Gunpowder (Gunpowder #1)

26. GUNPOWDER

26

GUNPOWDER

Blair drifted in and out of being awake. Each time his eyes opened to the blurry fluorescents, he made them focus long enough to look at the readings on the screen beside Wren’s bed. Once the squiggly green line confirmed that Wren’s pulse was doing what it was supposed to, he would drop his head back onto the edge of the bed and pass back out, stirring only when a nurse would come in to check Wren’s blood pressure or do something to his IV. He didn’t know if it was hours or minutes that passed that way.

The next time he opened his eyes, long fingers were combing through his hair.

His heart leapt. He raised his head and his eyes filled with tears at the sight of Wren looking back at him. “You’re awake,” Blair said, a smile spreading over his face.

“Shouldn’t you be with Incindious?” Wren asked hoarsely.

Blair didn’t know what hurt worse, the thought of the gang, or Wren thinking he would have left his side to be with him. Then again, there was a time when he would have. He took Wren’s hand. “This is where I should be. This is where I want to be.”

“I don’t know, I’ve been told I’m distracting,” Wren said.

“I didn’t mean it. Wren, I’m so sorry. For leaving you, for letting you get hurt, for all of this. Felix said he would kill you if I didn’t, he thought you betrayed us.” Blair tightened his grip on Wren’s hand, remembering all too well how it felt slipping away, twelve stories in the air. “I didn’t know what to do.”

Wren clicked his tongue. “I was joking, you idiot. Once I got my bearings I kind of figured there was something more going on. That’s why I had my knives.”

“Speaking of that—”

Blair cut himself off as a doctor walked into the room, a dark skinned woman with laugh lines and thick curls pulled back behind her head. She stopped at the end of the bed with a smile. “Nice to see you awake, Wren.”

“Thema, you’ve got to let me out of here. This gown is itchy, whoever ran my IV blew a fucking vein, and I want to sleep in my own bed.”

“I’m glad you’re just as joyous of a patient as you are a doctor,” Thema sighed, but there was still a smile in her eyes. She walked over to the computer and started looking through his chart. “You have a mild concussion, a stab wound in your left bicep, four bruised ribs, and heavy bruising on your left shoulder and left side, as well as some bruising around your neck. We should be able to get those stitches out of your arm in a couple weeks. It says here you already filed a police report?”

Wren looked at Blair, who shrugged. Wren looked back over at her. “Sure.”

“I know you’re ready to get out of here, but now that you’re awake we’ll need to make sure your concussion isn’t any worse than we think, and then we can see about painkillers.”

“Sounds great,” Wren deadpanned.

Blair looked down at their joined hands on the bed. He guessed he had Spencer and Ben at the police station to thank for the cover story. He’d had no idea what to say when he brought Wren into the ER, so he’d just claimed they were supposed to meet up and Wren was injured and unconscious when Blair got there.

Thema shined a flashlight in Wren’s eyes, made him do some exercises to test his reflexes and coordination, then asked him some questions about himself. Blair watched despondently until she left. He’d let go of Wren’s hand for the doctor to examine him but he found himself hesitating to reach for it now that they were alone again. Even if Wren knew there had been more to it than what Blair told him at the time, Blair had broken up with him. He’d told Wren they were a mistake. Understanding why he did it wasn’t the same as forgiving him.

There was one thing he needed to know, regardless of whether or not Wren wanted to be with him.

“Wren.”

Wren stared at him, tense like he was bracing himself for something. Maybe he already knew what Blair was going to ask.

“Who are you?”

Wren looked down. Without Wren’s glasses in the way, there was nothing to keep Blair from seeing the different emotions that flickered through Wren’s eyes. He saw anger, confusion, and frustration all in the span of a few seconds. Then Wren looked up with something that Blair had never seen on his face before. Fear. The way Wren’s hands were twisted together in his lap made him look so wildly uncertain that Blair barely recognized the man looking back at him.

“My name is Wren Dominic Masters. I was born October twenty-eighth, in Los Angeles, California. I hate crowds. I like computers, and rain. My mother left when I was twelve, and apparently my father was an assassin.” Tears gathered on his dark lashes. “He taught me how to stop feeling everything except for pain. He taught me how to fight—to kill. When I was eighteen, he sent me to a school that taught me how to save people. I used to think it was some kind of sick joke, but now…I don’t know. Maybe he just knew he was dying and in his own fucked up way, he wanted me to have a better life than he did.”

One of the tears spilled over, and Blair finally took his hand again. Wren’s fingers immediately tightened around his.

“I want to be a trauma surgeon. I think I want a cat. And I don’t know how to tell for sure since I’ve never felt this way before, but I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you.” Wren stared down at their joined hands. “I know I’m not who you thought I was. It’s okay, if this changes things.”

“Wren...” Blair didn’t realize he’d started crying, too, but he recognized the warmth on his face as he shook his head. “I’m an arms dealer. I’ve killed people. It doesn’t matter to me where you came from, Sunshine. I just want to be part of where you’re going.”

Blair kissed him, maybe too hard considering Wren’s injuries, but Wren kissed him back just as hard. Wren wrapped one arm around his neck, the one not hooked up to an IV. The feeling of their lips connecting brought Blair more peace than he ever thought he’d feel again after watching Felix get taken away and finding out Julian betrayed them. It didn’t make losing them any easier, but knowing he hadn’t lost Wren too made him think he might actually get through this.

Doctor, assassin, Blair didn’t give a damn what path Wren chose. Blair loved him. And against everything that was ingrained into him, Wren loved him back. That made all the other details irrelevant.

“What now?” Wren asked when they parted.

Blair didn’t have to ask what he meant. “Spencer texted me that everyone’s meeting at the bar later. I told him I’d come once you were awake, I didn’t want you to wake up by yourself. I’ll be back soon, though.” He took a deep breath, weighing his decision one final time but the sight of Wren in a hospital bed made his next words come easily. “I’m leaving the gang.”

“No, you’re not.”

He couldn’t blame Wren for not believing him. “I’m serious. You asked me once if I’d ever considered living for myself, and I thought it was impossible because even if I left Incindious… there was still you. But loving you is living for myself. You’re my fucking world, Wren. And I almost lost you.” He knew he needed to explain further—to make sure Wren knew he wasn’t just filling some hole inside of Blair like Incindious did, that Blair wasn’t going to poison their relationship with that kind of dependency.

By the time Blair found his words again, Wren put a finger against his lips, smiling faintly. “Blair, shut up.” He removed it once he saw that Blair was going to comply. “Let me say this again: no, you’re not. I never thought I’d say this after all the time I’ve spent trying to convince you that you’re better than that chain-smoking pride parade of a gang, but I don’t want you to leave them. Not right now. I’m not trying to minimize your feelings, but everything is still too raw. Give it some time, and if you decide to leave Incindious, leave them for you. Not for me.” Wren curled his hand around the side of Blair’s face, thumb stroking over his cheek. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Blair turned to press his lips against Wren’s palm, fighting to keep more tears at bay. He’d cried enough for a lifetime. “God, I love you.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’ve mentioned that.” Wren withdrew his hand. “Come on. I see enough of this place without being here in my free time, too.”

The hospital was collectively unhappy with Wren for leaving so soon, but there wasn’t much they could do to stop him. Thema, despite her protests to Wren checking himself out, went to get him the spare set of scrubs he kept there for when he was on call, since the clothes he’d been wearing were in pieces and stiff with dried blood.

“Let me help, you’re gonna pull your stitches,” Blair chided as Wren tried to pull his shirt over his head.

Wren scoffed, but he let Blair tug it carefully over his injured arm and bruised shoulder. “That’s rich coming from you.”

Blair found Wren’s glasses and—after cleaning them to the best of his ability—unfolded them and placed them gently on Wren’s face. An aching tenderness spread through Blair’s chest as he untucked Wren’s bangs from under the frames. “There he is.”

Dressed in navy scrubs, Wren looked almost exactly the same as the day they met, if not for the missing chunk of his hair and the emotion in his eyes that had taken the place of the disdain and desolation that had filled them back then.

For once, Wren didn’t seem to know what to say. But Blair dared to think he looked happy.

Wren draped his arm over Blair’s shoulders as they walked out of the hospital, and Blair wrapped an arm around his waist in return—carefully, making sure to avoid anywhere he knew to be bruised. The sunlight hit Blair for the first time in… however long he’d been sleeping in Wren’s hospital room, as they passed through the sliding glass doors. He remembered walking out after he’d been shot. Seeing a black car drift the corner into the parking lot. “I see Wren has decided to grace us with his presence,” Reymond had said back then.

It was almost strange to remember a time, and such a recent one at that, when he didn’t know who Wren was. Before Wren was everything to him.

“You know, I always suspected my father was involved in something more than just running the Masters Corporation, with how paranoid he was and the way he taught me to fight,” Wren mused as they reached the Lexus. “But an assassin? Well, then again, I guess I wouldn’t have believed Jinx so easily if it didn’t make so much sense.”

Blair opened the car door for him. “Y’know, I thought my dad was bad for walking out on us.” He paused to circle around and get in the driver’s seat. “But at least he wasn’t ‘oh, he’s an assassin—that makes sense’ bad.”

Wren laughed. He flipped the visor down to examine himself in the small mirror, wincing as he took in the state of his hair.

“I could even that up for you,” Blair offered, pulling out of the parking lot.

Wren flipped the visor shut.. “You can just cut it all short, I don’t care.”

“No!” Blair said immediately, then flushed as Wren looked over at him with a raised eyebrow. “I like your hair,” he mumbled.

Wren showed him mercy after that, withholding his teasing and not making any more casual threats to cut all his hair off. They were about halfway to Flushing when Blair felt weight on his leg. He glanced down to see Wren’s upturned hand on his thigh, and when Blair looked over, Wren was staring out the window far too pointedly for someone who wasn’t trying to avoid eye contact. Blair grinned as he laced their fingers together.

The closer they got to Harlowe’s , the harder Blair found himself gripping Wren’s hand.

By the time the bar came into view, all the lightness had evaporated from Blair’s chest, and reality came crashing back down.

Blair parked the Lexus against the curb and looked up at the brick facade of a place he used to call home. Now he didn’t know what it was. There would be no Julian beyond those walls. No Felix. Every surface used to hold another happy memory, but now all Blair could see was Felix holding a gun to his head. Since the day Felix, Spencer and Julian found him sulking on a street corner, Blair had devoted himself entirely to the world that lay beyond that red door.

“I’m not ready for this,” Blair whispered.

“You never will be,” Wren said, and squeezed his hand. “Let’s go.”

Blair got out of the car and gravitated back to Wren’s side as they walked up to the door. He noticed that Wren had retrieved his necklace from his personal effects at the hospital, even though there were still flecks of dried blood caked on the silver pendant.

Blair’s legs became leaden as they stopped in front of the door and sapped him of his momentary happiness. He felt like if he stepped forward, whatever laid on the other side would be cemented in place as the awful truth, but if he just turned around he could close his eyes and pretend his family was still in one piece.

Before the war, he might have had just enough childish optimism to try it.

He didn’t bother trying the door. After everything, it was definitely locked. Blair took his keys out of his pocket and flicked through them until he found the one he was looking for. A metallic scraping sound filled the air as he tried to slot the key into the lock. He cursed under his breath, but his frustration only made his hands shake harder, and he was about to hurl the damned keys into the street when Wren took them away from him. Wren slid the key in easily and left it there for Blair to turn.

Blair twisted the key but stopped short of pushing the door open. He screwed his eyes shut, trying to dispel the tears he felt trying to form there. He’d cried enough for a goddamn lifetime. “Fuck.”

“I know,” Wren said, wrapping his arm around Blair’s shoulders again.

Blair took a deep breath as he pushed the door open. Spencer was behind the bar, almost like things were normal. Almost. Reymond stood by the couch, eyes fixed on the street outside. He didn’t even look up when they walked in. He looked exhausted. Marie was curled up on the couch right where Felix used to sit.

Blair leaned heavily on the bar. He heard the squeaking of Spencer polishing a glass behind him; the same one he’d been polishing since they walked in. It was as though the bar had been gutted and they all stood there in the rubble, even though the hardwoods shone with the same luster as always, the stickers still in the corners of the windows where they had been replaced after the shootout. The smell of cigarette smoke still clung to every porous surface in the room.

The silence was as palpable as a human presence. When it was broken, it felt like an attack on the fragile peace of mind they had found in not acknowledging the situation out loud.

“I should have done somethi—” Blair started.

“Don’t you dare be so submerged in your own guilt to believe that you’re the only one who failed him,” Reymond said sharply, turning from the window.

“Doc,” Spencer said. He finally put the glass he’d been polishing down on the bar. “Come on, now.”

Reymond’s shoulders sunk. He rubbed his eyes under his glasses, ringed as they were with dark circles from exhaustion. “You’re right. I apologize. I’m just… tired.”

“I get it. Believe me, I do.” Blair offered him the closest thing he could get to a smile at the moment. “It’s fine.”

“I’m sorry, Kennedy,” Spencer said, tapping a cigarette out of his pack. The Incindious logo on his Zippo blazed in the fading light of the day. “But he’s gone, and he’s not coming back.”

Wren uprooted himself from the wall he had been standing against and came to lean on the bar next to Blair. “What are you all going to do now?”

Spencer blew out a ring of smoke. “Nothing we can do.”

A loaded silence settled over the room. Not arguing Spencer’s words felt like the same thing as agreeing with him but there was really no argument to be made. They all knew it was true. Blair stared at the couch, seeing Felix slouched there as clearly as if the man was still there with them.

“Felix knew he might be walking into a trap. I told him when I traced the signal from the transmitter that it was too easy, that it was nothing like the sophisticated technology we’d seen from Phantom until that point.” Spencer took another long draw from his cigarette. “I think taking Wren was just insurance. A hostage, in case Felix didn’t take the bait.”

Blair leaned against Wren’s right side. He felt guilty, not for the first time, that he was grieving the absence of the person who’d forced them apart. His eyes drifted back to Spencer, and Blair wondered how the man was keeping up his act of being okay. Spencer had lost both of his best friends in a single day.

Felix had decided when Incindious was formed that betrayal would be punished with death, but Blair couldn’t help but think that Julian was still out there somewhere alive. Julian was a soft spot for both Felix and Spencer, and that was made it so much fucking worse that he had deceived them. All because he was gullible enough to think that selling them out to Phantom would prevent any more bloodshed.

Every moment of the past few days hit Blair like a tidal wave.

“Hey,” Wren said quietly. “You’re shaking. What’s wrong?”

Blair looked up, trying to focus through the haze of pain and anger that had started to encroach on his senses. “I’m sad and pissed and tired. Our leader is gonna rot in prison, Julian betrayed us and let Felix think it was you, Spencer is probably like, halfway through the five stages of grief, and my boyfriend got thrown off a roof by an assassin—who I’m gonna hunt the fuck down for what they did to you, by the way.”

“I didn’t really get thrown, I kind of… fell.”

“Not the point, Sunshine.”

Wren shrugged.

“Blair,” Reymond said. He walked over from the window to stand in front of them. “May I borrow you for a moment?”

“I’ll be right back, okay?” Blair said, reluctantly moving from Wren’s side.

Wren didn’t look up from examining the dried blood under his nails. “Please hurry. This is a dangerous neighborhood and I am but a delicate flower.”

“You’re an ass.”

Wren’s lip curved up to one side and Blair shook his head as he trailed Reymond out of the bar. His smile wavered when they stepped outside. Blair didn’t know how long it would be before every inch of the bar and everything surrounding it didn’t make him see Felix, but that day wasn’t today and he didn’t have much hope it would be tomorrow, either.

“I came by the hospital to ask after Wren’s condition, but I didn’t want to crowd him by visiting,” Reymond said, then offered Blair a small smile. “Thank you for finding him. And bringing him back. I went to the first signs of life I heard when I got to that place, which took me to Felix and Isaac. I never would have gotten to Wren in time. That was all… I just wanted to say thank you.”

“It was my fault he was taken at all. But I’m not gonna let him get hurt again.” Blair looked towards the door to the bar. “I love him, Doc.”

“I believe he loves you, as well. The best he can.”

Blair smiled. “I know.” He looked up at Reymond. “Did you love Felix?”

Reymond pushed his glasses further up his nose and turned away briskly. “We should get back inside.”

Blair didn’t push him. They walked back inside, and Blair settled in the armchair by Felix’s couch. No matter what, that was always going to be Felix’s couch. Reymond stood at the opposite end of the table from Blair, and Marie slid over to make room for Spencer on the couch, both of them leaving that one space empty, where the back had a permanent dip from Felix hanging his head over it.

“So,” Wren said, coming over to sit on the arm of Blair’s chair. “What now?”

Spencer looked at him over the top of his glasses. “You with us now or something?”

Wren put his hand on Blair’s shoulder and Blair reached up to lace their fingers together. “I’m with him,” Wren said, voice dripping disdain for the idea that he would be on their side. If Blair didn’t feel like there was a cement block in his chest, he would have laughed at how committed Wren was to hating Incindious on principle.

“It’s not like anybody wants to take his place. Felix was our reason to fight. He loved this city, but we loved him,” Marie said, pulling her legs under herself and curling up, making her tiny form even smaller.

Spencer nodded. “We took our oath to Incindious, but our loyalty was always to Felix. They were one and the same. Nobody ever thought there would be an Incindious without him.”

Blair ran his thumb back and forth across Wren’s knuckles, swallowing back a childish surge of anger at the way they talked about Felix like was dead or something. He wasn’t angry at them, so much as the way their words forced him to accept that even if Felix was alive, he was gone. Not there anymore. Not coming back.

“Well,” Wren said, crossing his legs. “If you’re all this hopeless and pathetic without him, I guess you should go get him back.”

Spencer looked at him, then to the bar, like he was weighing the benefits of breaking a bottle over Wren’s head. He must have decided it wasn’t worth the profit loss, since he sighed and said, “He got arrested for murder. Getting him out would be—”

Wren scoffed. “I know you’re not going to say impossible. After all this, after Blair got shot for your stupid war, I know you’re not going to roll over now .”

“Our war,” Blair corrected gently. “I joined Incindious by choice. I knew the risks.” And was still there because of Wren, but he didn’t think that would be a helpful thing to mention.

“Turf wars—and whatever the fuck this was—aren’t uncommon for people like us,” Spencer said, resting his elbows on his knees. “Breaking someone out of federal prison is in a completely different league.”

Blair tightened his grip on Wren’s hand. “The boss would do it for one of us,” he said.

“He would fail,” Spencer said flatly.

“He would still try,” Blair said.

Marie twisted a platinum curl around her finger. “I mean, it’s not like going through the front door is the only option,” she said, looking over at Spencer, then at Reymond and Wren in turn. “We have all of Incindious, a doctor, and a hacker at our backs. We don’t know it’s impossible if we don’t try.”

Something took root in Blair’s chest that had laid dormant since he watched Felix get handcuffed, since he saw Julian fall to his knees in the street. Hope. He looked up at Wren, who raised an eyebrow at him in challenge. Blair smiled at him. The embers had been suffocated by one devastating loss after another, but he felt it flaring to life, scorching through the pain and the doubt until there was only fire.

Spencer looked between them all, shoulders slumping when he found even Reymond staring at him expectantly. “This is never going to work,” Spencer said.

Blair didn’t look away from Wren, who smiled back at him. Just a little. “You never know.”