Chapter 18: Scars Beneath Steam
The water had gone tepid. Caius knew this because the chill had begun to seep past his skin into the marrow of his bones, but he couldn't summon the will to move. He sat in the deep soaking tub, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, eyes fixed on a single, minuscule crack in the grout between the subway tiles.
The steam had long since cleared, leaving the room clinical and sharp in the low light. His reflection in the dark window was a ghost floating over the city.
The door opened without a sound. Nino stood there, having changed out of his tuxedo pants into low-slung sweatpants, his chest bare. He’d been on the phone for an hour, his voice a distant, angry murmur through the walls. Now he was silent.
He took in the scene: Caius, motionless, a statue in cooling water. The perfect lines of his back, the dip of his spine, the way his wet hair curled dark and innocent against his neck. The absolute stillness of him was worse than any outburst.
Wordlessly, Nino walked to the tub. He didn’t speak. He just turned the hot tap back on with his foot, a fresh, gentle stream swirling into the stale water, and then stepped in.
The water sloshed, warm rivlets shocking against Caius’s chilled skin. Nino settled behind him, his large body fitting around Caius’s smaller one, his legs bracketing Caius’s hips. He didn’t pull him back immediately. He just sat there, surrounding him, letting the new heat build between them.
Finally, he reached around and placed his palms flat on Caius’s stomach, drawing him slowly, firmly, back against his chest. Caius let his body go limp, his head lolling to rest on Nino’s shoulder. The solid, living warmth of the alpha was an anchor in the cold void he’d been floating in.
Nino’s lips brushed his damp temple. “Talk to me,” he murmured, the words vibrating through his chest into Caius’s back. “Or don’t talk. But don’t leave me out here in the cold, Cai.”
The old nickname, one from their earliest, most formal days, slipped out. It shattered something.
Caius’s breath hitched, a sharp, ragged intake. “It was a protocol,” he whispered, his voice hollow, echoing against the tiles. “A failsafe. For operatives who… malfunctioned. Whose emotional dampeners were too effective.”
Nino’s hands stilled on his stomach. He said nothing, just listened, his breathing a steady metronome against Caius’s back.
“They built us to be tools. Sharp, precise, disposable. Feeling nothing was a feature, not a bug. But sometimes… sometimes the conditioning worked too well. You’d go numb. Tactile sensation, taste, pain… it all just faded to grey. You became a liability. You couldn’t read a room, couldn’t sell a cover, because you were just… empty.”
He lifted a hand from the water, stared at his own pristine fingers. “The corrective was shock. Physical, acute stimulus to reboot the nervous system. Electricity. Pressure points. Sensory deprivation followed by overload.” His hand fell back with a soft splash. “I found it was… inefficient. Unreliable. So I developed my own.”
His fingers traced, absently, over the ridges on his ribs that Nino had found. “A blade. Clean, controlled depth. Specific angles. The pain was bright. It was a clear, definable signal in the static. It told me I was still there. That I hadn’t completely evaporated inside my own skin.” He let out a soft, humourless sound. “It became part of the maintenance routine. Like cleaning a weapon.”
Nino’s arms tightened around him, a convulsive movement. He buried his face in Caius’s neck, and Caius could feel the wet heat there that wasn’t from the bathwater.
“After I burned my identity… after I came here,” Caius continued, staring straight ahead at the wall he’d been counting tiles on. “I didn’t need it. The static… it was quieter. Different. But then, after the graze…” He swallowed. “The adrenaline crash. The smell of your fear. It was all so loud, but it felt… distant. Like I was watching it through thick glass. I needed to know I could still pierce the glass. That I wasn’t sliding back into the old silence.”
“So you did this? The night after the gala?” Nino’s voice was thick.
“Yes.”
“Dio mio, Caius.” The prayer was a pained exhale. Nino’s hand came up, not to the scars, but to cradle the side of his face, his thumb stroking his cheekbone. “You feel everything. You feel too much. That’s your problem. It’s all in there, boiling. You just don’t know what to call any of it.”
The words were a direct hit, so accurate it stole Caius’s breath. He hadn’t thought of it that way. Numbness wasn’t the absence of feeling; it was the overload, the circuit breaker tripping.
“I don’t know how to turn it off,” Caius admitted, the confession shockingly small.
“Good,” Nino said, fierce and immediate. “Don’t turn it off. Just… let me hold it with you. Let me be the shock absorber. You wanna feel something? Feel this.” He took Caius’s hand and pressed it flat over his own heart, where it beat a hard, frantic rhythm against his ribs. “That’s for you. That’s terror and love and fury and it’s all because of you. It’s never grey. It’s a fucking riot of colour, Cai, and you’re the one who painted it.”
Caius turned his head, his cheek against Nino’s. The alpha’s stubble was rough, real. The pulse under his palm was a frantic, living drum. It was the most vivid, terrifying, and beautiful signal he had ever received.
“It hurts,” Caius whispered, not about the scars.
“I know, amore mio. I know it does.” Nino kissed his shoulder, a promise. “So let it hurt. I’m not going anywhere. The water’s getting cold again.”
They stayed until the heat had truly faded, until the city lights outside the window began to blur with the first hint of dawn. Nino stood first, water sheeting off his powerful frame, and held out a thick, warmed towel. He wrapped Caius in it, rubbing the soft cotton over his arms, his back, with a tenderness that felt like a different kind of shock therapy.
As they moved back into the bedroom, the real world crept back in. Sera had left a file on the dresser, a single yellow sticky note on top. Forgery pipeline active. ETA 48 hours. Alden’s team is spooked—unusual movement at his primary residence. Watching.
Nino read it, his jaw tightening. The vulnerability of the bath was receding, the armor of the Don clicking back into place. But he didn’t let go of Caius’s hand.
Caius looked at the note, then at their joined hands. The riot of colour Nino spoke of—it was messy, illogical, dangerous. It compromised efficiency.
But as Nino led him to the bed, pulling him down into the nest of sheets that smelled of them, Caius thought of the alternative. The grey silence. The sterile, efficient blade. The empty tub in a cold room.
He turned into Nino’s embrace, slotting himself against the alpha’s body, and for the first time, he didn’t do it as a calculation or a performance. He did it because the warmth was a signal he wanted to feel, and the anchor was one he no longer wished to cut loose.
“Tomorrow,” Nino mumbled into his hair, already half-asleep, “we break his money.”
“Tomorrow,” Caius agreed, his own eyes closing. He felt the echo of the blade, the ghost of the static. But louder, much louder, was the steady, stubborn beat of a heart against his ear, painting the darkness in colours he was just beginning to name.