8. GIVE
8
GIVE
The good thing about having an information broker in Incindious was that when someone crossed the gang, there wasn’t a nook or cranny in New York they could crawl into where Spencer couldn’t find them. Within twenty-four hours, they had the name of the scrapyard that crushed the car from the alleyway.
Also, the good thing about the boss having a reputation that reached to every corner of the Queens borough was that most people they talked to knew exactly what happened when Felix Bane got angry. Ten minutes after they arrived at the scrapyard, they had the name of the guy who hit Adam and where he liked to hang out. That might have had a lot to do with the owner of the scrapyard they left tied to his desk chair, dripping in kerosene, who got pretty loose lipped after Felix held up a book of matches and said it was going to get hot in there if he didn’t start talking.
That was how two days after Adam had his brush with death, a humid night found the three top members of Incindious descending into the dingy underground of College Point. A few glances shot their way as they reached the bottom of the stairs leading under the dive bar. Spencer blended in, preferring the anonymity, but the frayed edge of Blair’s tank top came down plenty low enough for his insignia tattoo to be visible. As for Felix, anyone in the place that had gang affiliations would have heard stories about the red-haired demon in a long coat who left ashes behind like footprints.
Blair walked with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, lightweight and black with a black fur-trimmed collar. More than a couple jokes had been made at his expense about how much it resembled Felix’s, and yeah, maybe he did buy it right after he joined Incindious and was still at the height of his hero-worship for the boss. Sue him.
The burly man at the bottom of the stairs blocked their path before they could join the crowd. “Check your weapons here, get ’em back when you leave.”
“Must be a lucrative business, having a fighting ring down here,” Spencer said, taking the silver gun out from under his blazer. He placed it in the plastic bin, along with the knife from his boot.
Blair’s skin crawled at the prospect of being unarmed in Phantom territory but if Spencer was going along with it, it must be okay. He laid the Beretta in the bin. As an afterthought, he took the butterfly knife out of his cargo pants that was hardly sharp enough to count as a weapon anymore, but he tossed it in there all the same.
“You too, big guy. Take all the weapons out,” the man said, unimpressed by Felix’s glowering.
Felix’s shoulders sank and he took the MAC-10 out of one of his inside coat pockets, then the magazine from the other side. He dropped them on top of Spencer and Blair’s weapons with a scowl.
The bouncer raised an eyebrow. “I know you’ve got more than that. Give ‘em up, buddy.”
The lines of Felix’s frown deepened into pure hatred as he pulled the Glock 18 off his back and threw it into the bin. Blair wasn’t sure that the boss was going to leave without putting a few rounds in the man responsible for taking his guns away, however temporary it was.
“ All of them.”
Felix took a hunting knife out of the holster on his thigh, a switchblade from his coat’s outer pocket and, after suffering an expectant look from the bouncer, both the fixed blade knives from each of his boots. He turned his empty pockets out with a petulant look that the bouncer met with a smile.
“There we go. He’s between fights right now, who wants him?”
Felix shrugged out of his coat and held it out to Spencer. “He’s mine.”
The crowd parted for the bouncer as he led them to the center of the room. There was a chain link cage about the size of a boxing ring, and the people closest to it began to murmur in anticipation as a new fighter approached. Felix stopped at the gate and pulled his white t-shirt over his head. It was already damp with sweat, thanks to the basement lacking air conditioning and being packed with people. Spencer folded it over his arm with Felix’s coat.
“Kick his ass for Adam,” Blair said.
Felix flashed him a crooked smile as he wrenched the gate open. “You ain’t gotta tell me that.”
He stepped under the lights, murmurs rippling through the crowd. Their hushed voices were no more than a buzz against the music and the much louder thrum of bets being placed. Curses were being thrown at the new contender for the house fighter, but it all began to blend into the same hushed realization as the whispers spread through the room .
Ace, already in the cage and covered in a sheen of sweat and blood, squared off with his fists up. Blair seethed in silence; this was their guy. His jaw clenched when Felix stood across from him with his fingers hooked in the belt loops of his jeans, relaxed as could be. “Come on, red, let’s go,” Ace said.
Felix didn’t move. “Do you know who I am?”
“You’re my opponent. Let’s go , I don’t have all night.”
“Adam Winters of Incindious.”
Their words probably weren’t legible to the crowd, but Blair could hear them from where he stood right up against the chain link barrier with Spencer. The spotlights left no question to the malice in Ace’s smile.
“What, were you one of his boys? Did I off your dealer?” Ace taunted, bouncing on his heels with renewed vigor.
Felix huffed out a laugh. “You really must be at the bottom of the food chain for them to have not told you who I am.”
Blair swallowed. He wasn’t buying the calm facade for a minute. Felix was ready to explode and raze everything around him.
Word had spread far enough through the crowd that they seemed to know who was standing up there even if Ace didn’t, and though their impatience for the fight to start was becoming palpable, there seemed to be a collective decision not to voice their complaints too loudly. Blair’s shirt clung to his back as he watched Ace run his mouth, driving nail after nail into his own coffin. It wasn’t like when Wren took an attitude with the boss. Wren had been needed, and he hadn’t been gloating about mowing down a member of Incindious like it was yard work. But the guy in that cage was dancing on every one of Felix’s buttons.
“I guess you’re in Incindious, huh?” Ace said, taking a long step forward to get in Felix’s face.
“Am I in Incindious?” Felix chuckled, and it soon escalated to a deep laugh that landed just on the other side of unhinged. “You dumb bastard.”
Felix’s boot flew off the ground and drove into Ace’s abdomen, dead center between his ribs. Saliva flew out of the boy’s mouth as he staggered backward. He leaned forward to desperately suck in the air that had just been knocked out of him. A poor choice, as Felix took one step forward to thrust his knee under Ace’s jaw, and Blair heard a sickening crack.
Ace staggered up to his feet, just in time to catch a left hook to the face. He was still reeling when Felix threw an uppercut under Ace’s jaw, knocking the smaller man onto his ass. Ace groaned as he clamored to his feet.
“Don’t worry, Adam lived,” Felix said, sweeping Ace with a foot behind his ankle before he could regain his balance. “And you’re gonna live, too.”
The hair on the back of Blair’s neck stood on end. Spencer was rigid next to him; hell, he had probably sensed the dark turn of Felix’s intentions long before Blair did. Ace had been down long enough for the match to be called but no one was daring to intervene.
Spencer leaned over to say into Blair’s ear, “We have company.”
“Phantom,” Blair muttered without need of confirmation, but getting the boss’ attention was going to be a lost cause for now.
“You’re gonna live with your pain just like he is,” Felix said.
Ace shrieked as Felix’s body coiled. “L-look man, I was just doing what they told me—OH god !”
His scream and the accompanying crunch that followed shattered the tense atmosphere into chaos. The bouncer ran into the cage as Felix walked out, and people were turning away from the grotesque sight of a boy’s kneecap that had just been stomped in with the full brunt of Felix’s weight. More importantly to Blair and Spencer, members of Phantom came pouring out of the woodwork like cockroaches.
Something swung toward Blair, a blur in his peripheral vision. He barely had time to react to keep the wood post from connecting with the side of his head. It didn’t surprise him there were construction materials laying around the dingy basement but damn he was glad the rusted nail sticking out of the end hadn’t made contact. He used the momentum to his advantage, pulling the Phantom lackey toward him and driving an elbow up into his throat.
“Kennedy!”
He spun out from under his assailant’s arm at the sound of Spencer’s voice, raising his hand as soon as he realized the strategist was at the bouncer’s station by the stairs. The Incindious emblem on the grip of his Beretta reflected metallic in the light as it spun toward him, and Blair’s wrist snapped back with the gun’s weight when he caught it. A man the size of a tank went barreling toward Spencer. The strategist dropped him with one hit from the butt of the Victory to the pressure point on the back of his neck before maneuvering deftly through the crowd to press his back to Blair’s.
“We’re outnumbered,” Spencer said.
“They’re outgunned,” Blair replied.
Felix joined them, snapping the magazine into the MAC. “Somebody’s got the kid and they’re making a run for it. I bet they’ll lead us back to Isaac. Spencer, you’re the fastest, you follow them and we’ll thin ‘em out down here, make sure they don’t get in the way.”
A swift glance over the room and Spencer locked on to the figure in all black with a full face motorcycle helmet, making for a service door as quickly as they could while supporting Ace’s weight.
“They’re probably headed for a service elevator, I’m going to take the stairs and cut them off,” Spencer said.
Felix leveled the gun on someone coming toward them. “Do what you gotta do, just don’t fuck up my jacket.”
The Phantom member who rushed them didn’t seem eager to meet the same fate as Ace, as they saw the MAC-10 and hauled ass back the way they came. The previous chaos of the room was nothing compared to it now that guns were involved.
“Behind you,” Felix warned.
Blair had already been saying, “Boss!” as he saw the gleam of gunmetal coming toward Felix.
They reversed their positions in a seamless movement, Blair twisting under Felix’s arm as Felix sighted the gun over Blair’s shoulder. The rapid popping of the MAC met the bang of the Beretta as they took out the person behind each other. Someone screamed at the sound of gunfire. The woman Blair shot was rolling on the ground, blood gushing between her fingers where she held her wounded shoulder, and Blair stepped right over her to make for the exit. The man Felix shot wasn’t moving.
“Boss, as much as I want to stay and pick these guys off, I think I hear sirens,” Blair called out.
Felix nodded. “Let’s split.”
The narrow staircase was already packed with people fighting to get out so they made for the service door that they had seen Ace being carried to. Sure enough, it opened to an old service elevator that looked like it had the potential to be more dangerous than the swarm of law enforcement headed their way, but they got on nevertheless. Felix punched the arrow that had become the cornerstone of a spiderweb.
Blair looked over. Sweat held a few strands of Felix’s hair against his neck, turning them crimson and it left a sheen on his still naked upper body, making the puckered edges of his long healed bullet holes more pronounced in the dingy light of the elevator. Blair raised his eyes to Felix’s face and found him perfectly calm, his breathing perfectly even as though he didn’t just cripple someone, as though they weren’t racing the clock to keep him from going back into handcuffs. Blair turned his gaze back to the elevator doors when they opened with a groan of aging hardware. He didn’t want to look at that unfazed expression anymore, didn’t want to think of what Felix had gone through (or, more unsettling still, what he had done ) for this night to seem small in comparison.
“I knew you guys would turn up sooner or later.”
Blair heard the words as soon as the elevator doors opened, and met the guy halfway as he swung. This member of Phantom looked older than most of the ones Blair had seen, but he also seemed to have more fighting experience to match his age. Blair grabbed his arm before he could connect but in the next moment he was wrenched out of the elevator. Blair's face was the first thing to hit the yellowed tile floor. A commotion rose over the ringing in his ears and then the older man landed next to him, knocked out cold.
Felix grabbed the back of Blair’s shirt and hauled him to his feet. The hallway spun at first but once the flickering exit sign stopped rotating around his field of vision, he figured he was alright.
He didn’t complain about Felix being the first one through the door. There was a coppery taste in his mouth and his reflexes still felt a little sluggish. No one was waiting on the other side this time. The sirens were deafening outside of the bar, without the interference of music and cries of panic, and Blair knew it wasn’t just his currently oversensitive hearing when he saw Felix’s jaw tighten.
“Are you good to ride your bike?” Felix asked.
Blair glanced down the alley toward the parking lot. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”
“Get the hell out of here. Spencer went after our best shot for someone who might lead us back to Isaac. We’ll knock Phantom around some more another day.”
Blair’s mouth went dry as they ran for the front of the bar. The cops were way too close for comfort. He wasn’t as worried about getting arrested since he had a clean record and, against the rest of Incindious’ weapons, a relatively clean firearm. Felix, on the other hand. He was the one who had spent five years in Dannemora, who had come out with a haunted look in his eyes and a roughly inked flame on his forearm that would later become Incindious’ insignia. There wasn’t a cop in Queens who wouldn’t love to stand at a podium and be commended for putting Felix Bane back in prison.
“Don’t go back to the bar,” Felix called out as opened his driver’s side door. “We’ll go our own ways and meet back up in the morning, let the dust settle.”
“Understood.”
The police cruiser was close enough for its lights to turn the back of the Mustang violet for a moment before Felix tore out of the parking lot. Blair straddled his bike and started it up. He kicked off as soon as the engine was running, since his Yamaha was essentially a neon sign that said “I’m a member of Incindious, please arrest me” if the cops saw it from the side. His skin flashed blue as he pulled around the cruiser turning into the parking lot. Felix had gone right, so he went left. It was a good mile or two before he worked up the nerve to check his rearview mirror; the bar had disappeared around the block, and none of the cops had followed him.
He let himself relax, finally. His head was throbbing and his leg was on fire but he no longer had any problems that a couple of aspirin couldn’t fix. He looked to the sky at the sound of thunder, and cool raindrops slid over his face. Blair rode through the steadily increasing drizzle until he saw the first open gas station that didn’t look busy. He had been riding long enough that he was likely in a different law enforcement’s precinct.
Blair walked into the small, harshly lit gas station and bee-lined for the bathroom to assess the damage now that he was out of College Point. He got the distinct prickly sensation of being watched and looked around. The only other customer in the place was staring at him, and the cashier watched him warily from around the lottery case.
He let himself into the bathroom, the motion activated lights flickering on as he locked the door behind him. “Shit,” he muttered when he saw his reflection, immediately finding the reason for their stares. A cut ran through his eyebrow with a trail of blood leading down to his eye where it was caked in his lashes. He barely remembered blinking away something wet during the fight—everything had happened too fast to worry over such a small thing at the time.
Blair turned the faucet on and set to scrubbing his face. At least the cut must not have been too bad, since the bleeding had already stopped. It stung when he splashed water over it and left a pinkish tint on the paper towel he dried off with, but there was no fresh blood when he checked the mirror a final time.
The relief on the cashier’s face when he left was palpable. He couldn’t blame her. It wasn’t a bad part of town, but someone walking in the door bloody and disheveled just spelled trouble. The suspicion wasn’t even unwarranted, since Blair had just been running from the cops.
Blair didn’t consider himself a bad person but he wasn’t the best, either. He was an okay person who did bad things. There was definitely worse out there. He shuddered as Jinx’s face accompanied the thought. Yeah, way worse.
His phone rang as he started to get on his bike. He peered down at the ID, but the number wasn’t saved in his phone. Huh . He had all the members of Incindious in his contacts as well as his few family members. It was a Manhattan area code.
It occurred to him that it could be a member of Phantom, trying to get a trace on him, but after the fight back there they were probably still regrouping. Blair also wasn't a particularly hard man to find, so tracing his phone would be a waste of energy on Phantom's part when they could just look for the flashy street bike with the gang logo on the side. He sighed and swiped the green button. “Hello?”
“Hello, Blair.”
He almost dropped the phone onto the wet pavement at his feet. Warmth flooded his body, erasing the fatigue and pain, if only for a moment as the sound of Wren’s voice wrapped around him. “Hey, Sunshine.” Then he remembered the texts and the warmth crept up his neck into his face. I’m never drinking again, he promised himself on the spot.
“I dropped my phone. I didn’t get it replaced until today.”
“At midnight?” Blair said, the incredulous words leaving him before he thought to just be grateful that Wren wasn’t mentioning the texts. He wanted to entertain the idea that Wren had fucked his phone up before Blair sent them, but Blair was never that lucky.
Wren clicked his tongue. Blair idly wondered when he had started finding that noise attractive. “I got it back on my way to the hospital this morning. I just got home.”
“Oh, right. Yeah.” Blair toed the ground, the moment heavy with silence until rain began to pelt the pavement. “How was your day?” God, what a mundane question. Maybe Wren had a point when he said Blair liked to fill the air with small talk. He leaned against his motorcycle with a hand over his eyes.
“It improved once I had a phone again.” There was a gurgling noise in the background. A coffee maker, knowing Wren.
“Missed me that much?” Blair joked.
“Yes, terribly. I feared my self esteem would wither away and die without someone to call me pretty.”
Damn it. So he wasn’t going to be let off the hook for that. “I’m sorry about—”
“Come over.”
“...What?”
“I’m tired, I don’t feel like talking on the phone. Just come over if you’re not going to bed or something. I’ll send you my address.”
Blair was still making incoherent sounds when his phone beeped to signal the end of the call. Motherfucker had hung up on him again. He stared at the screen until a message popped up from the same unsaved number. It was as Wren promised, an address and nothing more. He continued to stare until he thought there might have been some damage done when that two-by-four connected with his head. A few hours ago he had been resigned to never hearing from Wren again—and even worse, that had bothered him—and now he was being invited to his apartment at midnight.
A million questions buzzed around in his mind. What about Doc? Was Wren going to ridicule him endlessly about those texts? Was Doc waiting there to beat him up for calling his boyfriend pretty? Blair ruled the last one out, at least. Doctors had to take a vow, first do no harm and all that. He didn’t think he was in any danger from Dr. Garrett.
Surely it was a bad idea to go. Wren was a bad idea.
Blair tried to tell himself he hadn’t decided, as he opened the address on a map. He tried to tell himself he hadn’t decided, as he committed the location of the building to memory and turned the key in the ignition.
He tried to tell himself he hadn’t decided, and he went straight to Wren, like he always did.
The rain was coming down harder the closer he got to Manhattan. By the time he stopped in front of the apartment building, his clothes were soaked through. It was a ritzy building, of course. He shouldn’t have expected any less.
At least the elevator was a lot nicer than the other one Blair had been in that night. He hit the button for the fourth floor and it gave only the slightest jolt when he reached his destination. Wren’s was the last door on the right.
He took a deep breath and knocked. There must have been something wrong with him, to be more nervous about seeing Wren than he had been about getting arrested. A deadbolt turned on the other side, the knob twisted and Wren opened the door. He didn’t say anything, just stepped aside for Blair to come in.
“I didn’t think I was going to hear from you again,” Blair admitted.
Wren closed the door and faced him. He was wearing that damn shirt from the time they’d had dinner, baring his shoulder and a long stretch of collarbone. “Why?”
“Well I didn’t know about Doc before, and I figured if either that or my stupid texts weren’t enough, what you saw at Incindious might have been.” The last part wasn’t completely true, the thought hadn’t crossed his mind before, but he wanted to throw at least one thing in the mix that wasn’t entirely his fault.
Wren leaned back against the door and raised an eyebrow. Part of his bangs were tucked behind one ear, letting the light wink off his earrings. “What part of ‘trauma surgeon’ doesn’t compute to you? That wasn’t the first time I’ve seen internal bleeding and it will hardly be the last.”
“Yeah, but what about—”
“As for your texts, you should know by now I’m not bothered that you aren’t particularly bright.”
“Wow, thanks .”
Wren pushed himself away from the door to stand in front of Blair, the distant rumble of thunder covering the sound of his footsteps on the marble floor of the entryway. “And as for Reymond, even I’m at a loss for how you thought that one up.”
Blair blinked and shifted, only then becoming aware of the puddle he was creating with his dripping hair and clothes. “The day you operated on Adam, you said you were going home with him.”
“And?”
“And that usually implies… you know. Stuff.”
“Oh,” Wren said, with a sudden look of understanding. “You are an idiot.”
“Hey!”
Wren reached back to open the door. He pointed out of it and Blair thought he was telling him to leave, but there was only enough room for him to look where Wren was pointing, he couldn’t actually get out the door. So he stood next to Wren and followed his finger to a door down the hallway.
“I came home with him because I live here, genius, and he lives right there.”
Oh.
Oh.
Wren was right. He really was an idiot.
“So you guys aren’t together.”
“Gross. God no.” Wren closed the door again and, in a rare act of kindness for what little dignity Blair was still holding on to, didn’t make him say anything further on the subject. “You’re already here so you might as well come further than the front door.”
Blair’s stomach fluttered as he followed Wren further inside, hanging his coat up on the hooks by the door so there was one less article of clothing to trail water across Wren’s apartment. Blair was happy that Wren and Doc weren’t together. He didn’t know what to do with that feeling. He put it aside for the time being, letting his attention shift to the large space that opened up beyond the entryway. He let out a low whistle.
“Nice place,” he said.
“I guess. My father picked it.”
A black leather sectional faced the windows, which consisted of an entire wall of glass. There was no TV. A desk took up most of the wall diagonally across from the windows, with a keyboard in the center of three monitors, and books were piled on every available inch of space. A stack of papers sat next to the keyboard and there was more on the coffee table. After looking around the living room and glancing at the kitchen, Blair determined there wasn’t a flat surface in the place that didn’t have at least one empty coffee mug on it. That was the only sign of disorder in the apartment. Even the clutter of books and papers appeared organized in their own way.
“Did you ever go get your stitches taken out?” Wren asked with the doubtful tone of someone who knew the answer.
“I’ve been kinda busy.”
“You shouldn’t let them scab over, they aren’t dissolving stitches. They need to be removed.” Blair’s mumbled excuse was lost in a thunderclap. Wren rolled his eyes. “Sit down.”
Blair sat on the leather sectional as the room flashed white, followed almost immediately by more thunder. He was glad he wasn’t out riding his bike. The wind had picked up, he could hear it whistling against the glass.
Wren came over with his hair thrown into a messy ponytail and wearing a pair of the blue medical gloves he always seemed to have around. “Pants off.”
“Um.” There was no reason not to remove them, since it was impossible to get to his stitches otherwise. No reason other than him being alone with Wren in his apartment and his mind rapidly detouring somewhere besides getting his stitches removed. “Yeah.”
If he thought his own reaction to the request was awkward, it was nothing compared to the effort of getting his soaked cargo pants down. They weren’t tight fitting which helped but they were sodden and heavy. His stomach flipped when Wren knelt down and took the waistband in hand. Fuck my life , Blair thought, willing his body not to betray him as Wren worked them off his hips. All the teasing remarks and lingering glances had prepared him for Wren taking full advantage of the opportunity. Much to Blair’s surprise, Wren pulled his pants down to his knees with clinical indifference before picking up a wallet sized kit he had brought over from the desk.
“I can’t believe it’s healed so well, given how careless you’ve been,” Wren said, nudging him down to lay on his stomach.
The vulnerable position made him anxious, but he had put Adam’s life in Wren’s hands, so surely he could stand this much. He propped his chin on folded arms, feeling the cool touch of an antiseptic wipe on the back of his thigh.
“I didn’t mean for you to have to take your work home with you,” Blair said. There was an odd tugging sensation in his leg.
“It’s good practice.”
Blair turned his head to watch the rain. Maybe it was because Wren—despite all his notable personality flaws—had that trustworthy aura of a doctor, but Blair was quick to forget about the embarrassment of his position. Wren was different once he had medical tools in his hands. There was no teasing, just a calm, determined drive to complete his task. In what seemed like no time at all, he was telling Blair that he was done, and Blair could feel a gauze pad on the back of his thigh when he sat up.
“Sit up here to do the other ones, I feel bad having you kneeling on the floor in your own apartment,” Blair mumbled, turning sideways on the couch.
Wren’s lips turned up and Blair flushed all the way to his ears, imagining the innuendos probably going through Wren’s mind. He couldn’t have been more glad when Wren sat sideways on the couch to face him and started working on the stitches in the entry wound, because that sharp tongue would be silenced for at least a few minutes. In nothing but his boxers, there would be no hope of concealing his reaction if Wren kept talking like that.
Blair watched the black sutures slide free between Wren’s latex clad fingers. All kidding aside, he had healed better than he expected, no longer of a break than he gave his leg after he’d gotten out of the hospital. Counting the time he was admitted, it was going on a couple of weeks since he’d been shot. It didn’t hurt when Wren pulled the stitches out; only that weird tugging again where scabs had attempted to form, but no pain.
“Keep these clean,” Wren advised, snipping and removing the last one.
“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Blair’s eyes followed Wren’s hand when he dropped the sutures on a napkin on the coffee table. “Really, though. Thanks for this.”
Wren pulled each corner of the napkin in and went to dispose of it. From somewhere else in the apartment, the kitchen maybe, he said, “I wasn’t going to let my hard work go to waste.”
Blair paused where he had been pulling his pants back up. “You were in the operating room that night?” he asked when Wren returned.
Wren came to stand in front of him. His gloves had been discarded along with the sutures, his hands bare and glowing white when lightning flashed outside. “I stitched up the back of your leg.”
The rain was finally coming down in sheets but Blair wasn’t watching it anymore. He found himself unable to look away from Wren, who he had been tied to for even longer than he realized, who had left his mark on Blair’s body before Blair had seen him for the first time.
Wren touched his face and Blair was glad the storm rendered his gasp inaudible. It was a light touch above his eye, nothing sensual or remarkable, but it forced the air out of his lungs a little faster anyway. “What happened?” Wren asked, his raspy voice almost lost in the rain pounding against the glass.
“Got in a fight,” Blair said, trying to tear his eyes from Wren’s and failing.
Wren traced the length of Blair’s brow with his thumb. “Stupid.”
“Maybe.”
Wren lowered his hand from his face, slid it under Blair’s wet hair to rest against his neck. “Your heartbeat is erratic again.”
“Probably,” he breathed, and he took his next breath against Wren’s lips.
Kissing Wren was as terrifying and perfect as Blair imagined it would be.
He didn’t know if the hand on the back of his neck pulled him in first or if it was his reaching for Wren’s bare shoulder, or maybe they just met halfway, all he knew was reason slipping out from under him as he fell into Wren’s gravity.
Wren made a soft sound against his mouth that raced through his blood faster than adrenaline, hotter in his stomach than a shot of the strongest liquor.
“Wren,” Blair said, pulling back.
Wren leaned his forehead against Blair’s, clearly not ready to go far from his lips yet. “Yeah?”
“If you’re not with Doc, then be with me.”
Wren’s fingers curled restlessly against the side of his neck. “I’m in the middle of medical school and I have exams coming up. I don’t have much time for you.”
“I’m in the middle of a gang war, I know the feeling,” Blair said with a faint smile.
Wren’s face was tilted back just far enough for Blair to see a furrow between his brows. “I’m kind of a fuckup.”
“Be my fuckup.”
Wren kissed him again and all the uncertainty was gone. In its place was a need unlike anything Blair had ever felt before; a need to be closer, a need for air because he stopped breathing as soon as he felt Wren’s tongue caress the seam of his lips. Blair felt like he’d never kissed anyone before at all, with how different this was from the awkward, exploratory touches he exchanged with his brief highschool girlfriend. The heat from Wren’s mouth traveled down Blair’s body, into his veins like it meant to light his blood on fire.
Everything else around them became a distant hum of nothingness as Wren kissed every ounce of logic out of Blair’s mind. Even the rain hammering the wall of glass they stood in front of was quiet compared to Blair’s heartbeat pounding in his ears, and when thunder cracked outside, Blair didn’t flinch.
Blair’s fingers curled around Wren’s nape, pulling him closer.
Definitely a bad idea .