Metanoia |BxB|

Chapter Seven

(Tessa Pictured)

QUINN

Quinn can honestly say without a single sliver of doubt that life will never be the same. He had figured as much when he'd seen Jasper toss his cap on graduation night, but he hadn't been quite sure until now.

The Tower always threw needless, overdone dinners for their employees and their families every quarter and demanded that they come and mingle with the people they couldn't stand on their 9-5 shifts for an extra couple of hours.

He had always at least had Jas to keep him company. His son would always deadpan responses that saved them from Nancy's stories about what she read in whatever tabloid or Gale's monotonous tellings of the research his team would be doing soon.

Jasper was good at stopping people in their tracks that way.

Lydia had always been like a forcefield. Entertaining these women and letting them talk to their heart's content so that Quinn wouldn't have to. Although they were all scientists with awards and certificates and several books under their belt, they all had a way of being complete gossips and home remedy types on the inside.

Now, however, he only had Chloe for protection and they were both defenseless against chattering human beings. To be quite honest, he doesn't really know how their kids turned out the way they did with the two of them being so awkwardly anti-social.

"Oh boy, here comes Henry." Chloe whispers from behind her flute of champagne and Quinn gets enough time to force on a plastic smile before the man slides into view.

"How long do we have to be here?" Quinn asks between his teeth and waves when the intern begins to bee line towards them. "Chlo, I hate this guy."

"They haven't served dinner yet." his wife mumbles back and wraps an arm around his. "We have to at least make it through the chocolate mousse."

"Dr. McKormick, so nice to see you outside the lab!"

Henry, to put it bluntly, was a brown nosing daddy's boy who drove each and every person on their floor up the wall. Especially Quin.

He never seemed to be in shortage of plastic smiles and boasting comments or shit he pulls out of his ass so make himself look bigger next to the other interns. Quinn wishes he had been assigned Conrad, the nice intern who was on the floor above him.

The best part of it all, however, was that Quinn and his team were stuck with this kid, Henry, for another quarter if they wanted to maintain his father's funding. And Quinn needed that funding.

"Henry. Pleasure. Please, meet my my wife, Chloe. Chloe, this is Henry. One of our interns."

"I'm his intern." Henry states with a wide smile.

"Henry, It's nice to meet you. I've heard about you from my husband." Chloe smiles easily and shakes the boy's hand.

Scratch what he said earlier about not knowing how the kids turned out the way they did. Chloe was as much of a sweet talker as Lydia when she wanted to be.

"I take is the Misses knows all about your research here in the lab." Henry grins and Quinn is about to answer when Chloe beats him to the punch.

"Yes, Henry, I'm very familiar with the project." Chloe's smile is plastic now, and Henry seems to not noticed how she's glaring daggers at him.

"It's a good thing, what your husband is doing. These pills will change the world, and he's so close to doing it. I think it's revolutionary, to create medicine that makes a clean slate and just completely erases all the Prints."