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John's hands have pulled triggers and snapped bones and felt blood well up from wounds, but maybe that doesn't leave them stained but tender instead, with a gentleness that comes from knowing how it feels to break something. Once he knows that he's allowed, he wraps himself around them: lets Harold rest against his shoulder to take the weight off his aching spine, curls an arm around Sameen to keep her warm when she kicks away the sheets.
He doesn't touch Root, not right away, but one time he's half asleep and she slips under the covers next to him and soaks up his warmth, and he pulls the sheets tighter against her cool skin and feels her exhale against his chest, like an admission, like a gift.
Sameen's hands have held scalpels and fired guns and were curled around the steering wheels of fast cars. She wears latex gloves and places neat surgical stitches in their wounds, hides all their damage and scars beneath layers of pristine white gauze. She sleeps with her gun close by on the makeshift pile of mattresses and pillows and blankets that they keep in the back of the subway station.
When she kisses Root, it's all urgency and desire, her hands caught in Root's hair. When she kisses Harold, she lets him take his time: he's gentle and precise, but there is something wicked in the touch of his hand on her lower back, pulling her close. When she kisses Reese, he molds himself against her like a pleased cat, docile and pliant beneath her.
Harold's hands have pressed keys and fixed car engines and created magnificent things out of thin air. He lets his hand rest on Sameen's shoulder and strokes the nape of John's neck and runs his fingers through Root's hair.
They conspire to drag him off to sleep when he's sitting at the desk and working late at night: John kneels next to him and nuzzles his hand, his eyes glittering with promise. Shaw grabs hold of his sleeve and drags him away with her, careful that he can keep up, before digging into the aching muscles of his shoulders with her palms, soothing the pain with every touch of her hand.
Root wraps her arms around him and says: "Come on, Harry."
She sleeps peacefully in his arms, and when she dreams, he strokes her head and murmurs softly to her, tells her about all those lines of code, the endless games of chess he played against the ghost of his machine.
Root's hands have spilled blood and revealed secrets and detonated bombs. They're always cold, and she slips them under the fabric of John's shirt to press against the warmth of his skin, making him shudder. She learns how the scar tissue on Harold's skin feels against her palm, maps every inch of Sameen's body with her fingertips.
There's not enough room for all four of them in the back of the subway station, so they curl up closer together, a warm tangle of limbs and sheets and pillows.
Root thinks of all the blood she would spill for these people, the things she would burn to the ground for them, but Harold makes a soft noise and pulls her close, Sameen and Reese breathing quietly on either side of them, and tells her to go to sleep, it's fine my dear, just go to sleep.