Page 74 of Gunpowder

“Wren, do you have a concussion?”

“Probably.”

Blair squeezed his hand, eyes widening with alarm. “You should let Doc check you out, it’s dangerous to go to sleep if you have a concussion.”

“It’s minor, if I have it at all. But you know, Blair.”

Blair looked at his profile. “Yeah?”

“All that knowledge you have about concussions is really an inspiration for me to learn more about them. Maybe I should go to medical school or something.”

Blair groaned and dropped his head against the back of the seat. “Shut up.”

He was glad they were making the much shorter drive to his place rather than Wren’s, since he really didn’t want to risk Wren passing out on him for real, whether it be from a concussion or exhaustion. He told Wren where to turn in for the resident parking behind the building and let out a relieved sigh when the Audi came to a stop. Somehow they had mostly stayed in their lane, but it didn’t make the ride any less nerve wracking when he knew Wren could hardly see straight.

Blair felt like his feet were dragging as they walked into the apartment. He punched his code into the alarm system and flipped the light on. Wren closed the door behind them, standing in a decent amount of light for the first time since they left the bar earlier that night to go to the warehouse. It felt like so much longer ago than a couple of hours. Having such a clear view of him brought Blair’s guilt back tenfold.

Blair took his hand. “C’mon, let’s get cleaned up.”

Wren mumbled what could have been assent or protest, but Blair couldn’t understand him. It couldn’t have been anything too negative since Wren was following him without having to be forced. That was good, too, since Blair’s leg seemed fully prepared to give out at a moment’s notice in long overdue payback for the way he had mistreated it.

He laid his guns on the bathroom counter and began pulling Wren’s shirt over his head despite him muttering about how he could do it himself. Blair’s heart dropped to the floor right along with that black tank top. Wren’s left side was littered with bruises, in addition to the state of his head that Blair had finally seen back in the living room, his hair clumped and matted to his temple. He trailed his fingers as close to Wren’s hairline as he dared.

“What did he do?” he ground out.

Wren removed his hand, pushed it back down to Blair’s side so he could start working his jeans down his legs. “It doesn’t matter. Having a mental image of what he did is just going to make you angrier at someone you already killed. If I’d been able to see I would have been fine,” he added, a bit sulkily.

Blair stripped out of his own clothes and set the taps running. He left it alone, if only for a couple minutes while he adjusted the water temperature and turned the shower on. Once they were standing under the spray with rust colored water coursing down their bodies, he asked again.

Flatly, Wren said, “He bashed my head against the edge of a desk. Once I fell backward he started kicking me. None of my ribs are broken, I already checked,” he added, like that would make Blair breathe a sigh of relief and say Oh thank goodness, as long as that’s all.

The thought made Blair ill down to his core and reignited his anger all at once, but he knew Wren didn’t want to hear any more apologies. So instead he settled for picking up the shampoo and saying, “Turn around.”

Blair was careful to avoid the injured side of Wren’s head, since it was harder to identify the wound now that his hair was wet. He watched a stream of red pour down when Wren ducked his head under the spray to rinse it. Blair would have done anything to take the pain, absorb it into himself where it belonged, as the one who got Wren into this fucking mess. He didn’t care if Wren had a freakishly high pain tolerance or not.

Wren was the first one out of the bathroom and made a beeline for the stairs, his towel still tied loosely around his hips. Blair stayed behind him but far enough back that he could try to steady him if he started to waver. He made it to the top fine, though, and fell unceremoniously onto Blair’s bed. The light downstairs didn’t bother Blair enough to go back down and turn it off. At least it let him see to load the 92 before laying it on the nightstand.

“Make sure you stay off that bad side,” Blair said, pulling the blanket over them.

Wren was laying on his back but he mumbled something incoherent and turned towards Blair, laying fully on his good side. He fell asleep at an alarming speed. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, thankfully. Blair would just have to take him at his word if he didn’t think he was bleeding internally. Blair curled his hand around the side of Wren’s neck, just to comfort himself with the thrum of Wren’s pulse beating under his fingers.

Everything they planned had gone to shit. Taking Wren along in the hopes they could end the fighting, cut Phantom off at the head, had all been for naught. Sure they had taken out a nice chunk of them but there had been no Isaac, not even Jinx or the motorcyclist that first led them there. For all the heads they cut off that night, two more would grow back in each of their places. They’re always one step ahead of us.

He almost wished he hadn’t proved Wren’s worth to Incindious, because now Wren was stuck in the middle of this until it was over.

20

GIFT

There was too much tension for any of them to sit. They stood in a loose circle around one of the tables; the same one, if Blair remembered right, where Adam had laid not that long ago dying of a homo, hema...whatever Wren had fixed. Wren had leaned there just minutes earlier while Reymond checked out his injuries. They weren’t severe, apparently, but the presence of them at all was enough to make Blair’s temples throb with anger. It was the same with the sight of Julian, his eyes fixed on the floor, present but also very much absent.

“The warehouse was our only lead,” Marie murmured.

Blair looked at their strategist pacing behind the bar, talking on the phone. “Spencer’s reaching out to his contacts hoping someone might have heard something on Isaac’s movements.”

“Fuck that,” Felix said.

Blair glanced over. “What?”

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