Page 95 of Gunpowder

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.”

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