Page 36 of Drawn to Death
I don’t answer him. We both know it isn’t that simple. This stopped being just about protection a long time ago.
His breathing slows, deepens. I feel the exact moment sleep takes him, the way he goes heavy and loose against me. Just like that. Safe in a killer’s arms, drifting off like it is the most natural thing in the world.
Maybe for him, it is. He’s seen through my eyes. Felt what I feel every time I take a life. Drawn every death with a precision that still makes my skin crawl. He knows exactly what I am. And he still chooses this. Chooses me.
I lie still, listening to him breathe. My arm staying over him, protective and maybe a little possessive too. Outside, the city hums with late-night traffic, distant sirens, that restless white noise of other people’s lives going on while we lie here, caught in this strange, quiet moment.
My bed has never felt like this before. Never been warm with another person’s heat, never held anyone but me. The professional distance I’ve kept for years, the clean, empty space between jobs and everything else; it's just gone. All that’s left is this; a sleepy artist curled against me, trusting enough to fall asleep in my arms.
I should feel wrong about it. Dangerous, even. A liability I can’t afford. But it doesn’t feel like that at all. It feels like slipping into a life I haven’t realized I want until it is already mine. The daily routine we’ve built, the way we move around each other in the kitchen, the quiet scratch of Quell sketching while I clean my weapons. His toothbrush next to mine, blue against black. All these little domestic details sneaking in where I’ve always kept things sparse and sterile.
Quell shifts in his sleep, murmurs something I can’t catch. I adjust my arm around him, careful not to wake him. His breath is warm on my skin, soft and steady. The weight of him anchors me more than I expect. More than I’ve ever wanted to admit. I didn't even know I needed it.
I think about the dream he told me about. The woman with gray curls. He hasn’t drawn it. A change, even if it is small. Does it mean something? Is he slipping away from the visions that bring us together? The thought sends a flicker of panic through my chest. If the dreams stop, will he still need me? Will he still want to stay?
The question hangs there in the dark. No answer. Quell sleeps on, completely unaware. His face looks peaceful for once, the usual tension gone. The shadows under his eyes are softer in the dim light.
I trust him. More than I should. More than is safe for either of us. He knows what I am, what I do. He knows too much about Vincenzo, about the organization, about the bodies I’ve left behind. If he ever decides to talk…
But he won’t. I know that, deep down, the same way I know how to strip a gun blindfolded or which arteries bleed out fastest. Quell is mine now. I am his. Whatever has drawn us together; fate, luck, his weird gift; it has us locked in tight.
The clock on the nightstand blinks: 3:47 AM. Still hours before dawn. I can feel Quell’s warmth soaking into me, making my eyelids heavy even with my mind racing. His breathing is slow and deep now. The signs of real sleep. I match it without thinking. Inhale when he does. Exhale when he does.
This strange, quiet domesticity. This life I’ve landed in without planning, without warning. A killer and his dreamer, tangled together in the dark. It shouldn’t work. It can’t last. But right now, with Quell’s heartbeat steady against my palm, it is all I want.
I close my eyes. Whatever Vincenzo is planning, whatever is coming, it can wait until morning. Tonight, all that matters is this: Quell, safe in my arms. My bed, not cold or empty anymore. My life, not so compartmentalized and hollow.
Strange how quickly a man like me can get used to something like tenderness. Strange how easy it is to hold instead of hurt. Strange how little I mind the change.
My last thought before sleep is of Quell’s dream, the one he hasn’t drawn. The woman with gray curls. Who is she? What does she mean? Is she a warning, or a promise? Does she matter at all?
I’ll ask him in the morning. For now, sleep. For now, this quiet moment, stolen from a life that has never promised me anything but solitude.
Chapter eighteen
Quell
Iwake surrounded by silence. Not the hollow, echoing kind that usually lingers after my nightmares, but something softer, a gentle pause, like the hush between heartbeats. Morning light spills through the blinds, striping the floor of my studio in pale gold. For the first time in weeks, my head feels clear, not weighed down by someone else’s death. I flex my fingers, half expecting them to ache, but they are loose and painless. No cramps from clutching pencils all night, no need to exorcise bloody visions onto paper. Just one night of dreamless sleep, and I almost feel normal.
The floorboards are cold under my feet as I pad across the studio. My toes curl at the chill, but it grounds me, a sharp, real sensation, anchoring me to this morning, not some haunted memory.
I stretch, arms up, feeling the slow, pleasant pull in muscles that haven’t spent the night tensed in fear.
Instead, Talon held me as I drifted off, his arm heavy and warm around my waist, his breath soft against the back of myneck. He was still there when I woke up, though he slipped out earlier, mumbling something about checking the perimeter, making sure everything was secure. Always on duty, always watching.
But for once, I am not scared of what the day will bring. The woman with the gray curls is not a death dream. Maybe things are shifting. Maybe I am too.
I drift over to the drafting table in the corner, where the light is brightest. It is a mess: jars stained with charcoal water, pencils worn down to stubs, half-finished sketches I can’t bring myself to complete. It was good of Talon to bring my things from my apartment, but they don’t interest me today. I push them aside, clearing a patch of bare wood. Today I want to draw something for myself, not for the nightmares.
My hand hovers over the pencils, picking one with a soft lead. Not the hard, sharp ones I use for the visions, the ones that scrape every detail of death onto the page with cold precision. This will be different. Gentler. Closer.
I pick a new sheet, thick and rough, the kind that drags the pencil, that clings to every mark, that makes you work for it. The kind I use before the visions, before my sketches start charting other people’s last moments.
My first mark is careful. A slow, shallow curve, a jawline. Talon’s jawline, the one I trace in the dark with my fingertips. I put down another line, the slope of his shoulder when he sleeps. Then the hollow at his throat, where his neck meets the collar. I draw from memory: Talon at rest, Talon when no one is watching, Talon with all his sharp edges folded away.
The pencil makes a soft, steady whisper as I work, the paper’s texture catching the graphite, roughing up the lines just enough to make them feel real. I let myself get lost in it, the repetition, the gentle push and pull, the way the image comes together in slow, deliberate layers.
“I just want to draw him smiling,” I mutter, not meaning to say it at all. My voice sounds thin in the empty room. When was the last time I drew someone smiling? When was the last time I drew anything except the moment right before it all ends?
