He felt safe.

Protected.

Arms were around him. Fingers touched his scalp with delicate care.

The body beneath him was firm, familiar, warm.

Quentin took a slow breath and allowed his eyes to drift open.

Nothing was as it should be. At first he thought it was due to the jumbled thoughts of sleep, a leftover from a dream forgotten the second he’d woken, but no. This was not his house, and Laurence should not be crying.

His mind snapped fully awake when he pieced together the wetness against his shoulder, the quick movements of Laurence’s chest, the soft, sharp intakes of breath from his lover.

“Laurence?” He tried to sit up, but Laurence’s arms tightened around him. “What’s wrong?”

Laurence laughed weakly. “Oh Goddess, baby. I love you. I love you.”

The more he said it, the more desperate he sounded.

Quentin frowned and pulled himself up a little straighter, more forcefully this time, so that he could look at Laurence. “You’re here,” he realized.

He hadn’t expected to find Laurence the first place he went. Was Freddy really so lax, or was this part of some larger plan?

It didn’t matter. Laurence looked awful, as though he hadn’t slept or eaten in days, and had been weeping for at least as long. His beautiful golden skin was dull and lifeless, and his eyes were ringed with bruise-like darkness.

“Listen,” Laurence hissed. “Baby, listen to me. You can’t trust me!”

Quentin blinked rapidly at that and freed his hands up to cradle Laurence’s cheeks. He brushed at tears and furrowed his brows. “Darling? What’s wrong? Why are we…”

He tailed off.

Where were they?

Quentin took in the room as quickly as he could. This was Freddy’s Kensington house, if memory served - which it so infrequently did.

But it had been wrecked.

Suspicion nibbled away at him, and he glanced to the floor, only to find a circle of clear ground around himself.

He’d done this.

Which meant he’d forgotten something.

He sucked in a breath and looked to Laurence with growing fear. “Did I hurt you?”

Laurence shook his head desperately. “No. No, baby, you could never hurt me.”

“Did…”

You can’t trust me!

He tilted his head. “Did you hurt me?”

“No. No but…” Laurence’s voice seemed trapped in his own throat, and he coughed. “You’ve gotta run, Quen. He’s gonna-” Laurence’s mouth stopped working altogether, and despair chased fury across his features.

The fury looked familiar. Like a flash of déjà vu, he couldn’t place where from, but he had the oddest sense that someone else should be present.

“We should go,” he concluded. He slipped from Laurence’s weakening grip and stood, then hauled Laurence to his feet.

“Hold on,” Laurence said. The anger melted from him, replaced by concern. “Baby, do you remember what happened before you blacked out?”

Quentin pressed his lips together. “Michael,” he said slowly. “He was here.” He glanced around, but it was already obvious that the redhead was long gone. “He’s working with Freddy.”

Laurence nodded and turned away. “After that?” He began to pick through the detritus, gathering together pieces of the laptop and setting them in a heap.

The laptop.

Quentin struggled to remember. “Freddy had you,” he whispered. “Somewhere else. We had a video call…” Then he straightened quickly. “Michael was your dealer.”

“It’s all coming back, huh?” Laurence nodded softly. “That’s great, baby. You’re getting better at this. Keep working at it. It’s important.”

Why wouldn’t Laurence face him?

He sounded calm now. Not a trace of the tears or fear he’d been riddled with a minute ago.

“Frederick,” Quentin said.

Laurence turned and raised his head. He bore an expression utterly unfamiliar on Laurence’s face, despite using his features to craft it. It was cold and calculating. “I always did say that you were far smarter than you gave yourself credit for.”

The voice was right, but the accent was Freddy’s.

Run, Laurence had told him. But if Quentin were to run, Laurence remained in Freddy’s grasp, a prisoner, ill-treated and used.

Laurence’s dark eyes scanned back and forth quickly. “It seemed I used a hammer to crack a nut,” he mused. “How much do you remember, Icky?” He took a step closer.

Quentin took a step back. “Let him go, Freddy.”

“Or what?” Laurence snorted in amusement. “You’ll hurt me? Dearest Icky, you can’t even hurt a killer in self-defense.” He spread his hands and continued forward. “You can’t touch me, and you certainly won’t harm Laurence.”

This was why Laurence had told him to run. He’d known this was coming, known Freddy had the power to control him like this.

A fragment of memory came to him, as though it had never left. The laptop. Frederick, holding Laurence by the hair. Wearing Michael’s body like a spare suit, just as he now did with Laurence’s.

His eyes narrowed. “You can’t control me, can you?”

“We’ve been down this conversation before, Icky. Try to focus.”

He pressed his lips together tightly. Laurence wanted him to run, Frederick wanted him to remember something.

Whatever had happened had made him lose control so utterly that he had blacked out and destroyed the drawing room, and the last time that had happened was with Jack. Quentin had thoroughly destroyed Myriam’s shop. Oh, he’d blacked out here and there since then, but in the main it was the situation at Laurence’s Valentine’s party which had proven truly destructive.

Frederick was trying to set him off again, wasn’t he?

Quentin felt sick at the thought that someone could intentionally trigger an episode, weaponize his own illness against him in such a way. No wonder Laurence had been so insistent that he run.

He turned on the balls of his feet and sprinted for the door.

He heard a soft hiss at his back, and then the splintering of glass and a sound like the stretching of a thousand rubber bands. It was a sound he couldn’t place, not quite.

Not until a rosebush snared his ankle.

Quentin stumbled, but caught himself telekinetically rather than land in a carpet littered with broken glass. He twisted and threw shards of that glass at the thorny vines which dug into his trousers, but more poured in through the ruined windows from the back garden.

Laurence stood with his arms wide, hands flung toward him, features pinched in concentration.

Frederick was using Laurence’s gifts, or forcing Laurence to use them. Either way, this was not a fight Quentin wished any part of. If he himself didn’t get horribly hurt, Laurence might, and that was untenable.

More brambles shot toward him at a speed only Laurence could make them grow, and Quentin flung everything he could at them to bat them aside as he backed toward the door.

Frederick wouldn’t risk exposure, would he? If this fight spilled out onto the street, would Frederick let it go, or would he allow the whole world to see what they could do?

It was a gamble, but if Quentin remained here there was no way for this to end well.

He thrust a jet of flame at the nearest vines and dove backward through the doorway, rolling as he landed, and sprung to his feet the moment he was able. He tore the kitchen door off its hinges and jammed it into the doorway of the drawing room, then bolted across the hallway.

A loud smash sounded behind him but didn’t stop. Instead he wrenched the front door inward and all but flew down the steps and out into the street, drenched through by the rain in a matter of seconds.

Quentin skidded to a halt and turned on the balls of his feet, looking back to the open doorway.

Laurence appeared, framed by it, lip curled in irritation.

They stood, chests heaving. Quentin heard his pulse banging in his ears, felt the tingle of adrenaline pumping through him.

But the park across the street failed to lash out and attack him.

That was it, then. Frederick wasn’t willing to take this out into the open.

“I’m doing this for your own good,” Laurence yelled. And Freddy’s accent was gone, just like that. It sounded so much like Laurence’s native cant that for a second Quentin hesitated. “There are things you have to remember!”

No. It was Frederick, and he was using Laurence’s body, and Quentin would make him pay for this.

Once he figured out how the hell to make him stop.

He slicked hair from his eyes and turned his back on the man he loved, then broke into a run. He knew his way back to the Dorchester from here, and he’d spent too long cooped up in one vehicle or another. He was good at running, and running was what Laurence had told him to do, so by God he was going to do it now.

Quentin sprinted as fast as he could and didn’t look back, and all the while he tried to ignore the fact that his heart was breaking.