17. Talon
Chapter seventeen
Talon
T he darkness in my bedroom isn’t the same anymore.
Before it was just emptiness: silent, blank, mine.
A place to crash between jobs, nothing special.
Now, even when the room is empty, I can tell Quell is here.
The air feels different. The awareness that, just down the hall, someone else is breathing, living in my space.
I stare up at the ceiling, following the faint stripes of streetlight that slip through the blinds.
Vincenzo’s laughter echoes in my head. Too easy.
The way he brushed off my ultimatum, that lazy flick of his hand. It grates on me.
Three in the morning. Sleep doesn’t even bother showing up.
I shift; the sheets are cold and smooth.
My brain won’t stop, keeps replaying Vincenzo’s office over and over, like I am stuck on a loop.
The way his eyes slid over Quell, sharp, calculating.
That smile that never touched his eyes. “You can keep him, Talon.” Like he was tossing a bone to a dog who’s done a trick.
I don’t buy it. Not really. Vincenzo hasn’t lasted this long by being soft on loose ends. And Quell, with his visions, his sketches, his knack for seeing things nobody should; that is a loose end if I’ve ever saw one.
Maybe there won’t be another obvious move.
No more Mickeys at the door, guns drawn.
Vincenzo is too smart for that. He knows I am watching.
He knows I’ve picked my side. But there are other ways.
Quieter ways. An “accident” while I am out.
A mugging gone bad. A hit-and-run with no witnesses, no driver.
Just thinking about Quell like that, in pain, or worse, eyes empty and gone, it hits me somewhere deep, hard enough to hurt.
I am not used to that. I’ve always kept my distance, kept things professional.
You can’t lose what you never let yourself care about.
But Quell has slipped through all that. Gotten under my skin.
I can’t even remember what it felt like before he was here.
I close my eyes, trying to force my breathing slow and steady. In for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight. Some old military trick that usually works. Not tonight.
A soft creak breaks the silence. The bedroom door, opening slowly, carefully. I don’t bother with the gun under my pillow; I know that step. My eyes adjust. There he is: Quell, just in pajama pants, arms rigid like he is bracing for something.
“Talon?” His voice barely makes it across the room. “Are you awake?”
“Yeah.” I push up onto my elbows. “What’s up?”
He enters fully, closing the door behind him with deliberate, almost exaggerated quiet. In the dark, his face is all sharp lines and shadow. I can feel the tension rolling off him in waves.
“I had another dream,” he says. Flat, almost like it doesn’t matter, but I catch the tremor underneath. “Not a bad one. Not like usual. But…” He stops. His throat works, like he is trying to swallow something he doesn’t want to taste. “I didn’t draw it, just like I promised. But I need…”
That makes me blink. He always draws them. Always. It is just… who Quell is. He has to get the pictures out of his head and onto paper, or they'll eat him alive.
“Who was it?” My voice comes out rougher than I want.
He shrugs, small and tight. “A woman. Older. Gray hair, all these tight curls.” He makes a vague circle around his head with his hand. “I don’t know her. She wasn’t… it wasn’t a brutal death. Not like normal.”
Some part of me can breathe again. Not someone from our world, then. Not a threat. Not a job. Not a warning.
“So why aren’t you sleeping?” I ask.
He stands there, shifting his weight from foot to foot, the silence stretching between us, full of words neither of us can quite spit out.
“I just…” He hesitates, jaw tight, like it hurts to say. “I just need a hug.” The last part barely makes it, so soft I almost miss it.
If anyone else said that to me, I’d probably laugh. No one ever asks me for comfort. No one looks at a man with my hands; the kind that has ended more lives than I care to count; and thinks: that’s where I’ll feel safe.
But Quell isn’t anyone else.
I lift the corner of my blanket. “Come here.”
He doesn’t hesitate. Crosses the room, bare feet soundless against the floorboards. The mattress dips as he slides in beside me. For a second, it is awkward, all elbows and knees and the weirdness of figuring out what is too close.
Then Quell settles in, back pressed to my chest, and that is that. His body fits against mine as if it were always supposed to be there. Like this is something we do every night, not just after bad dreams.
His skin is cool, like he’s been standing in the doorway longer than I thought. I drape an arm over his waist, careful at first, then tighter when he relaxes. His hair tickles my chin, and it smells faintly of the shampoo we both use now.
“Better?” I ask. My voice rumbles against his shoulder blades.
He nods. “Sorry,” he mumbles, barely audible. “For waking you up.”
“I was already awake.”
“Thinking about Vincenzo?”
Sometimes I forget how easy it is for him to read me now. How much he’s seen, in ways most people never could. He’s looked through eyes that aren’t his, wandered through dreams that show him more of my life than I’d ever planned to share.
“Yeah.” There is no point in pretending.
“He’s going to try something, isn’t he?” Quell’s voice is soft and resigned. Not scared, just sure.
My arm tightens around him. I can’t help it. “Maybe.”
“You don’t have to protect me, you know.” His hand finds mine, his fingers lacing through mine in the dark. “I knew what I was getting into. When I asked to come with you to see him.”
I don’t answer him. We both know it isn’t that simple. This stopped being just about protection a long time ago.
His breathing slows, deepens. I feel the exact moment sleep takes him, the way he goes heavy and loose against me. Just like that. Safe in a killer’s arms, drifting off like it is the most natural thing in the world.
Maybe for him, it is. He’s seen through my eyes. Felt what I feel every time I take a life. Drawn every death with a precision that still makes my skin crawl. He knows exactly what I am. And he still chooses this. Chooses me.
I lie still, listening to him breathe. My arm staying over him, protective and maybe a little possessive too. Outside, the city hums with late-night traffic, distant sirens, that restless white noise of other people’s lives going on while we lie here, caught in this strange, quiet moment.
My bed has never felt like this before. Never been warm with another person’s heat, never held anyone but me.
The professional distance I’ve kept for years, the clean, empty space between jobs and everything else; it's just gone. All that’s left is this; a sleepy artist curled against me, trusting enough to fall asleep in my arms.
I should feel wrong about it. Dangerous, even.
A liability I can’t afford. But it doesn’t feel like that at all.
It feels like slipping into a life I haven’t realized I want until it is already mine.
The daily routine we’ve built, the way we move around each other in the kitchen, the quiet scratch of Quell sketching while I clean my weapons.
His toothbrush next to mine, blue against black.
All these little domestic details sneaking in where I’ve always kept things sparse and sterile.
Quell shifts in his sleep, murmurs something I can’t catch. I adjust my arm around him, careful not to wake him. His breath is warm on my skin, soft and steady. The weight of him anchors me more than I expect. More than I’ve ever wanted to admit. I didn't even know I needed it.
I think about the dream he told me about.
The woman with gray curls. He hasn’t drawn it.
A change, even if it is small. Does it mean something?
Is he slipping away from the visions that bring us together?
The thought sends a flicker of panic through my chest. If the dreams stop, will he still need me? Will he still want to stay?
The question hangs there in the dark. No answer. Quell sleeps on, completely unaware. His face looks peaceful for once, the usual tension gone. The shadows under his eyes are softer in the dim light.
I trust him. More than I should. More than is safe for either of us. He knows what I am, what I do. He knows too much about Vincenzo, about the organization, about the bodies I’ve left behind. If he ever decides to talk…
But he won’t. I know that, deep down, the same way I know how to strip a gun blindfolded or which arteries bleed out fastest. Quell is mine now. I am his. Whatever has drawn us together; fate, luck, his weird gift; it has us locked in tight.
The clock on the nightstand blinks: 3:47 AM. Still hours before dawn. I can feel Quell’s warmth soaking into me, making my eyelids heavy even with my mind racing. His breathing is slow and deep now. The signs of real sleep. I match it without thinking. Inhale when he does. Exhale when he does.
This strange, quiet domesticity. This life I’ve landed in without planning, without warning. A killer and his dreamer, tangled together in the dark. It shouldn’t work. It can’t last. But right now, with Quell’s heartbeat steady against my palm, it is all I want.
I close my eyes. Whatever Vincenzo is planning, whatever is coming, it can wait until morning. Tonight, all that matters is this: Quell, safe in my arms. My bed, not cold or empty anymore. My life, not so compartmentalized and hollow.
Strange how quickly a man like me can get used to something like tenderness. Strange how easy it is to hold instead of hurt. Strange how little I mind the change.
My last thought before sleep is of Quell’s dream, the one he hasn’t drawn. The woman with gray curls. Who is she? What does she mean? Is she a warning, or a promise? Does she matter at all?
I’ll ask him in the morning. For now, sleep. For now, this quiet moment, stolen from a life that has never promised me anything but solitude.