#cigarettedreams

  The day that chaos erupted across the city in the usual from of ash and smoke he was not anywhere close to the precinct, out of the centre with his foot hard down on the accelerator. It was only later when he returned home, curled up with Clarence running amok across the living room sofa, drink in one hand, winnings stacked on the table relatively neatly. Soft thud of his music blaring through the speakers and wall screen holo flicking through channels respectively. It landed on the news for a brief moment. Long enough to see, John Murdoch reported missing after escape now presume dead, to blare across the screen. The reporter looked anguished and worn out, as if they’d been up all night working hard over their article, the channel flicked by but Quinton scrambled for the remote to flip it back. Sank down on shaky legs as he watched for the first time in his life, an entire news program from straight to finish.

  “Shit.”

   He had not thought that this would be the outcome, stuck in that small cramped room with mirrored glass between him and undoubtedly that goddamn cop, sweating and furiously trying to keep himself from emptying the contents of his stomach. That this. This would be the outcome. He never wanted John to… Quin rose from the sofa abruptly, so much so that Clarence was disturbed enough to scamper beneath a pillow, he plucked the lizard up and put him safely away. Moving through his empty sterile apartment like a storm. Pulling on his damnable obscene coat and finding shoes abandoned near the doorway, hopping from foot to foot as he pulled them on.

  Didn’t bother ringing him. He just went, walked through the rain with his coat pulled tight around him, soaked through to the skin by the time he finally got to his apartment, not entirely sober either. Had gone on a small diverted route that included stopping off at various bars, in which the fixer sat like a solitary figure at the bar, drinking and doing very little else. Deadened eyes staring into the bottom of his glass.

  Had his own key, as always, and so let himself in. Neither Dante nor Marishka were in, he assumed the pair were out for a walk and instead of worrying him by sending a frantic text, stripped out of his wet outer clothes and curled up on his sofa. He had gotten scolded by the surgeon last time for sleeping uninvited in his bed and so this time didn’t cross that boundary. Still even here the pillows smelt softly of him, he clutched the cushions and sobbed like an over-grown child.

  You killed him.

  It didn’t matter that they were long separated, that the feelings he’d once felt for him had diminished as time went by, he still cared, he hadn’t wanted him to die. Everything Quinton had ever done was to protect him, to keep him out of the fire, to go live a normal life. He had seen how desperately he’d wanted it, even if he’d quit his job, those lingering memories of his fiancé and their child…the photos…it had always been there.