#there is a lot of tension in the air

The apartment is beautifully clean. Every mug in the cabinet is lined up with the handle angled to the left. Every stainless steel surface is kept polished, the countertops have nothing but a bowl of decorative fruit painted in cheery colors, the coffee table has been sanded and freshened up to erase old rings of coffee stains. Quinn lounges on the couch, comfortable but refusing to pull the throw blanket off the back of the couch to cover their chilly arms because it’s sitting so perfectly where they laid it.

Knuckles rap quietly against the front door. All wandering thoughts about how elephants are cute when they use their trunks to drink water are erased in an instant. Wary brown eyes flit to the door. They are shirtless, freckles and scars on display to the empty, cold room. The patio door is in their bedroom, and the nearest window will creak if they try to push it open quickly. There is a gun under the coffee table, and one in the cabinet above the sink, and a knife in the entryway drawer, but none of those will really do much good if Quinn doesn’t have enough time to strategize. They don’t even know who’s there.

Pajama pants brushing against the sofa cushion as they swing their legs to stand up, the spy shakes their head to get their curls out of their face. They showered this morning and took care to curl their hair like they were undressing a wound, cleaning it, and redressing it. Now they’re wondering if that was a mistake. It was certainly stupid to have changed into pajamas this early in the night, to have not even bothered to grab a shirt. What if this is someone who expects them to be playing the role they used in some random mission months or years ago? What if it’s someone here to kill them? Do they really want to die wearing plaid?

The soft knock comes again. It’s oddly respectful, like the sound of someone unnecessarily asking for permission before entering a mausoleum.

The handle is cool under their swollen hand. It always seems to be too warm and tender, the other not so swollen but far more stiff, and it just gives the most awful cracks and clicks when forced to move. Quinn doesn’t spare the attention to frown down at their ugly crooked fingers as they turn the doorknob and crack the door open.

Exhausted dark eyes. Aquiline nose, bushy eyebrows, collarbones standing out under the neckline of a white T-shirt.

He watches them calculating whether there’s any point in closing and locking the door. Oscar doesn’t speak yet. Quinn yanks their fingers back from where they’d curled around the edge of the door to peek; their hands go behind their back, and they keep the door in its position with the side of their foot pressed up against it instead.

“I need to come inside,” He says in his low, urgent but patient tone. He’s staring right into their soul. A sickly sweat beads at the back of their neck and sticks to their hair.

But the door swings open, and Quinn stands aside only to close it again once he’s in. They lean back against the door with their hands safely between their spine and the wood.

Oscar leans heavily on the kitchen counter as soon as he reaches it. He’s tracking blood across the floor, and more drips down his neck, flowing maybe from somewhere under his hair. He is wearing his uniform pants, but not the shirt that would make any fed stick out like a sore thumb. He looks like he was tossed out of a moving car and didn’t find a safe place to crash for days after that.

He turns to them, and they consider that he might expect them to rant at him, or stare at him impassively while they wait for an apology, or try to kill him. Something rational for the very clever, very dangerous Quinn Mae to do. All they can manage is to watch him, respectfully avoiding eye contact when he almost establishes it, too scared to bolt or to stand their ground.

“…Your place is different.”

They don’t look around. As clean as it seemed to them before the knock came, they recognize now how unacceptably filthy it is. The dust on the windowsill. The papers scattered across the desk - is there anything sensitive there? - no, it doesn’t matter, he knows everything. The throw blanket isn’t really at the perfect angle. They’ve let themself fall apart, they’re obviously not recovering very well. They haven’t even been doing missions, and Oscar will know that, of course, because he is an expert in Quinn Mae.

“Haven’t… haven’t kept up, I missed trash day and - no healers around to help when, when I can’t… you know.”

His eyes are on them again. Quinn endures the inferno of his judgment and breathes through the feeling that they’re going to faint. They’re fed, hydrated, rested, healthy. They don’t faint anymore.

“What?”

Glancing up, they finally meet his gaze only to find that it holds confusion and hesitance, not judgment. Although he isa remarkable actor when he wants to be.

“Um. My place.”

He blinks. “You think it’s bad? Messy?”

It must be a trick question. Their breaths come a little quicker. His eyes go to their chest, and they know that he can see their fear plain as day. “…Yes. Yes, it’s… clearly.”

They are consumed by his calculating eyes, and they do not quail under the gaze that they grew used to while working under him.

Oscar thinks about the time he watched Major nearly beat Quinn to death, and their pleas for Oscar to just leave, their swearing that it was their fault and they had it handled. He thinks about how many months it took to earn their trust, to manipulate them into feeling safe with him, and then how they thanked him for pushing until they told him their most painful secrets. He thinks about the last month and a half that he saw them at work, when they were taken from him because he wasn’t getting results from them anymore, and they were given to Davian. How Quinn rapidly deteriorated into a humiliated, doe-eyed bedwarmer, a source of entertainment.

The time when Davian dumped them on the floor of Oscar’s office and told them they were allowed to do one piece of paperwork for their old boss. How Quinn took the paper offered to them by Oscar with shaking hands, and focused so hard to getting every detail right because they were desperate for a chance to get to work again, to think critically, to be useful for their mind.

Once again, he scans the room and sees no big project. No pieces of taken-apart locks on the coffee table, no corkboard with plans and pictures and blueprints, no books lying open. It’s like someone dipped their hand into Quinn’s mind and scrambled it all up, hollowed it out, until they were nothing but tensely waiting for the next threat to loom over them.

Oscar is the one who did that. And Oscar is the threat now looming over them.

He’s never had a chance to… never wantedto feel it up until now. But the weathered and weary fed looks back at Quinn and sees what a deeply important, powerful person they were striving to be, and how far down he struck them. What he took from them. Their hands are at their sides now, unconsciously no longer being protected. They look small and uncertain, but still dependent upon the rules he established when he was breaking them. Oscar was in charge, he was aware of everything, and all they had to do was try their best to do excellent work for him. The air of the room is almost charged with expectation. They want him to tell them what he’s here for. Tell them what to do. What the latest threat is, what he’ll do to them if they don’t comply.

“Would you give me your hands if I told you to?” He asks, not sure whether he’ll be angry or relieved if they say no.

A second of hesitation is all that they’ve built up in their recovery. One second of clear apprehension before they hold out their hands to him, even stepping forward so they’re in easy reach.

Oscar runs his hand over his face, scratching at his scruffy chin. When it becomes clear with the increasingly awkward silence that he’s not going to break their fingers on a whim this time, a blush burns across their cheeks. Quinn pulls back and leans against the door again, arms somewhat folded, hands near their core.

“It looks like you were kicked out,” They croak. “Or you escaped.”

“Escaped?” He counters, feigning confusion. It’s more out of pride than anything, but they see the deceit alone.

“You were trapped too. I was slow to figure that out.” He hears in their tone that they loathe themself for being slow, and it’s absolutely not true, but it’s the painful truth to them. “Looks like you just barely got out, tried to survive by hiding out with warlocks, got kicked around. Now you’ve come to me because, ironically, you need my help.”

He doesn’t look impressed. He is, but any reaction that he gives will be read as an act. So he waits to hear what else they have to say.

“It looks like that’s what happened. It makes sense that that would be how it went. But I’m not going to believe it.”

There it is. He knew they’d be wary. Of course they would, he betrayed them. He’s a well-trained liar.

Their heel bumps against the wall as they back up just a fraction more. They look like they want to escape, but they’re the one holding the door shut. They’re the one trapping him in here right now. He wonders if they want him here, if they need it somehow.

“It’s not very original to come back playing the victim,” They add. “Why would I believe you? Why would I help you? After everything?”

They might have meant it as an accusation. It doesn’t sound like one. It sounds like they’re questioning themself more than him. Oscar wishes that he could hold them and let them cry it out, or let them reel from whatever numbness they might have been using as a shield since they got out.

“I just need to be here.” He doesn’t advance, but Quinn’s breaths get shallower like he’s closing in on them. “It’s a last resort. I’m not asking you to do anything, go anywhere. Just let me rest here.”

The apartment smells like them. He wants to collapse onto their bed and breathe into their pillows and pretend none of this ever happened, that he never did anything past befriending them and sleeping in their bed.

It does seem to strike them as odd that he’s not making them leave, or ushering more feds in here to haul them back to the facility. “I’m not… I’m not going to fall for it again. Fall for you again. You’re really here to try the long game again? Do they really think so little of me, that I’m that stupid?”

He feels like he’s sinking toward the floor. Oscar sighs. “You can use your magic to see if I’m being honest. I don’t care. Where can I crash?”

Their stiff, pink-tinted sore hands curl slightly around their sides in a self-soothing hug. “…I won’t get on the bed.”

That twists unexpected guilt in his gut. The exiled fed nods slowly. “Do you want me to take it?”

Quinn has no idea what to do with any of this. They shake their head, opening their mouth then seeming to think better of whatever came to mind. “Um. Yes. Sure. Are you hurt? I mean… you won’t die in there, will you?”

He must look even worse than he feels. Oscar shrugs. “If it hasn’t happened yet, it won’t tonight.”