Chapter Text
A few years ago, he never would have imagined that car accidents, gunfights, and underground drug plots would become an almost normal occurrence in his daily life. When had he begun to grow accustomed to situations straight out of a James Bond novel?
In all fairness, he mostly listened to the action—the grunting, the shouting, the crashes. Sometimes he wondered if the repeated gunshot sounds would stress his ears and eventually lead to premature hearing loss. But considering their line of work, he didn't dwell on the distant future too much.
Leaving the library wasn’t his first intention when he started to pursue the numbers. His social anxieties were quite comfortable within the thick, forgotten walls. The extreme circumstances which led to Mr. Dillinger's demise, and him forcing himself to walk again, started a cascade which brought him to the present. A time in which Reese was conflicted between him not leaving the library in order to stay safe, and him leaving the library in order to help in the field and not lose touch with human interaction at all.
Which made the mishap today even more frustrating. It didn't happen in a car chase, fistfight, or bomb explosion. It happened while putting on his coat, losing his balance, and taking a step in the wrong direction.
He was about to head out to meet Detective Fusco and still had plenty of time, but also an unaccounted-for problem.
“Oh dear,” Finch whispered, lifting his foot, which produced another cracking sound.
Although he looked in the right direction, he could make out no shapes or figures in his line of sight. His surroundings looked like someone put the color scape of the library into a washing machine and hit start. Display light, corner lamps, and blinking equipment LEDs resembled glowing spheres without any kind of definition.
It’s not like he broke his glasses for the first time in his life, but precisely that was the problem. A few years ago, he had enough spares around the place. Too many by reasonable measures. But he liked to plan, to stay one step ahead. However, after a metallic safe door weighing two tons flew into his general direction a few weeks ago, and he was knocked out several times over the course of the last years, his arsenal of glasses thinned out. Unfortunately, he would pay for his neglect toward his stock today.
Bear whined and watched Finch stumble toward the back of the room, where a familiar item was left untouched out of spite.
“Don't worry, Bear, it’s my own fault. I will stop by the optometrist before meeting the Detective,” Finch explained, glad that at least right now he would not be able to see Mr. Reese's smug grin when he witnessed him talking to the dog like that. He and Bear might have had a rough start, but the canine was his best company in the solitude of the library.
Finch grabbed the cane, which had gathered dust, according to the senses he was left with.
He despised the rickety old thing, unwilling to be reminded of the days when he actually needed it. But given his new handicap, it was either this or stumbling over every crack in the pavement. Perhaps it was the paranoia rooted deep in his personality, but taking a cab was no option for him. Sitting in an unknown vehicle with an unknown man, driving somewhere he couldn’t see—definitely not.
So he pushed out the door, ready to navigate the noisy blur of gray in front of him.
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Fusco knew he still had an hour left before meeting Finch. But a quiet lunch break, one of those thick hot dogs down the street, and an hour without some rookie asking for his opinion for the tenth time—he wouldn’t say no to that. He liked Glasses, a lot, but there were days when he already heard a lot of bullshit in the precinct and just couldn’t stomach sentences which sounded like a cluster of dictionary paragraphs. Also, he could do without a new fact about cholesterol while biting into one of Dave's hot dogs. Was it a good, healthy sign that he was on a first-name basis with the guy from the hot dog stand? No. But stressing about his two vigilante friends 24/7 was no spa day either. So what the hell.
Only one bite left when his gaze wandered down the street. Mid-chew, he recognized a familiar figure, about to step onto the street, by a traffic light which had just turned red.
He tossed the hot dog into a bin, hurrying toward the street.
“Hey! Hey! Harold!”
Finch felt an object fly past him with great velocity, letting his coat fly open. This can’t be right.
Strong hands grabbed his coat and yanked him back. A blur, which might have been a cake, or more likely a face, entered his vision.
“You have a death wish or something?” Fusco asked him, steadying his grip on the man, not knowing what had gotten into Mr. Good News.
Finch squinted, his breathing more pronounced from the shock, no doubt. “I‐ Detective?“
Fusco mustered his face and quickly realized an essential accessory was missing. “Yeah, it's me. And you probably would be able to tell with your glasses, Glasses.”
Without the signature rectangular glasses, the man who was usually oozing authority and class was looking smaller. Like the first defense was missing.
“Wanna tell me what happened?” Fusco continued to guide him back onto the pavement.
Finch rolled his eyes, embarrassment tinting his cheeks red. “My glasses broke.”
“Yeah, no shit. But last time I checked, you weren't colorblind, pal,” he nodded to the light, which only turned green this second.
Finch continued to walk, pouting.
“The light was green,” he insisted.
“Wha—” Fusco looked back to the light above the crosswalk and indeed saw green. However, the fluorescent light belonged to a flickering sign of a run-down pharmacy on the other side of the road.
Lionel huffed incredulously. “Are you kidding me?”
His eyes switched between the light and the limping man before hurrying after Harold.
"I usually abdicate when it comes to kidding around,” Finch deadpanned, walking along. "If you'd excuse me, if I want to be on time for our appointment, I have to hie away toward my trusted optometrist.”
The first words were enough to make him shake his head, as if trying to get those words out of his ears. “No chance I'm letting you stumble around alone.”
Fusco's strong hands held his arm and back. But he was no invalid who needed to be guided through a city he had known and breathed for the last decades.
“I appreciate the concern, Detective—” but his sentence got interrupted.
Fusco chuckled and patted his back, perhaps a bit more forcefully than necessary. “Exactly. Just appreciate it, good man.”
A scratching sound made Fusco look to the other side of their little walking club. Finch carefully used a cane with his free hand. Now, the detective was well aware of Finch's limp. Of course, the older man would never give up the concrete circumstances of it by his own free will, but whatever caused it left a long-lasting mark.
“Hey, what's up with the cane? You hurt?”
Finch's shoulders sagged in his elegant coat, which probably was worth more than Fusco's monthly income. He seemed to simply give in. What's the point of fighting now? His glasses broke, and he was walking down 2nd Avenue shoulder to shoulder with Lionel Fusco.
Finch sighed. “A relic of the past, when I was less steady on my feet.”
Fusco was surprised by any kind of answer he got from Finch regarding his past. So his face slipped into a bewildered expression before turning into a smile. “Oh, ‘course you're so steady right now?”
Humor was his way of coping with tense situations. But Harold's answer was a blank stare, which lost all its effect when his eyes darted right past him.
Fusco chuckled again. “I'm joking.”
A silence stretched between them, like they didn’t have anything left to talk about after fifty years of marriage. If they did it Finch's way, they probably would communicate without words for the rest of the week. But Fusco had questions, and the man who had all the answers in the world owed him at least some.
“So what were you thinking?” he asked, before yanking Finch to the right to avoid him hitting a filthy trash can. “Woah, easy.”
Finch regained his footing, and his lips curled for only a second. “You probably want to hear that I wasn’t thinking at all, Detective.”
“Not bad, Professor X. What else is new?” Fusco inquired, trying to pull more information from this newfound oracle.
Harold rolled his eyes again, blinking against the undefined world around him. “I should have told someone before embarking on this short walk by myself?”
Another spirited hit on his back nearly made him stumble. “So you do have some sense.”
Turning another corner, Finch exhaled. “I'm aware of the amount of work you and Mr. Reese have. I didn’t want to be another liability.”
A loud laugh escaped the detective, and Finch flinched a bit, hearing some sarcasm behind it. People turned their way, no doubt, and despite not seeing the crowd, Finch felt eyes on him and immediately tensed.
“Liability, my ass! You know what a liability would look like? Scraping your sorry ass off the street and explaining to Wonderboy why his tech support walked in front of a car like a stray dog. I mean, you're practically blind.”
Finch hummed, processing his words carefully. “A colorful scenario, Detective.”
They stopped at another stoplight. “Sometimes even you have to admit that it would be logical to ask for help.”
Finch furrowed his brows, trying to decipher the open book that was Lionel Fusco. “What is that supposed to mean?”
The light turned green, and the small crowd around them set into motion along with them.
“You can’t look or walk in a straight line right now. You nearly got yourself killed and would rather die than call John, Shaw, or me. Even Cocoa Puffs would have been better than no one. You could have taken the dog.”
Finch pressed his lips into a straight line and was grateful to hear a familiar door chime, releasing him from the detective's uncomfortable questions.
"Well, we're here,” Finch stated, straightening himself, picking up the cane.
Fusco looked confused at the sign of the unspectacular optometrist. “How can you tell? It could be a Mexican boxing club.”
“I counted the steps.” Finch smiled, making a move to push up his glasses, only to look confused when no metal frame was there to move.
Lionel snorted, because he actually expected their local genius to memorize each inch of Manhattan. But he was a sorry sight, and Fusco decided that was enough humiliation for a day. “Sure you did. Get it over with. I'm waiting outside, Daredevil.”
It was a nice day, he realized, now that he had more than five seconds to look up at the sky. Not a cloud in sight, and the brightest blue lit up New York. The last weeks were nothing but stress, explosions, and grief for the whole team. After Reese disappeared, Fusco had a fundamental enlightenment while sitting in the uncomfortable plastic chair, facing the hearse of the best partner he ever had. If he wouldn’t be able to pull himself together, the whole gang would go to shit. And that's what he did. He kept his shit together to protect what Carter stood for. Together, they would always have a chance against the corrupted, the pure evil in this city. He was no genius, no Carter, no Finch, but he knew that their mission was born out of good deeds, and what more could he do to redeem himself, to become the man his son thought he was. Losing Carter was tough, but the thought of losing the whole team hit him even harder. How he wished his partner could see this blue sky today, soak in the sun, and drink this cheap coffee while waiting for their stubborn mutual friend.
The door chime pulled him back, with a smile on his lips, which only widened once he saw Finch. Gone were the rectangular glasses, replaced by round ones which made him even more owlish than before. Finch was a professor in Fusco's books, but he didn't exactly act against the allegations with fashion choices like this one. Although, they did work for him.
“Woah, leave some ladies for the rest of us,” Fusco chuckled, gesturing to the thick lenses.
Finch exhaled, not in the mood for anything after this hiccup to start the day. “How amusing.”
Fusco let it go and started to walk with him, noting the newfound authority, straightened posture, and airborne walking stick. “Alright, so what did you want to discuss?”
They continued their meeting in a cafe about the recent number of an alcoholic golfer like nothing happened. The numbers, Fusco learned early on, were more important to his vigilante friends than any convenience life threw at them. And he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Oh, one more thing, Detective,” Finch started, while getting up from their table.
Lionel tried to sound annoyed, to even pretend like this side hustle wasn’t his favorite purpose in the world. “What's that?”
Finch gulped before smiling at him. “Thank you.”