the world (it burns through me)
Chapter 16: Sweetheart
Ao3 | 3.7k Words | Sweetheart's POV
Sweetheart thanks their lucky stars. Ben is sorry, for what it's worth. Quinn and Sweetheart share a dance. Colm picks up the phone. The 7-30 responds. It snows in Dahlia for the first time in ten years.
SPOILERS FOR THIS CHAPTER but I wanted to give a warning anyway: For those that don't recognize him immediately, Ben is Geordi's abusive ex in Redacted canon as well as the continuity of the FFAU. He's depicted in this chapter as one of Quinn's victims. This is not in an attempt to diminish, dismiss, or excuse his actions or the abuse he put Geordi through, but rather to explore the cycle of abuse and how victims can become abusers themselves. It's indicated that Quinn enjoys convincing his victims that they deserve their abuse, that they are just as bad as he is, and see them treat others the way that he treats him. I hope that this is received in the way it was intended rather than being considered dismissive of abuse victims.
TW: Discussions of past and current abuse, scars, past injury, blood and injury, mentions of firearms, taser, knife violence, fighting, mutilation, what could be considered torture, disturbing psychological and sexual themes, Quinn's bullshit.
You were really good at your job. That was the thought you kept repeating to yourself as the weeks ticked on, as December passed, as January raced by day by day and you were no closer to catching this fucking asshole than you had been when the case dropped into your lap. What was worse was you weren’t certain you’d be paid for all of this effort, and you weren’t certain you’d be comfortable with that even if it was offered. This was family being threatened, after all.
So you toiled away two months of time with which you could have been earning money on dead end after dead end.
You didn’t know much. What you did know wasn’t exactly helpful.
Quinn had roots in Dahlia, at least more than he had in most other places. His name was on a few plastic surgeon’s patient lists in L.A., he had a tattoo artist in Oregon he frequented, and his credit card history spoke of visits to clubs in nearly every college town on the western seaboard. He didn’t own any property, but people he knew did. An old girlfriend here, a friend from boarding school there, and all of them seemed to welcome him in like he was a fugitive to be quartered and protected.
He had a father. Mr. Fox was a wealthy man with a wealthy son. From what you could gather from his Wikipedia page and the about section of his company’s website, he was a touch eccentric, even when the category was billionaires. His company, Flux, was a health and wellness medical group that specialized in slowing the aging process. Mr. Fox himself had undergone countless procedures to slow his own aging, received regular blood transfusions from younger, healthier men, and, according to his pretentious YouTube channel, had a grueling morning routine that stretched into the late afternoon. Flux sold everything that promised to keep you young; vitamins, health foods, workout regimen, cryo chambers.
For all of his efforts, you had to admit that Mr. Fox did not look his age of fifty-six. Mostly he looked… alien. His skin was waxy and plastic, his musculature (which he loved to show off by appearing in every interview and picture that he could shirtless) was sculpted and perfect. He looked like a fucking Ken doll.
You weren’t surprised that a person like Quinn Fox came from extreme wealth. People who felt so entitled to what they wanted that they were willing to hurt and kill for it were often bred in an environment where they were never told ‘no.’
Mr. Fox didn’t answer your multiple emails inquiring about his son. When you came knocking on the doors of old friends and acquaintances, people shut down. Nobody knew him, nobody had heard the name, nobody had ever seen the man in the picture you shared. Nobody knew your firefighter either, even when their eyes flashed with fearful recognition.
So you counted your lucky fucking stars when you found him.
He was an old flame of Quinn’s, a fleeting interest of a few months that was discarded when a new toy came along. You ran into him while asking questions at one of Quinn’s old dives. As soon as he laid eyes on the picture you produced, you couldn’t mistake the look in his eyes for anything besides rage.
It was barely four, but Ben offered you a drink anyway. He was the bartender at one of the clubs in college town, a dingy, too-small space tucked under a piercing shop. You cast a weary look over the darkened dance floor and cracked leather booths. You could picture Quinn here, huddled in a corner, flirting with college kids barely old enough to get in, waited on hand and foot. It made you shiver.
“He’s a monster.” Ben growled, pouring himself a whiskey and you a club soda. You worried that you’d come home reeking of alcohol just from sitting at the bar. Ben was a big guy, tall too, and his nose was twisted in the same way Trouble’s was. You could see, if you squinted, a resemblance between them. Quinn’s compulsive need to prey on people who resembled them kept rearing its ugly head. “Drop it. You don’t wanna dance with him.”
“He’s threatening my client.” You cocked your head as Ben tossed the whiskey back. “I intend to put him behind bars.”
“His daddy will pay for him to get off.” Ben shrugged. He snagged a knife from behind the bar and started chopping limes, tossing the slices into a plastic container. Steady, consistent knife strokes. “It’s not worth your time.”
“I’ll take it into consideration.” You bit out. “How do you know him?” Ben’s eyes flicked to yours, dark and discerning for a long moment.
“He used to come here pretty often.” He shrugged. “He’s a good looking guy. I gave him a few free drinks, kept the bouncers off his case when he got too handsy with some of the drunk girls. He… appreciated my efforts.”
“Sexual favors?” You asked, pulling your notepad from your pocket and scribbling out some of the details. Ben snorted.
“Quinn don’t need sexual favors from anybody.” He said, face darkened. “What he wants, he takes. It just so happened that I wanted him too. We’ll call that serendipity.”
“How long was your relationship?” You asked. Ben sighed sharply.
“It wasn’t so much a relationship as…” he cocked his head to the side, choosing his words carefully. “Look, he’s… if he’s after your client or whatever, they probably deserve it. He doesn’t waste time on good people.”
“What do you mean?” You pushed, leaning forward.
“I mean that I’m not a nice guy.” Ben’s lips curled, flashed his teeth. “I mean that Quinn wouldn’t be into me if I was. He likes ugly people who do ugly things. Makes him feel just a bit better about what he does to us.”
“What did he do to you?” You asked.
Ben met your eye steadily for a long moment, as though he was waiting for a break in your curiosity, a sign of some sort that you wouldn’t be able to handle whatever it was he was going to show you. When he found none, he set down his knife and stepped back from the bar slightly, tugged the hem of his t-shirt out from his apron. He pulled it up just far enough to reveal his chest. You leaned forward as the raised lines of scars were exposed to the low light of the bar.
At first, you thought the cuts were random, slashes here and there, intersecting to cause the most pain. Then, you noticed the pattern.
They were all ‘Q’s, jagged and awkward, carved across Ben’s chest, the base of his throat, down his stomach. You swallowed and blinked away the memory of that ‘Q’ tattooed onto Trouble’s fucking face.
Same purpose, different method. Pain and ownership, meeting two of his desires at the same time.
“Can I take a picture of this?”
Ben reluctantly played model for you, turning to the left and right so you could snap pictures with your phone camera. Once you were satisfied and he reiterated that he had no idea where Quinn was, Ben walked you out the back. He lead you through the kitchen, up a rickety flight of stairs, and out of a swinging door to a back alley just off the main road. You turned, crunching cigarette butts under your boots, and offered Ben as solid of a smile as you could muster. Bad person or not, nobody deserved to be treated the way that Quinn treated his victims.
“I’m sorry.” Ben said as he held the back door open. There was no handle on the outside of it. “For what it’s worth.” You stared at him for a moment, as your body went tight and tense in your confusion.
You knew what it felt like to be stabbed. You’d experienced it once before as a teenager when someone had hit your bike with their car and part of its frame had impaled itself in your thigh. You’d been more upset about the bike than the stabbing at that time, but the pain of it was distant and dulled from the adrenaline. You didn’t have that luxury this time.
The knife tore into your stomach, not sharp enough to be an easy stab. It wasn’t long, maybe two or three inches, but it was certainly enough to zing pain up your spine as you bucked back into a broad, solid chest. An arm snaked around your middle, held your weight, as another pulled the knife out of your gut and wrapped firmly around your neck, tucking your throat into the crook of his elbow. He groaned, nose pressed into your hair, and laughed as you shook and smacked at him uselessly, tried desperately to get him the fuck off of you.
It was Quinn. You didn’t need to look up to confirm it, but you did anyway, just in time to watch him run his tongue along the blade, his eyes rolling back as he swallowed.
“Thank you, darling,” Quinn grinned at Ben as he flexed his arm around your throat, played with your airway like it was a stress ball. “Back inside, please.”
Ben looked away from you, eyes on the ground, as he let the heavy door swing closed. There was no handle on the outside. You’d have to get out to the street to get help.
“Now, Detective,” Quinn purred in your ear, “just what are we going to do with you?”
“You don’t plan to kill me?” You ground out around the pressure on your windpipe. “Mark me up like your other victims?”
“Oh, there’s an idea.” Quinn rocked back and forth, swayed you in an uncoordinated slow dance. Your stomach kept turning, but you didn’t know if that was disgust or internal bleeding. “But just how would you deliver my message if I did that?”
Enough of this shit. You strained against his arm hard enough to swing your elbow back into his stomach. He doubled over, coughing, and his arms loosened around you enough that you could slip out. You spun, hand falling to your belt, and pulled out your taser.
When you left the police academy, you knew that you didn’t want to carry a firearm. Just having one could put you in a lot of danger, and could put the people around you in even more danger. You weren’t likely to accidentally shoot someone, you were a very good shot, top of your class in marksmanship. But a lot could go wrong when dealing with assailants, especially if there were bystanders. You didn’t want to bring a firearm into the mix. You had to carry something, if not for your own peace of mind, then for Milo’s. You were no slouch at hand to hand combat, but you knew that relying on your fists was worse than bringing a knife to a gunfight. When you got your P.I. license, you bought a top of the line, police-grade taser gun.
When you discharged your taser, it struck Quinn clear in the chest, and the wires attached to your weapon pulsed with a charge. Quinn grunted, stepped back in shock as the pain hit him.
But he didn’t collapse. His muscles didn’t convulse. His eyes snapped up to you, clear and bright, as he grinned.
You turned your gun so you could see the switch on the side. You usually left it set to pulse mode, which delivered electric pulses and interrupted most people’s control of their muscle tension. Somehow, at the worst possible time it could have happened, you had set the gun to drive-stun, which encouraged compliance with pain.
But Quinn was the sort of guy who liked pain. He reached up, snagged the wires with his bare hand, and tore the barbs out of his chest.
“Fuck,” you breathed. You tossed your taser to the side. You didn’t have time to hesitate. You dashed towards him, ignored the tearing pain in your stomach, and rammed your fist up into his jaw. He was taller than you, probably stronger than you, but you could put up a hell of a fight when you needed to.
It was less of a fight and more of a quick, dirty tussle. You were bleeding and had made your wound worse by moving. You put all you had in your first few strikes, but that wasn’t enough. Quinn took them like they were nothing. Compared to what somebody like Trouble could do, you imagined it probably felt like it too.
Quinn took hit after hit, but gave them right back. You were already at a disadvantage, and one well placed hit to your gut had you on the ground. Your vision dotted with stars, your lips going numb as the blood loss started creeping up on you.
That was it. Your back was flat on the concrete, your breath stuttering as you struggled to draw in enough air to satisfy your shaking body. Quinn grunted and spat on the ground next to you. He swung a leg over your middle and straddled your hips, pressing one hand over your mouth as he grinned down at you, teeth lined with blood.
You struggled beneath him, but your body only had so much to give. Your movements were sluggish and uncoordinated, ineffective. Quinn batted away your attempts to hit him mindlessly, turning his knife in his hand.
“Let’s leave our message, hmm?”
You knew what it felt like for a knife to be dragged through your skin. You’d cut your hand while cooking before. But Quinn made an art out of it. He pulled the knife slowly, took his time, his blue eyes wide and drinking in every twist of your face, every sound that escaped you despite yourself. By the time he was done, his pale hands were covered in blood. You watched as he pressed his fingers into his mouth, sucking at them until the blood flecked away, left his skin stained between the lines of his tattoos.
“You make such a wonderful little victim.” Quinn smiled down at you. “I’d keep you if I didn’t need you to tell them something.” His smile cracked impossibly wider. Too many teeth, lips spread too far. Your head was spinning. “You tell them that this mark is their fault. You tell them that it was supposed to be theirs, but they sent you after me. Tell them that the next time they send somebody else to do their dirty work, they won’t walk away from me.” His hand trailed up your chest until he could grip your jaw in his crushing hold. “Do you understand?”
You stared up at him, eyes hazy, and spat in his fucking face.
Quinn barked out a ragged laugh and wiped at his face, collecting your blood and saliva on his hand. He ran his tongue over his palm, groaning obscenely as he stared down at you through his lashes.
You were going to be sick.
“Feisty little thing.” Quinn moaned. “Next time, I’ll have to see what it takes to break you.”
He stood, driving his boot into your side one last time as he began to walk away. You blinked hard as you watched him go, vision swimming and unsteady.
Your phone was in your coat pocket. You wormed your numbing fingers along your body until they brushed the cold metal of it.
You didn’t know why you called him. Really, you should have called 911, but back in November you’d made a promise. You didn’t make a habit of breaking them.
“Hey, kiddo,” Colm’s voice rumbled through the receiver. You swallowed heavily and tried to figure out what you wanted to say. Help me. He’s getting away. I need an ambulance. Tell Milo…
“Hey,” you managed, voice cracking. Your throat was so fucking dry.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Colm’s voice took on a panicked edge. “Where are you, kid? Are you okay?” You blinked up at the afternoon sky as it darkened with thick clouds. Something cold landed on your cheek.
“It’s snowing.” You breathed. It hadn’t snowed in Dahlia in ten years. It had been a remarkably cold winter, after all. You wondered if there would be enough snow to stick.
Colm responded, but his voice went weird in your ears, warping and buzzing. You closed your eyes. You were so fucking tired.
When you woke up, there were hands on you. You jerked, groaned as the skin on your stomach tugged and screamed out in pain. There was a warm, calloused hand on your forehead, pushing your curls back from your face, and another bracing your side. You forced your eyes to open.
It was Milo. You… you thought it was Milo. Your eyes wouldn’t focus, kept rolling to the back of your head as your eyelids fluttered. You huffed softly as his thumb traced over your brow to try and soothe you.
“I know, kiddo, I hear ya.” It wasn’t Milo. His voice wasn’t quite right. It was rasped from years of smoke. Milo didn’t touch cigarettes. Just the smell of them made him gag. He said that he had reeked of them for weeks after moving out of his parent’s apartment since Colm smoked about a pack a day-
“Colm,” you gasped, throat ragged. Your hand flailed until you could grasp on to his sleeve.
“I’m here,” he said softly, “I’m right here. There’s an ambulance coming, okay? You stay with me, you understand? My kid’ll kill me if I let you die.”
“‘m cold.” You managed, shifting slightly on the freezing concrete. Colm bent further over you, blotting out the dull light from the sliver of sky visible between the buildings. Snowflakes landed in his curls, pooled around his face like waves.
“I know, kid, hey, open your eyes. Keep those eyes on me.” He tapped your cheek hard enough to make your head spin, but it kept your eyes open. You watched as he took stock of your condition. Slowly, like he was afraid to really look, he pulled your coat back and gingerly peeled your blood-soaked shirt from your torn skin. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph.” He breathed. You watched as his eyes grew distant and his face went pale. Whatever Quinn had done to you, it made a veteran homicide detective go a bit green.
You heard sirens in the distance and you were suddenly struck with the fear that it could be the 10-19 responding. You didn’t want Milo to see you, not until there was a doctor standing over you telling him you’d be okay. You didn’t want to scare him.
The ambulance backed up into the alley, and two paramedics and a firefighter piled out. You recognized one of them, Bailey, as she hopped out of the back with a go bag on her shoulder. It was the 7-30 responding, then.
The7-20 was the sister house to the 10-19. Their jurisdictions were nestled against each other on the southwest corner of Dahlia. The two houses had better response times and success rates than any other in the city. Friendly competition broke out between them every once in a while, who could put out the most fires, respond to the most calls, shave down their response times the most in a given stretch of time. David always insisted that steel sharpened steel, and the 7-30 was the only house in town that even began to meet the 10-19’s standards.
“Colm,” the firefighter greeted as he knelt next to your head. You wracked your brain trying to remember his fucking name. “Ansel gave me a heads up about your call. Sorry to see you like this.” He looked down at you as he braced your head with his knees, practiced calm painting his posture as he smiled gently. You’d met him before, at least once or twice, at one of the house’s joint Christmas parties. He was a nice guy, steady and calm in a way that David sometimes struggled to be. “Hey, friend. I’m Greg, and this is Bailey. Stay still for me, okay? We’re gonna get you taken care of.”
You wanted to nod, but he wouldn’t let you. You blinked hard. Greg fastened a C-collar around your neck. Somebody pressed something into your stomach and you groaned, unable to force out the scream that pounded at the back of your throat. Colm cursed under his breath, a calloused hand slipping into yours.
You were loaded onto a backboard and then a gurney in quick succession. Somebody cut through your shirt to expose your stomach properly. Diodes were attached to your bloodied skin. You cried out as you were loaded into the ambulance and you thought you heard Colm yelling at somebody.
“Colm,” you managed as you blinked past the fluorescent lights of the ambulance. Greg and Bailey loaded into the back with you as the driver took off, full lights and sirens. That wasn’t a good sign. Colm shoved himself into one corner by your head, his hand falling to your forehead again, shaking and cold.
“I’m here, kid.” He said as Greg and Bailey started talking quickly over you. You focused all of your energy into getting out what you needed him to know. If you died in transport or on the table, Colm needed to know what happened.
“It was Quinn.” You croaked. “His… friend? Ben. Bartender in the- the fuck- the club. Victim. I- he told Quinn. He left me. Left me alive. On purpose.”
“Okay,” Colm said softly, “okay, easy. You can tell me all of this later, kiddo, save your breath.”
“No,” you snapped, pulled your arm out of Bailey’s grasp just as she brought an IV to the big vein in your hand. Adrenaline surged through you, probably for the last time. You had to make this count. You snatched the collar of Colm’s crumpled suit and pulled him close, probably with more strength than he was expecting. “Listen!” Tears escaped past your lashes. “Find Ben. He can… he’ll get you to Quinn.” You swallowed around the blood in your throat. “Tell Milo…”
“I know.” Colm said. He pressed a kiss to your brow. “I know. I’ll tell him.”
You closed your eyes.
