons. And Harold would sit idly at his desk and putter through admin work.
Waiting.
Just waiting for something.
Harold smiled at John, seeing the melancholy heavy in his heart reflected on John’s face, in his eyes.
“Hi, you.”
Harold turned, startled, and leaned in for a kiss automatically.
“Hi back. Finished so soon?”
“Oh they bored me to death with their opinions. I mean really, Cézanne doesn’t make sense to you? Pick up a book!”
Harold huffed out a laugh as she guided them forward gently, crooking his head over his shoulder to smirk at John. If he’d loathed the “lines” in Degas, Harold would have to show him Cézanne soon. John tilted his head and shot him a ridiculously fake smile back. Harold smiled despite himself, inordinately pleased.
“What’s funny?”
“Oh, nothing.”