Quinn IV

Quinn is lying on the bed in Carrie's guest room, trying to will his body to cooperate. She had helped him there after the painkillers had kicked in and he was a little lightheaded from all the activity of getting from his place to Carrie's. Now she's out getting his prescription filled or that's what he thinks she said. All he knows is it's a good time for him to move, shower, clean up before she comes back and notices his filthiness. Because the idea of Carrie helping him shower can only lead to every kind of disaster.

So he's gathering all his will, pushes himself up from the bed and into the bathroom. Manages to start the shower running before sitting on the toilet to take a much needed break. Thankfully he's already not wearing a shirt and it's relatively easy to remove his pants. Getting into the shower is harder but he makes it with only a slight wobble.

The water feels glorious, he hasn't been able to shower in weeks. The heat beats against him and the steam pushes into his sore lung; he breathes deep like the nurse told him to. Bad idea.

The breath goes deep into his chest but he chokes on the pain. It rattles through his body as he fumbles to turn the shower off, each breath a cough and each cough a punch to his wrecked ribs. He looks for a towel, doesn't find one. Realizes he has to lie down or he'll be lying on the floor soon. Self-preservation kicks in and he manages the twenty steps back to the bed, collapsing into it still coughing.

Eventually the cycle of coughing and heaving comes to an end but it spits Quinn out ragged and sweating, naked and starting to shiver.

Of course that's when he hears the door open and knows he has no chance to solve his problem before she checks on him. Because he can't move yet, and she's only steps away.

"Quinn?" she calls. "You awake?"

He makes no response, keeps trying to breathe without coughing. He is in the middle of a heaving breath when she comes in and sees him naked and useless on the bed.

Carrie raises her eyebrows in mild concern, sits down next to him on the bed and pulls the covers over his shivering body. "Jesus, Quinn," she says. "There are towels."

Quinn tries to smile, comes out as a grimace. "Like you've never seen a dick before, Carrie," he manages to rasp out.

Carrie hides a grin, tries to look stern and he counts it a point in his favour.

"Doesn't mean I need to see yours. You're lucky you didn't pass out in the shower," she says. "You could have waited for help."

Quinn glares at her to let her know his opinion of asking for help but she pretends not to notice. Instead she runs her hand over his feverish brow, up through his wet hair as he tries not to shudder.

Thankfully Carrie gets up and goes into the bathroom, leaving him able to gather himself for a moment, trying not to be a shaking mess. But he really does feel like shit and now his bandages are all wet and bloody. Great houseguest he's been so far; she's really going to regret bringing him here, he thinks.

She returns with a towel and dries his hair for him, then passes him the towel.

"Dry yourself off, Quinn," she says with a smirk, throwing a bag that lands perilously close to his sore chest. "And put some pants on."

Carrie leaves the room and he does as she says, pushes back the covers and dries off as well as he can from a sitting position. He looks in the bag and finds a pair of sweats, a couple of shirts.

By the time she gets back he's managed to wrestle himself into the pants but doesn't bother with the shirt over the wet bandages. Carrie returns with water and a big bag from the pharmacy, makes him take a handful of pain pills and antibiotics before starting to unwrap his bandages.

Quinn tries to pull back. "It's alright, I can do it myself," he mutters.

Carrie gives him a pissed off look, scowls. "I'd like to see that, Quinn. You can barely sit up long enough for me to do it," she says.

He frowns, is annoyed because he knows she's right. But a guy's got to have some dignity. He hates it even when anonymous nurses see him incapacitated, have to clean his ass. It will be exponentially worse if it's Carrie even if she's already seen him in some shit situations, times of weakness.

Quinn feels exposed, mostly hates it and but kind of wants it, wants her to know him. And he knows he needs help, he just doesn't want to admit it.

"Carrie relax, I'll do it," he tries. "Just give me a minute."

But Carrie just looks at him like he's an idiot. "My house, my rules," she says seriously.

"Well fuck. You break into my place and bring me here then it's all your rules?" Quinn responds, just to keep the argument going while he figures a way out. "Remember, you're the one that told me to fuck off, Carrie."

She wasn't actually angry before but now she's starting to look really pissed off. Pissed off is good, Quinn thinks. Good chance he can make her storm out.

But of course the next words out of her completely change the game.

"Well, maybe I was wrong," she says angrily.

Quinn raises his eyebrows, a little explosion goes off in his chest.

"You? Carrie? Wrong?" he asks.

Carrie glares at him in return but he sees the hint of a frustrated smile. "Fuck you, Quinn," she says. "Maybe I don't have to do everything on my own."

Quinn looks at her, another bomb bursting in him. This is what he wanted from her the whole fucking time. Of course she pulls it out when it works against him. And while he wanted her to need him, him needing Carrie is a whole other story - one he hasn't committed to yet. Because it's been a fuck long time since he's needed anyone and he's learned from the past that need leads to disappointment; that it's a weakness to be conquered.

"Maybe?" he asks, wondering if she will backpedal on her words, make the whole conversation easier.

But for once Carrie is looking at him with unguarded eyes. He sees a glimpse of the few moments she has been completely honest with him and thinks shit, this is not the time for honesty.

"Maybe I was really fucking worried, Quinn," she says. "Maybe I had a lot of time to think how I fucked everything up."

He doesn't say anything, doesn't want to admit this is what he wanted.

"Maybe I fucking missed you," she admits, looking at him, daggers in her eyes. Only Carrie would look so angry while telling him that she missed him.

If she knew how much he had fucking missed her she'd probably run for the hills. So Quinn doesn't say anything but looks at her and wonders why he's arguing with her. This whole thing does still make him uncomfortable - especially with Carrie. She does not fit the nursing type, her empathy so often overshadowed by her own immediate needs. He can't believe he's here at all, that she's willing to take in his pathetic invalid ass. He thinks it must be really bad for Carrie to give a shit, to give up her privacy. And if it's really bad, he doesn't want her around to see it, see him weak and defenseless.

But then again this is what he wanted, to be in the position to make sure Carrie's alright, to be permanently informed on her safety and well-being. Which sounds creepy, he knows. But for whatever reason, it's what he needs.

So its his self-dignity against his desires. Fly solo or ride tandem.

He looks at Carrie and she is starting to look nervous, like she admitted too much. Quinn thinks how hard this is for her, the queen of solo flights.

"Shit, Carrie. I fucking missed you too," he says. "Now you know how it feels."

Carrie frowns at him, pokes him in the shoulder. "Now will you sit up so I can change your fucking bandages?" she says gruffly.

Quinn gives her a glare but does as asked, feels her pull the wet bandages off of him. They both look at his chest, Quinn realizing he hasn't even seen the wounds yet.

Carrie makes a tiny gasp before her expression settles into a sad grimace. She runs her fingers gently across the big red mess on his abdomen, touches the hole in his chest where they had stuck the tube into his lung, holds her hand over the dark purple of his ribs, above his heart. Quinn tries his best to relax, to let her look.

"Jesus, Quinn," she says. "What the hell happened?"

"I fucked up," he replies. "Sniper got me twice. I should have noticed him there. Really I should be dead."

Carrie finishes examining his wounds, starts putting antibiotic cream on the stitches.

"You never fuck up," she says. "So what went wrong?"

"I never fucked up til I met you," he says, wondering where the hell the words came from. "Now I'm a walking disaster."

It's true but he never quite realized it so strongly before. All this shit has happened since he started working with Carrie; he's never fucked anything up before.

Carrie looks at him oddly and for a second he thinks she's going to get up and leave. But instead she just takes a breath and picks up the gauze, starts wrapping it around him tightly.

He breathes in sharply, even the touch of the cloth on his body enough to make him wince.

"So what is it about me?" she asks and he wonders how the fuck he can answer that question. What is it about her? Pretty much everything, he thinks.

"Fuck Carrie, I don't know," he answers truthfully. "But shit is different with you around, I don't have the same focus and I can't do my job without it."

This is it, he thinks, exactly the problem. Quinn has always had his eyes on the prize but all of a sudden the prize changed. The job had always been the priority but now things aren't so clear.

Carrie finishes taping up his stomach, gives the bandage job a little pat with her hand and he thinks it really wasn't that humiliating, that it almost felt good.

"So now what?" she asks. "You going to just disappear again as soon as you can?"

Quinn looks at her, wonders what she wants him to say. He's had to make this choice before and the job has always won. Now the job is losing handily, is barely a consideration. But he knows it isn't fair to Carrie to stay around for her if she doesn't want it. And despite what she's said, he's still not sure what she wants. Hell, he's not sure what he wants. Or how any of this might work.

"You know how it is, Carrie. This kind of work, I can't have any ties. It's the life I chose," he says grimly. "But I don't know if I can do it anymore. I know I don't want to."

She covers the sutures on his chest with another bandage as he bares himself to her and, as Quinn feels her fingertips over his bruise, he wonders why he resisted this at all. He was wrong about Carrie as a nurse - she's serious but soft, with steady hands and a warm touch.

And maybe it's the painkillers kicking in but he suddenly wants to tell her everything, lay bare his secrets, show her the real Peter Quinn. But he's still with it enough to know he can't tell her that almost all of his idle thoughts fall her way - she has enough going on emotionally without him pushing into that territory. Honestly, he doesn't know if he'd be brave enough to go there, thinks she would possibly emasculate him just for trying.

"When I got shot, I was thinking about you. My head wasn't in the game," he says anyways. "It fucking happens a lot lately."

Carrie finishes with the bandage, looks at him sternly.

"No more fucking up, Quinn," she admonishes. Her eyes are sharp but he sees something else sneaking through.

Quinn nods, thinks his life is about to wander down an alternate path. The way she is looking at him, he knows there's no going back.

"You almost died," she states softly, as if it's a secret. "Brody just fucking died and now you."

Quinn nods again, wonders how she is so upset about it. He's pretty sure she doesn't even consider him a friend, possibly just an expendable work colleague. Not that she wouldn't care but he never imagined she'd get it together to find him. He may have wished for it at some point but decided it was impossible - no one knew where he lived, he always made sure of that. Even if he had a phone he probably wouldn't have called her. He wonders how she did it, will get her to tell him later. But he already knows that nothing else had gotten her to leave her place in over a month and now she's been out at least twice due to his pathetic self.

"I would have been really fucking sad, Quinn," Carrie says with a frown.

"You're already fucking sad, Carrie," he croaks.

She swats him lightly with her hand. "Well I would have been even fucking sadder," she replies.

"Good thing you found me then," he mumbles back.

"Well I had to," she says. "I'm sorry I was such a bitch to you."

Quinn laughs and instantly regrets it as it leads to a spate of coughing and he becomes a breathless mess. But the bitchiness is just part of the Carrie charm, he thinks. It will take a lot more than that to get rid of him.

"I can take it," he mutters in return.

Carrie almost smiles then, but looks concerned about his coughing fit. She puts her hand lightly against his ribs and he breathes into it until he stops heaving. Her touch is calm and settling, unlike anything else in her personality and Quinn wonders if she will ever stop surprising him. Then she pats him on the head like a little boy and leans down to give him a glancing kiss on the forehead and he thinks 'nope, never'. He closes his eyes, thinks this is too much, that possibly he's still delirious and dying in his shithole and this is just a fantasy.

"You look like shit, Quinn," she says. "I got us some food. Eat something and then sleep, alright?"

He opens his eyes and she's still there in solid form, tapping him on the hand, looking at him for a response.

"Only if you do too," he replies.

Carrie rolls her eyes, half-scowls at him. "Fine," she says, with fake attitude.

She goes to get the food and Quinn sits contemplating his situation. He is willing to admit she probably saved his life, that no one else would have come around to find him and he was too weak to have saved himself, too useless to bother. And now she seems to have completely flip-flopped on her position on him in her life. No wonder he keeps thinking this is just a fever dream, a last happy gasp before death.

But Carrie comes back with a deli bag and the food is real enough, as is her continued presence on the edge of his bed. Quinn looks at the two of them eating in bed, pale gaunt figures, each trying their best to have an appetite.

He moves over, pulls Carrie on beside him, smiles as she finishes her sandwich. She looks at him sternly and he returns to his food, gingerly takes a bite.

When he starts to feel nauseous and gives up on the food she cleans up and takes his temperature. It feels ridiculous - he hasn't let someone take his temperature since he was a kid - but the cool touch of her hand against his forehead is enough compensation for his humiliation.

"You're running a pretty high fever," she says. "But the antibiotics should get that down."

As if on cue, he shivers, suddenly hit by a chill and Carrie helps him struggle into a t-shirt, then makes him lie down and covers him tightly with the duvet. She pats him on the head again and he thinks how it would usually piss him off but right now he doesn't mind.

"Sleep, Quinn," she says. "You need to heal."

Quinn nods, thinks he won't be able to stay conscious long even if he tried.

"Night, Carrie," he mutters. "Thanks for saving my sorry ass."

He can hear the smile in her voice as she responds. "Your ass is fine, Quinn. It's the rest of you I'm worried about."

Quinn smiles drowsily as he closes his eyes, thinking about how fucked up things have been since Carrie Mathison appeared in his life. And that's in relation to his already fucked up life as a government assassin. He likes linear things, order and calm precision. She is as fucking nonlinear as things get, a bipolar case agent who disregards every rule.

But as he lies there with the warmth of her hand still on his skin Quinn knows he's finally found a reason to stick around. And it only took two bullet wounds and some extreme pain for Carrie to admit she wants him to stay.

Pretty good fucking deal, he thinks as he drifts into unconsciousness.