Page 64 of Gunpowder

“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 “Sad and outdated and—”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.”

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