10. Quell
Chapter ten
Quell
T his is my life now. Waking up in the spare room of the hitman who hasn’t killed me yet.
Or kissed me. I only dreamed about one of those last night, but the idea that my dreams have any say in the future is laughable.
Not that dreaming about death in the present is any less absurd.
Still, the drawings brought me here. To this new life.
The safe house. Talon. The drawings. Me, asking a question I never thought I’ll ask; “And if I decide I want the second drawing to happen?” And Talon, his voice like gravel, replying, “Then it will.”
What was I thinking?
I stretch, arms overhead, a blush crawling up my neck. When did I stop being afraid?
Ten days. That’s how long I’ve been here.
Ten days of waking up refreshed, of showering with warm water and always having clean clothes waiting.
Ten days of eating proper meals, at reasonable times.
Ten days of sleeping without screaming myself awake.
Well. Most nights. I could get used to this kind of treatment.
My bare feet hit the floor. I curl my toes against the cold concrete.
I don’t bother with socks anymore. Don’t need the armor of shoes in this place.
Usually breakfast arrives while I’m in the shower, but today, the door is open a crack.
I pull it wider and peer out into a nicely decorated hallway.
My instinct to explore is overruled by the smell of bacon coming from another room.
I pad into the kitchen, where Talon is cooking for us. A small table is set for two.
“Good morning, Quell.”
“Good morning…um…Talon.” Somehow the name seems wrong in such a domesticated situation.
“The kettle just boiled if you want tea.”
I reach for the kettle. Little flickers of last night’s dream blink behind my eyes. The kiss again, the memory making me flush.
His mouth on mine. Careful at first. Then not. His hand, rough and warm, cupping my jaw like I might shatter if he squeezes. The way his breath catches when I push in closer.
I pour water over the tea bag and watch the color swirl out, slow and reddish-brown. Steam curls up, fogging my glasses. I slide them off to wipe them clean, and the world goes fuzzy. Softer. Maybe that’s why the world feels different now. I’m not seeing it all the way through to the edges.
“You’re up early.”
Even now, after all this time, Talon’s voice still makes me jump. I shove my glasses up my nose and turn. He’s already in the doorway, crisp white shirt, dark slacks. No jacket, no tie. Just a hint of the man he turns into once he steps out of here.
“The drawback of a good night’s sleep,” I confess. My voice is rough, still thick with morning. “Tea?”
He nods once, and I reach for a second mug. This feels so normal, too natural for our relationship of killer and victim. This feels like a life where we could kiss, not kill.
“Any dreams?” he asks.
The real question hangs there, heavy. Any deaths? Any visions? Is he going to have to kill Mickey after all?
“No,” I lie. My cheeks go hot. “Just… normal dreams.”
He looks at me, and I wonder if he can see it; the lie, the truth, what I’ve seen, what I’ve felt, what I’ve wanted in that place where wanting doesn’t matter.
He takes the mug from me, our fingers almost touching. “Good.”
Just that word. It feels like it carries more than it should. Like he’s glad I’m not seeing death anymore. Maybe glad I’m seeing something else. Maybe I'm a good boy for him.
Maybe I'm an idiot for thinking this is more than it is.
He plates up the bacon and eggs, moving to the small table and setting them down. I slide into the seat and wait as he brings over the ketchup for me. I like this feeling where he knows me well enough not to need words.
“I was wondering if you would like to draw in the living room today; the lighting is better, and the view is… something.”
I glance around the apartment. It’s clearly a temporary home set up for my stay, a safe house or whatever they are called in my killer’s world. There are no signs this is lived in, no personality. But there is a chair near the window, and he’s clearly dragged the coffee table closer to that seat.
“I’d love to.”
As soon as my food is gone, my only thought is to try out the seating, the lighting, the view.
He obviously does the grown-up thing and clears away breakfast. The chair is soft; the lighting is better.
The view is…there. The view is of a red brick building, but rather than being a few feet away like the view from my bedroom, this one is separated by a little sideroad, room enough for a car and the trash bins.
My sketchbook is already open, with a fresh blank page waiting. I like this one. This one is new, expensive, the kind with thick, heavy paper that holds onto shading, the kind I’d never buy for myself. I’ve been drawing in it since I came here, and I approve of the paper.
I pick up a pencil next, rolling it between my fingers, feeling the cedar, smooth and solid. With no visions pushing at my brain, nothing urgent waiting to get out. Just the quiet, humming possibility.
Talon moves around the apartment, doing his thing, making a phone call in the bedroom, his voice too low for me to catch. Making the bed with perfect hospital corners, even though he knows I’ll wreck them again by morning. Lining up the books on the shelf, even though they’re already lined up.
I smile, finding comfort in the company. Just being in the space with someone else. Not home, not prison. Something in between.
When did that change? When did the safe house stop feeling like a cell and start feeling like… something else?
My old apartment flickers in my memory, a comparison I can’t help but make.
The musty smell of cheap carpet. The leaky faucet I never bothered to fix.
The creak of floorboards that haunted every step around my living space.
The silence, so thick I'd turned on the TV just to hear voices, even if I never watched.
Talon emerges from the bedroom, tie knotted perfectly, jacket draped over his arm. "I need to go out," he informs me, not quite meeting my eyes. "I’ll be back before dark."
I nod, trying to ignore the dip in my stomach. I guess I’m going back to my room to be locked in.
“Will you be here when I get back?”
His question throws me. Here, as in on the chair, in the apartment? Still behind his locked doors.
"I’ll be here," I nod, as if I have a choice. My smile is broad, trying to show him that he can trust me to exist outside of the small bedroom while he is gone.
He crosses to where I stand, and for a second I think he might say something else. Maybe about the drawing. Mickey. The future I see that scares us both for different reasons.
Instead, he reaches past me to check the window lock. His sleeve brushes my arm, just a whisper of contact, but it sends electricity racing across my skin, like the air before a storm. I freeze, breath caught, as the sensation travels up my arm and spreads through my chest.
It isn’t like touching anyone else. It isn’t like anything I've ever felt before. Just fabric against skin, and yet my body lights up as though he pressed his hand straight to my heart.
I can smell him; that crisp, sharp scent that isn’t quite cologne, isn’t quite soap, but something in between. I can feel the heat of him, close, then not, as he steps back with his keys in hand.
My mind spins. Is it affection? Arousal? Or just the starving need for human touch after so long alone? I can’t say. Everything blurs at the edges, like looking through a rainy window.
Talon pauses. His eyes flick to my hand, now gripping the armrest for balance. He doesn’t say anything, but his gaze sticks for a moment too long, and I wonder if he feels it too. That sudden current, unexpected, impossible to ignore.
“There’s food in the fridge,” he says, voice flat and careful. “Help yourself.”
Then he’s gone. The door clicks shut, the lock turning. I’m alone, but the apartment still has him in it; the smell, the memory, the ghost of his sleeve brushing my arm.
I drift through the day. Draw for a while, nothing clear, just shapes and shadows. Make tea, drink half, and leave the rest cooling on the table. Eat the lunch I find ready-made for me in the fridge.
When did this place start to feel like mine? When did the urge to run finally let me breathe?
Maybe it was the day Talon brought me the sketchbook.
Or maybe the night where he sat across from me and actually listened.
I tried to explain the visions to him, how they feel; not like dreaming, but like drowning in someone else’s life, lungs full of water that isn’t mine.
He didn’t just nod along. He asked questions, real ones, like he wanted to get it.
Like I’m not just something broken he has to fix.
Or maybe it was earlier that same day. He looked at one of my sketches; not a death, just a bird using a picture he gave me as a blueprint, and I caught him smiling. He didn’t look away. He even seemed to like it.
The hours stretch out, weird and loose. I think about my old life: how empty it is, that constant edge of fear, the nightmares that chase me out of sleep again and again.
I'd drag myself to my drawing table, barely awake, desperate to get the images down before they burned a hole straight through me.
When Talon comes back, the apartment seems to relax. He has a grocery bag in one hand and a jacket folded over his arm. The evening light hits him just right, making him look gold for a second, and then he steps into the shadowy hallway.
“You didn’t draw today,” he says, glancing at the blank page in my sketchbook.
"Nothing to draw," I say. It's not a lie, not really. The visions don’t show up. Just that dream, still hanging around, faint as a memory.
He accepts this, nodding, and heads for the kitchen. I watch him unpack the shopping; pasta, sauce, a bottle of wine. Proper food, not the endless noodles. He moves with his usual precision, but his shoulders look different tonight. Looser. Almost relaxed.
"I'll cook," he says. It isn’t a question.
I nod. The offer feels weirdly touching. "Can I help?"
He pauses, then hands me an onion and a knife. "Chop this. Small pieces."
We work together, not talking. The knife tapping the board fills the gap where words would go. My chopping is slow and uneven. He is fast, neat. But it works. Somehow, we fit. In this kitchen, in this moment, in whatever this life is.
Dinner is pasta with a sauce that tastes like it comes from someone’s mother. I watch him across the table. The way he eats, careful, barely making a sound. The way his eyes keep moving, never landing anywhere for long. Always checking. Always alert.
“Will you keep me?” The words tumble out, soft and half-dreamed, before I can catch them. “As long as I keep dreaming?”
He looks up. Fork in the air, like he’s forgotten what he’s doing. His eyes find mine. This time, he doesn’t look away.
“Yes,” he says. Barely a whisper. Maybe not even that.
It wasn't a proper answer. Not with everything between us. Mickey’s life. Talon’s people. The drawing of the kiss, still hanging there, promise or threat or both.
But it feels real. More real than anything else we’ve said.
He doesn’t explain. He never does. But as we clear the table, as the night thickens around us, as we drift through the apartment, something shifts. Something lands.
Later, in bed, I watch the shadows move on the ceiling and try to name what I’m feeling.
I don’t want the dreams to stop. Not anymore.
Not if stopping means leaving. Not if stopping means going back to that empty apartment, those empty days, that life where no one sees me. No one cares whether I wake up.
The nightmares are bad. The deaths hurt. The guilt of seeing through a killer’s eyes, the weight of Talon’s memories, I never shake that.
But when I close my eyes, I see his face. Feel the ghost of his sleeve on my arm. Hear his voice, “Yes,” like it’s the only word that matters.
Maybe the nightmares are worth it. If it means I don’t have to wake up alone.