dreams and moonlight
Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Homeland. I have no idea how this happened. One minute this was supposed to be light-hearted smut, and the next it turned into this. But still, enjoy! And be gentle with me. P.S. I really don't think I can wait ten months to find out what happened to Quinn.
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Carrie didn't cry when the letter came. But she didn't open it either.
'Presumed dead' was different than actually dead, and she knew Quinn. She knew him. He was as stubborn as her. And they wouldn't tell her anyway. They wouldn't tell her anything.
Her sister was worried.
Somehow, on the periphery of the tunnel-like vision she saw the world as now, Carrie could feel Maggie's concern. Her mother came up and began to help out with Frannie, but Carrie told her that there was no need. She was going to be a good mother to her daughter. Her father was counting on her.
And Quinn would have wanted it. He would come back and make sure.
Carrie wasn't sure how she was making it through work. She had been shunted off to a low-level analyst position at the Middle Eastern desk while the Senate went through countless hearings and then tried to figure out a successor for Lockhart. She knew that Saul was in the running, but she hadn't visited him, and he hadn't contacted her since she'd seen him at Dar Adal's house. They brought her in before the Intelligence Committee several times to answer for Islamabad, but she didn't really remember what she'd said. No one had thrown her in jail at any rate. She hadn't even been fired….
And besides, Quinn wouldn't die on this mission, right after he'd told her that he wanted to get out with her. He went on missions all the time. He'd been doing this job long before he had even met her. It would be stupid – utterly illogical – for him to die on this mission. So he couldn't be dead.
Carrie built a wall of information in her father's old room.
Maggie wasn't happy about that either.
Carrie bought her own place - just her and Frannie – and the wall grew. Every route he could take from Syria to Iraq was calculated. And then she nagged and blackmailed and bribed various other operatives on the ground to investigate them.
The wall was expanded to include every route from Syria to anywhere else in the surrounding countries.
She told herself that Quinn was extremely skilled in making himself disappear. He was injured – not badly, just enough to slow him down – and he would return to her once he was healed enough to move at speed.
One day she would get a phone call.
"Are you taking your meds, Carrie?" Maggie was always concerned now. It had been two months and Carrie knew that she looked like shit.
"Yeah, yeah," she waved the question away. Tried to organize her brain. If she could just twist that one thread – the green one – everything would make sense. It was the clue, the important one. Green for spring and growing and rebirth.
Maggie reached out a hand to feel her forehead and Carrie swatted her away. "You don't look at all well."
"Well, I'm taking the meds, Maggie!"
"Jesus, alright." Maggie's eyes were concerned, but Carrie couldn't see her. All she saw was the letter, her name printed neatly on it in Quinn's handwriting.
"It was a last minute switch, ma'am," the young man who delivered them had told her. He must have seen her expression because he hastened to explain. "It was my first mission, ma'am, and I was ready and eager to go….but I don't think…well, it was a hardship mission, and I don't think your…..well, I don't think he wanted me on that for my first one."
He pressed the letter into her hand. "He's just presumed dead, ma'am. In training I heard that everyone's presumed dead at least three times in their career when they're actually not."
He'd left her on that note. Carrie had nothing to say to him because the only thing running through her mind was the inane thought of what kind of job causes you to be 'presumed dead' multiple times?
Quinn's voice whispered in her ears. "I don't want anything like that in my life ever again. I want to get out and I want to stay out."
"We need more yellow!" Carried cried out, startling her sister. Frannie thought it was all a game and waved her arms exuberantly from her high chair.
"I have to consult with your doctor, Carrie," Maggie said, hurriedly pulling on her coat. She paused and then placed a gentle hand on her sister's arm. "Try not to overexert yourself, alright? And I'm going to bring Frannie with me."
"What? Why?"
"It's safer that way."
Carrie tried to haul her sister back as Maggie went for the baby. "What the Fuck, Maggie?!"
Maggie held Carrie by her arms and stared fiercely into her face. "Carrie, you're having an episode. You need to calm down."
"I am calm! I am perfectly calm!"
Maggie was now hauling Carrie down the hall and up the staircase towards her bedroom. Frannie had started crying and Carrie needed to reach her. Quinn was yelling at her about lines, fucking lines, and she had no idea what he was talking about, but he was disappointed in her and that thought hurt more than she thought it should.
"Maggie!" Carried cried, desperately.
Maggie laid her gently on the bed. "Shh, shh," she hushed. "It's going to be alright. Just…try and sleep for a while, okay? I'm going to get you new medicine."
"The old stuff was working just fine."
Maggie sat down and stroked Carrie's hair out of her face. She smiled sadly down at her little sister. "I really liked him, you know," she confided. "He seemed good for you, your young man."
"What are you talking about?"
"Carrie, I know about the letter. And Saul talked to me the other day. He's really worried, you know."
Carrie snorted. "If he was so worried, he should have come here himself." She paused. "And Quinn's not dead."
Maggie's hand stilled on her forehead. "Sure, Carrie," she whispered before she left.
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Carrie woke a washed in moonlight. Something was different.
She looked to her night table and saw that her phone was glowing. A text had just come in. Blearily she rubbed her eyes and attempted to focus. The letters swam in and out of view. Silver beams of light lay across the room as her curtains moved gently in the breeze. The house was quiet and there were new pills next to the phone.
The message swam into view. She felt her heart stop.
Carrie, its Quinn. I'm outside.
She was up off the bed and over to the window in less than a second, her heart beating like a drum in her chest. She hauled back the curtains and there he was, standing on the patch of grass right before her front door, bathed in moonlight.
He was alive and whole and back. He met her eyes across the distance and then Carrie was running, almost tripping, down the stairs, flinging open the door.
He met her halfway. She didn't realize that there were tears on her cheeks until she had thrown herself in his arms and he had caught her.
"Hey, hey," he said, soothingly as she clung to him.
She turned her face blindly upwards and kissed him.
In an instant he was kissing her back, warm, firm lips trying to devour every part of her. Her arms went around his broad shoulders as his hands tangled in her hair. He deepened the kiss, body pressed flush against hers.
Carrie leaned backwards and then they were both stumbling towards the house, slamming the door and tripping over the staircase.
Quinn caught her before she hit the stairs and dragged them both down. He attempted to pick her up but she wasn't having any of it. She arched her body, pushing every inch of hers against him. She felt him shudder as his hands ran up under her shirt and caressed the skin of her back. She hooked her legs around him, and then she was on her back on the carpeted stairs, Quinn cradled to her body.
He groaned at the contact, instinctively grinding into her. Carrie gasped in pleasure, head falling back to the floor with a 'thunk', as Quinn buried his face in her shoulder. She ran a hand through his short hair and arched her back once more.
The nose Quinn made didn't even have a name. "Car…..Carrie," she gasped. "If you keep this up I'm not going to make it to the bedroom."
"Mmm hmm," Carried hummed with pleasure. "That's just fine with me."
He growled, staggered upwards with her still in his arms, and made it up the stairs. She distracted him once again at the top and for a moment it looked like he would take her right up against the wall outside her bedroom, but then they stumbled together, falling onto the mattress, laughing breathlessly.
Or at least Carrie was.
Quinn, silent and intent, skated fingers over her bare skin as the moonlight caused his eyes to glow and her hair to turn silver in its light. He hovered over her, drinking in her features, his own cast in shadow as he bent his head to kiss her.
"Clothes," Carried hissed. "Too many fucking clothes!"
She all but ripped his shirt off, fingertips delighting in every inch of skin she could reach. Quinn place a trail of kisses along her jaw, down her neck, over her stomach. He placed on finger into the band of her pants.
"Off!" Carrie panted, before hauling him up and kissing him once more. Her other hand unbuttoned his pants and pulled them down as much as she was able to.
And then it was just them, skin to skin, and she was barely breathing. "Oh God," she swore. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Before Quinn stoppered her mouth once more and entered her in one quick motion.
And after that it was all heat and sweat and ecstasy.
Carrie lay in his arms afterwards, spent and sticky, but filled with a feeling she had never felt before. She turned her head, seeking him, and buried her face in his chest. His hands gently stroke her hair.
"I love you, you know," Quinn whispered; the last words she heard before she fell asleep.
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Carrie awoke the next morning to find an empty bed and her phone ringing. She answered it, absently noting that her clothes were on and that the bed was mostly unmussed. Dar Adal was on the other side. He spoke for several moments but the only words she hear were, "…..body…positive ID….."
Numbly she hung up the phone and stared at the pills on the side of her bed. There was a heavy narcotic among them. If she took ten of them it would all be over in a matter of hours. And she would be with him.
But Carrie didn't touch the pills. Frannie was waiting for her.
And she remembered Quinn's eyes in the moonlight and his arms around her as he whispered he loved her, and she realized he had been saying goodbye.
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