In the morning, Quinn rolled out of bed and sat up, only to lie straight back down again. His head, his ears, his very skull hurt. He remembered Carrie asking if he had anything to drink, or any Tylenol, and wished he'd listened to her. Or at least sent her out for Gatorade. He tried sitting up again with better luck this time, and started to slowly make his way to the kitchen.
A quick look in the fridge yielded nothing much – take out containers, mustard, a six pack of Heineken. He briefly considered the beer as rehydration, then shuddered and thought better of it. He closed the fridge and turned around, reaching into the dishwasher for a clean glass. He filled it with the finest cold Virginia tap water, and took this with him to the bathroom. A brief search yielded Aspirin (who still takes aspirin?), Tylenol (Huh, I did have it), and a brown vial with 8 Vicodin left over from the last hospital stay, gunshot wound, fistfight… or something. He gulped two Tylenol, stripped and got in the shower.
He stood under the flow, feeling the needles of the hot shower sooth his scalp and back. He rubbed water in his face and started to think back on the previous evening. Booze – TV – pool looked inviting but he was too drunk to get that far – more booze – the chick from downstairs. What was her name? I don't think I even asked her.
But then Carrie had shown up. Had taken him upstairs – had touched him – and had even offered to stay. Stay on the couch? Stay and talk? He had been too fucked-up to figure it out. But she had come, and at least asked him what was wrong. It made it better, somehow. It was a start.
Quinn thoughtfully soaped his short haircut, feeling the medicine starting to work. It had been so many years since he'd had a connection. A friend, even a friend of the same sex. There had been people in college he'd have called friends. Study buddies, drinking buddies. Time had been where he'd even had a girlfriend. Someone he thought he loved at the time. Or maybe he had mistaken the desire to connect, to be with someone, to feel like he belonged, as love. And then came the Agency. In spite of it, he'd managed to spend enough time with a woman to think he'd like to be with her, to get her pregnant. When the time came to split, though, he left Julia and … the boy . John Jr. He left them flat. As he'd told Carrie, he fucked it up. With his kid, anyway. And somehow, he had been detached enough from people, places and things that it just didn't matter. He wondered if this made him a bad person. This last few months, he'd been asking himself that a lot.
But from the first minute he'd seen Carrie Mathison, some kind of alarm had gone off in his head. She was a gorgeous woman, no doubt. She had a physical magnetism that made his hands itch to reach out and touch her, for any reason. And she was an amazing analyst with a mind like no other – a brilliance, a way of connecting facts and people which made her no less than a national treasure.
The dark side of Carrie, the part that everyone had trouble with, that was part of the package. From the very start, Quinn knew that. He accepted her quirks, her illness, her inability to see anything but the problem she was working on, while she was working on it. Realized that she was worth helping. That her whole life was dedicated to finding and neutralizing the goons that would hurt this country. At the same time, her obsession with Brody was nothing short of appalling to him. But he understood – this is the way she was made. She was into Brody, so she was going to have him. When he set himself up, scope and rifle, in the deep woods near the Mathison cabin, watching Carrie and Brody indulging in their house-playing fantasy, he knew he couldn't take the shot. He couldn't take his eyes off her bare back as Brody caressed it. It would have killed her to watch him die in her arms. He just couldn't do it.
And, Quinn admitted, Killing Brody would have killed me. I couldn't do that to her. No matter how wrong her obsession felt, no matter how unlikely a happy ending was, it couldn't be me that killed the person she thought she loved. He turned off the shower and got out.
Toweling himself off, he shuffled to the bedroom closet to pick out some work clothes. It was only 8:00 AM and if he turned up at the base in short order, he should be able to downplay his state from the night before. Even as strung out as he felt, he wasn't anxious to parade these feelings in front of others. Because, what would it help? He had an appointment later this week with a psychological counselor, who was supposed to screen him for PTSD. Please, madam, spare me… but he had to go.
He selected gray gabardine slacks and a navy blue button down that accommodated his favorite pancake holster. He pulled together his briefcase and computer and grabbed his black jacket. He found the apartment keys sitting right on the edge of the coffee table. Carrie again. If she only knew what she did to him when she had her hand in his pocket! Good God.
He thumped down the stairs and saw the apartment manager lady, who had a blue bowling jacket on and was scraping the bottom of the pool with a long-handled pool net, trying to retrieve what appeared to be a liquor bottle. "Good morning," he said with some mustered cheer.
"Good morning yourself," she muttered sourly. Whatever, thought Quinn.
On the drive in, he considered the vector of Carrie's life and career since he declined to take the shot at Brody and further, had told Estes that if anybody else whacked Brody out, he would know and take care of them. No, it had to be this way. The Taliban, the true bad guys, they had strung Brody up and put his lights out for good. A weird dude, in some ways loyal Marine, in other ways, broken forever. And what had Quinn done for Carrie? Because he didn't take the shot, she had spent more time with Brody. She even had an embarrassing hookup with him while Saul and Quinn were wired in. If she only knew how agonizing it was for him to listen to that. Every sound she made while she screwed Brody… it kept him awake at night. For weeks after that hookup, the sounds she made were all he could think about.
And now she had Brody's baby. Her Dad had apparently flaked out, although she was reticent to talk about it, and it would seem that her sister had taken over as the mother figure. The baby – Franny – would be well taken care of, Quinn had no doubt. But Quinn knew that Carrie didn't have a maternal bone in her body. Maybe it was better this way.
Maybe it's better this way because – she can go to Istanbul. Station Chief, it's her dream job, after all. She can be free to do her job – when she's on her game, she's really good at it. The best. Maybe it's better this way because – when she's overseas, in the field, I can protect her. I can care for her. She can be … his mind approached the word… shied back from it and then admitted it – she can be mine.
Quinn snapped out of his obsessive trance as he approached the security gate. He rolled his window down and showed his ID to the gate agent with a curt "Hi" and a nod. He drove off towards the parking lot for his building, and found a spot about two over from Carrie's G car. Close enough to walk with her when she comes out. Close enough to keep an eye on her when she leaves at night.
Close enough, for now.