17. GRIT
17
GRIT
Ow.
Blair woke up to a dull throbbing in his leg and a warmth against his front. He got around pretty good for it to have only been about three weeks since he was shot but his body still liked to remind him when he overdid it. His face warmed at the thought of how he exerted himself the night before. Images flashed behind his eyelids like retina burn; stumbling into the apartment, looking down at Wren on the bed, and maybe most memorable of all was the invitation to stay.
Oh, yeah. He stayed.
He opened his eyes as he realized he wasn’t at home. The room was only slightly brighter than last night, a halo of light around the thick curtains the sole proof it was even daytime. He also realized the heat against his body came from Wren. His back was to Blair’s chest, his waist secured under Blair’s arm even in sleep. Blair resisted the urge to press his lips against the pale skin so close. He would rather let Wren rest. He remembered Wren saying he was on call, but he didn’t know when he was supposed to be there (or even what time it was without trying to reach his phone on the nightstand) and Blair didn’t plan on disturbing him to ask. Wren didn’t get enough sleep as it was. If he was late, someone could call him.
He stretched, toes scrunching up against the back of Wren’s calf. As much as he wanted to savor the rare, quiet moment, his bladder was making a plea for him to get the hell out of bed. He reluctantly let go of Wren’s waist and slid off the bed.
He picked his phone up off the nightstand and left his gun where it lay next to Wren’s glasses. Even his paranoid ass wasn’t taking his 92 to the bathroom. He wondered, leaving the bedroom, if Wren would care if he used his shower. Sweat and trace remains of other things had dried on his body and he could desperately use some hot water and soap. I don’t think he’d care. Look at this place, the water probably heats back up before you’re done drying off.
The bathroom was unchanged from the only other time he’d gone in there, looking for a hairbrush. He closed the door softly, mindful of Wren still being asleep, and crossed the room to step into the shower. He stared up at the shower head. This bitch had settings. It took him a humiliating five minutes to realize all he had to do was twist the base to turn it on. Ever the considerate houseguest, he didn’t change the settings even though whatever ungodly one Wren had it set to made it feel like Blair was going to get more holes blown through him by the water pressure.
Fucking masochist .
He tilted his head back and made sure his hair was good and wet before he ran shampoo through it. It smelled like Wren, and Blair smiled to himself as water and suds ran down his back.
“Morning.”
“Fuck!” Blair shouted, dropping the body wash he’d been holding.
Wren stepped in behind him with a quiet laugh. “Only you would be so surprised by the owner of this apartment walking into his own bathroom.”
“I just, you startled me,” Blair said, working hard to put words together at the sight of Wren’s face without his glasses. Not that Wren didn’t look great in them, but it was the first time Blair had seen them absent. “I hope you don’t mind me borrowing your shower.”
Putting conditioner in fell much lower on his list of priorities as Wren leaned him against the wall, Wren’s hair falling under the spray, slicking the longest strands to his shoulders while rivulets of water streamed down his bangs and off his face. “I’ve been awake for five minutes and you’re already naked, I don’t have any objections,” Wren said, and Blair hoped he didn’t see his throat move when he swallowed. He sounded really good when he had just woken up, with the usual raspiness of his voice even more pronounced.
Wren kissed him and Blair kissed back even as his body protested the thought of doing anything strenuous again. As tempting as it was to let guide those hands elsewhere, he didn’t think he could handle sex again this soon, and Wren had to be at the hospital so Blair reluctantly pulled away to pick the conditioner back up.
Wren, for his part, showered as efficiently and somewhat violently as he did everything else. He scrubbed shampoo through his hair and when his fingers hit a tangle he just forced them through it and yanked it out.
“I got it,” Blair said, moving his hands aside. “Christ, I don’t know how you have any hair left if this is how you treat it.”
Wren sighed, tilting his head back into Blair’s hands.
Blair rinsed it, worked conditioner from the ends up to his roots, and maybe massaged his scalp for longer than he had to while he rinsed that out but dammit, Wren turned to putty in his hands when Blair messed with his hair. It was hard not to take advantage of it. He knew Wren was probably late as it was, though, so he only indulged himself briefly.
Once they got out he wrestled with the urge to say something about Wren letting him stay. That was something Wren allegedly didn’t do and it seemed significant, but Wren was infuriatingly Wren and there was a good chance he would shut down as soon as Blair put him on the spot about it. So Blair held his tongue and focused on trying to shake out some of the wrinkles in his clothes from the night before. They were also cold as shit from being damp.
“Do you want some clothes?” Wren asked around his toothbrush, not even trying to conceal his amusement as he looked at Blair in the mirror, watching him shiver.
Blair accepted and instantly regretted it. Thanks to his thicker arms and broader shoulders, Wren’s scrubs were the only thing that fit him, and the pants had to be rolled up because they were a good six inches too long on him. Wren loved it, of course.
“Fuck you,” Blair said, trying to get his gun to sit in the back of the flimsy waistband.
Wren pulled his hair up into a ponytail. “Promises, promises.”
Wren made coffee before they left and they spent the elevator ride, then the walk to the parking garage in comfortable silence. Or as comfortable as it could be while Blair was forced to witness how fast Wren drank his coffee as though he had a personal vendetta against his heart’s continued function.
Once they reached his bike and the Audi, Blair said, “I know you’re going to be tied up this afternoon, but about the warehouse…”
“I’ll come by that sad dive bar once my call is over,” Wren said, lips curling into a smirk.
Blair finished cramming his clothes under the seat of his bike and pointed at him. “The bar is not sad, you take that back!”
Wren swung his keys around his finger. “Sad and outdated and—”
His words ended with a wheeze and a huff of laughter as Blair’s fist planted in his chest. Wren made his exit on that, went around to duck into the car and drowned out Blair’s attempt to get the last word with the sound of the engine. Blair gave him the finger as he passed by but couldn’t fully keep a smile off his face.
Blair sat at the bar, watching the place fill up. They weren’t open to the public for another couple of hours but it looked like everyone in Incindious was going to show up like Spencer asked. Sometimes he forgot just how many of them there were. Incindious dominated Flushing but it had members all over Queens, all bearing their mark, all ready to be assigned their roles in the fight against Phantom. Even Ben had shown up, a risky move as their inside member of the 109th Precinct. Blair gave him an especially enthusiastic wave, though. He hadn’t forgotten that Ben was the one to handle the police report for his injury and probably had a lot to do with none of them getting pegged when Adrian’s charred body showed up.
He took a sip of the bourbon Spencer had left him with before he went outside to man the door. With his photographic memory, no one would get past him if they weren’t part of Incindious. Blair was pretty sure their strategist had a color coded filing cabinet instead of a brain in his head. He sighed and took a longer drink. All Blair had managed so far in the fight against Phantom was to end up in a relationship with someone who could help them. For Incindious’ defense, he had done fuck-all to help.
The roar of conversation dropped to curious murmurs around him. He knew that sound, or lack thereof. Outsider. It wasn’t spoken, but it was said in the rigidly set forms around him, the hands that had started drifting to jackets and pants that concealed holsters. Blair spun on his stool to face the door. Wren stood just inside the entrance with all eyes on him. He stared back coldly, sending a chill down Blair’s spine. Incindious was imposing enough just as a whispered reputation on the street but assembled, they were nothing short of an army. Dozens of them with half drawn weapons and Wren looked at them like insects.
Blair saw someone break away from the crowd, the blade of a butterfly knife flashing silver against the warm tones of the bar. “Hey,” he barked, and they froze.
Most of them shifted their imploring looks to him, and Blair extended his arm. “He’s with me.”
The tension raised the hair on the back of his neck. Many stared, some in displeasure, and Blair curled his fingers in a beckoning motion. Shoes scuffled on the hardwood as Incindious parted to make a path. Wren didn’t meet any of their distrustful eyes as he walked between them. He smirked when he reached the bar.
“I didn’t know they were so afraid of you,” Wren said, leaning into Blair’s side and draping his arm around his neck.
Blair grasped Wren’s waist and laced his fingers with the ones on his shoulder. “They respect me, there’s a difference.”
Chatter broke out again, but this time Blair could pick out the hushed tones underneath, the disbelieving words—
“ Wasn’t he at the reopening?”
“ So that’s Kennedy’s boyfriend.”
“ I think the haughty bastard needs knocked down a few pegs—”
“— you won’t get within a foot of him with a weapon, not with Kennedy here—”
Spencer’s voice cut across them, clear and commanding. “Alright, let’s get this underway, people. We have a lot to discuss.”
Blair blew out a sigh of relief as the room fell silent. His own eavesdropping was making his skin crawl. Was Wren right, was the rest of Incindious afraid of him?
He was dislodged from his thoughts by Spencer gesturing to them. “We have someone assisting us with technological capabilities to get us into Phantom’s base. The reason I’ve asked you all here tonight isn’t because everyone will be participating in our first move against Phantom.” Spencer held up a hand to silence the protests bubbling up from the half-circle that had formed around him in front of the bar. “If this goes awry, I think Phantom will come for us with a ferocity the likes of which we haven’t seen yet. Our intent is to gather information that will decide our next move.”
Marie hopped up to sit on the bar to be seen with the help of Jake who, Blair noticed bitterly, hadn’t got near the hostile reception Wren did despite not being a member either. Spencer continued, “Our primary goal is to deal with Isaac, we don’t want to engage Phantom in its entirety before we know his whereabouts if we don’t have to. Enough Incindious blood has been shed already.”
Everyone stiffened as one at the sound of boots hitting the ground. Blair didn’t have to look at the path opening in the crowd to know they belonged to the boss, having finally risen from the couch. Felix strode up to the bar with Julian at his side.
“From this point on, I want all of you ready,” Felix said, coat sweeping out around his ankles as he came to a stop in front of the bar. “As soon as I find out where that bastard Isaac is, we’re hitting the fuckers with all we’ve got.” He shook a cigarette out of his pack with a sigh. “And Blair’s punk ass boyfriend is gonna help so don’t give him any trouble.”
A weighted silence followed his words. No one could argue with him if they liked having their teeth in their mouths but there was no mistaking the wariness in the room. Irritation thrashed in Blair’s chest, teeth grinding against the urge to yell that if anyone had a problem, they could come say it to his face.
“What is it?” Wren murmured next to his ear.
He looked over. “Huh?”
“You’re grinding my knuckles into dust.”
“Shit, sorry,” Blair said, loosening his grip. “It’s nothing.”
Blair didn’t tell him how unsettling it was, to be so willing to spill his own people’s blood for looking at Wren the wrong way.
The night gave way to the earliest hours of morning and only a few of them remained. Julian took Marie home with Jake following them like some kind of lost puppy, and by the time Spencer locked up, only four of them remained. It had been a quiet night for business so he closed up earlier than usual. Spencer sat on the couch with Felix, and Blair pulled up chairs across from them for him and Wren. He could tell by the ever deepening slouch of Wren’s shoulders that fatigue was wearing on him.
“We want to go in quietly, but if we have to leave bodies, we do,” Spencer said.
Felix stretched his arms along the back of the couch. “So how are you gonna get us in?”
“If they were just another gang with average technology, I would use proactive jamming. We transmit a constant signal that doesn’t allow any other signals through their security system, including the ones that would tell them it had been tripped,” Wren said.
Spencer regarded him over the top of his glasses. “And why does that no longer work if they aren’t average?”
“Because it’s easy to detect. If the system wasn’t closely monitored, or if they didn’t know what to look for, we could get away with it. But I’m sure the system gets regularly updated on its status based on the signal from the panel we saw by the door. If we jam that signal, they’ll know something is wrong.”
Blair leaned his elbows on his knees. “Then what do we do?”
“Reactive bit jamming. In short, we choose which signals to interfere with. It’s not as thorough but it will take them longer to notice.”
“Sounds pretty hard to do without being there,” Blair said.
“We can set up a communication system with Wren,” Spencer said. “Blair and Felix will go inside, be his eyes. I’ll circle around and secure any exit points.”
Wren nodded, rubbing his eyes under his glasses. “Either way, I won’t be far. I’ll have to be close enough to the warehouse to pick the signal up,” he said.
Blair’s head whipped to the side. “Woah, woah, not happening. You shouldn’t be anywhere near that place when we do this.”
“He doesn’t have a choice,” Felix said. “And if having him close is the only way we get in to scope the place out, then that’s what we do.” There was a sharp edge to his words that would have brought Blair to heel in an instant, but with Wren involved he barely even heard what Felix said.
“When will you be ready, Wren?” Spencer asked.
Blair caught his eyes, shook his head fractionally to try to tell him he didn’t have to do this. Wren met his gaze and responded to Felix without looking away from him. “Between the hospital and exams, I won’t have time for this warehouse thing until at least Wednesday.”
Blair saw the flat determination in Wren’s eyes, which meant not only was he outnumbered as the only person who saw an issue with this plan, but Wren wasn’t going to budge. Me and my bright fucking ideas.
“Wednesday it is,” Felix said, and pushed to his feet. “We’ll get together here to clear up any last minute details.”
Spencer followed them to the door, the only one not leaving since his apartment was above the bar. Felix was the first to leave with a mumbled goodnight, but Spencer caught Wren’s shoulder before he could follow. “Hey.”
Wren shook his hand off. “What?”
“I just want you to know we’ve got your back. One of ours or not, I’m gonna look out for you like you’re one of us when this goes down,” Spencer said.
Wren snorted.“Touching, really, but I don’t know you well enough to care if you have my back. I’ll leave that up to Blair.”
Wren walked out and Blair followed with a warmth in his chest, even as he threw Spencer an apologetic look on Wren’s behalf. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car,” Blair said, joining Wren on the sidewalk.
Blair stopped in front of the Audi with his good mood intact, as he knew it wouldn’t be long before he saw Wren again. It never was, whether they planned for it or not. Wren leaned on the hood, the car looking more than a little out of place under the flickering glow of the streetlamp, standing out as stark and beautiful against the grittiness of Flushing as its owner.
“I still hate the idea of bringing you so close to all this, but… thank you,” Blair said, running his thumb across Wren’s knuckles.
Wren clicked his tongue but still pulled Blair forward to stand between his knees. “Quit thanking me. I’m only doing it so I don’t end up having to operate on you in that dingy bar like I did your friend.”
Wren kissed him into silence before Blair could make any quips about Wren worrying about him.
“Be careful driving, I know you’re tired,” he said when Wren took out his keys.
Wren gave a small hum of acknowledgment and the headlights flashed as he unlocked the car. “Goodnight, Blair.”
“Goodnight, Sunshine.”
“Mitral, pulmonary, aortic…” Wren muttered, staring up at the ceiling. He heard the apartment door but didn’t bother getting up. “Tricuspid.”
Reymond made his way through the moonlit apartment with ease. He stopped next to Wren, who was sprawled on his back on the floor in front of the window, bathed in the crackling violet of a storming Manhattan. Wren had taken a shower when he got back from Harlowe’s to get the stench of cigarette smoke off himself. Now he laid on the hard floor in thin pajama pants, his still-damp hair fanned out behind his head. At least Blair’s insistence on feeding him whenever they were together had put some weight on him—Wren was tired of hearing the lectures every time Reymond saw him shirtless. Are you eating enough? You can’t live off caffeine, it’s not good for your heart , and on and on.
Ha. His heart.
Reymond folded himself down on the floor, his back against the window. “What are you trying to figure out this time?” There was no condescension in his tone. This was what they did, after all.
Once something was on Wren’s mind that he couldn’t figure out, it would burrow in deep like a parasite, eat away at him until he solved it or found something to ease his curiosity. Which led him to texting Reymond or showing up at his door at all hours of day or night, because Reymond was an encyclopedia of medical knowledge that inexplicably allowed Wren to use him as such without complaint.
Last time, Wren had been up for two days trying to figure out how sensory and motor cortical areas interact to mediate sensorimotor integration. Reymond told him he didn’t need to know the intricacies of neuroanatomy to be a trauma surgeon, and Wren had argued there were people who did know them and still couldn’t figure it out. Reymond had pointed him to a study Boston University made on the subject and it quieted Wren’s mind long enough for him to get three hours of fitful sleep before his next shift at the hospital.
But what plagued Wren tonight was different. It was the most uncertain he’d ever been about something to do with the human body, and it was happening to him .
“I know the name of every valve and their functions. The purpose of all four chambers. I can identify all the rare congenital disorders that affect the ventricles. There’s nothing I don’t know about the human heart, and yet I can’t figure out what’s wrong with mine,” Wren said, rolling his head to the side to look out the window. He watched rain pelt against the glass and it reminded him of a different night, reminded him of Blair standing drenched in his foyer, of be my fuckup and thunder crashing as they crashed into each other. Wren put a hand on his chest. There it was again—that sensation. Like his entire cardiovascular system was being turned inside out.
He continued, “I considered premature ventricular contractions but my symptoms don’t match that of an arrhythmia. I’ve considered… fucking everything.”
“What are your symptoms, exactly?”
Wren explained to the best of his abilities, which for once he found lacking. He could barely make sense of it to himself, let alone put it into words. Reymond listened in patient silence to his disjointed explanation.
Then Reymond started laughing.
“Oh, Wren.” Reymond tipped his head back against the glass, another chuckle escaping him. “I know exactly what’s wrong.”
Wren scowled. He didn’t see how this was amusing. “Well? What is it?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”