"Self-doubt inflicts the deepest wounds."
Marty Rubin

It wasn't the knife Delaney held that had scared Mickey.

It was the words.

"Hello, pretty boy"

The tone.

"I've been thinking a lot about you Mickey when I was inside."

The sick consistency.

He'd been thinking about him in the warehouse too.

It was his own reaction to the voice from his nightmares. The way he'd flinched and struggled to breathe over the rising terror in his chest.

The pitiful punch he'd thrown because he was so wrong-footed and so unsure of what he was doing.

It was the humiliation that he had failed to defend himself adequately.

"Come on Mickey, thought you were a copper!"

It was the shame that Delaney could see his self-doubt as a copper just as clearly as everyone else.

As clear as Jack. As clear as he, himself.

It was the not knowing.

Not knowing where Delaney had been. Not knowing what he'd touched.

So here he was, at 3 am, a brush in one hand and a bottle of bleach in reach of the other, scrubbing the carpet in his living room in a frantic fury, trying to erase any trace of Delaney, real or imagined. Trying to breathe through the panic but not inhale the fumes as he decontaminated his house.

Because that's all it was now. A house.

Delaney had destroyed his home, long before he'd ever invaded it physically.

Mickey's wrist was aching. He flung the brush furiously at the doorframe and watched it ricochet angrily off the wood, bouncing into the hallway.

The bastard took over everything. Even bricks and mortar.

Tomorrow, he'd start looking for somewhere else.

Somewhere that lacked Delaney's presence.