Chapter 43: Right beside you tonight
Maya’s texts were a persistent, gentle drumbeat against the silence of Logan’s new life.
Hope the air in the biocontainment unit isn’t too stale. Sent you a picture of Gerald, he ate an entire packet of basil seeds. He’s fine. Just smug.
He’d stared at the photo of the one-eyed cat looking profoundly pleased with itself, a faint ache in his chest. He’d typed Looks like a fuzzy little pirate and then deleted it. Sent a simple haha instead.
Another day: Got chewed out by a commissioner for ‘unlicensed greenery’ in a public waiting room. It was a spider plant. A SPIDER PLANT, LOGAN. The audacity.
He’d smiled, actually smiled, at that one. He imagined her, hands on hips, delivering a scalding lecture on phytotherapy to some bewildered city official. He typed a longer reply: Shoulda told him it was an undercover operative gathering intel on dust levels. He sent it. It felt like throwing a paper airplane across a widening canyon.
Her daily check-ins were a tether to a self that felt like it was dissolving. He found himself waiting for them, the phone buzzing on his absurdly clean desk at Ellery Associates. He’d read them under the desk, a secret hit of reality. He always replied. Short, often just an emoji or a yup, but he replied. It was the one routine he controlled.
One evening, after a particularly mind-numbing day of filing digital permits for properties that would never sell, her message was different.
You’re busy. I get it. But you’re not a ghost. Don’t make me have Ivy send a invasive vine through your vents to check your vitals.
He laughed, a sharp, surprised bark that made Marcus Ellery glance over from his office with a raised eyebrow. Logan schooled his face back to neutral.
You’ve been talking to the botanical terrorist? he typed.
She gives better advice than my therapist. Costs less, too. She says to let you heal your own way. Even if your way is stupid and involves too much filtered air.
He read the message twice. My way is working, he sent back, the defiance automatic.
Is it? she responded immediately. Then: Sorry. None of my business. The offer stands. HAZMAT suit is in the car.
He didn’t reply. He put the phone in his drawer and closed it. The silence in the office seemed louder.
He saw Roman that night for dinner, a private meal in a restaurant where the menus had no prices. Roman was discussing a shipment—something about pharmaceuticals and port authorities—when he paused, tilting his head.
“You’re still in contact with the herbalist.”
It wasn’t a question. Logan felt a familiar cold trickle down his spine. He forked a piece of seared fish. “Maya. Yeah. She texts. About her cat.”
“Her clinic is now a line item in a municipal budget. She’s a registered affiliate. Her communications are no longer private.” Roman sipped his wine. “Her concern is touching. Uninformed, but touching.”
“You’re reading her texts.” The food turned to ash in Logan’s mouth.
“I’m aware of their content. It’s a protective measure. Her association with you is a vulnerability. For her.” Roman’s gray eyes were placid. “Ivy’s advice, however, is sound. You are healing. The metrics are clear. Your reliance on external, amateur validation is an unnecessary complication.”
Logan wanted to throw his plate. Instead, he pushed his food around. “She’s just a friend.”
“The concept is quaint.” Roman set his glass down with a precise click. “But you have no need of quaintness. You have everything you require.”
Logan went to the gala because it was easier than staying in the apartment with that sentence echoing off the walls. You have everything you require.
This one was at the Natural History Museum, under the colossal, fossilized skeleton of a Gotham Tyrannosaur. The beast’s grin seemed to mock the glittering crowd beneath it. Logan had mastered the role: the attentive, quiet plus-one. He could navigate a receiving line, exchange three sentences about the weather or the architecture, and extract himself without causing a ripple.
He felt good. Stronger. He’d walked from the curb to the entrance without his lungs seizing. He’d even forgotten his inhaler in the car. He stood near a display of luminous geodes, sipping sparkling water, watching Roman hold court with a cluster of developers. Roman’s voice was a smooth, persuasive instrument. Logan felt a detached, clinical admiration for the performance.
Then the tickle started. A faint, familiar itch at the back of his throat, deep in the bronchial branches. He took another sip of water. It was nothing. Dry air. He cleared his throat softly.
The itch worsened. It became a scrape. A demanding, insistent pressure building behind his sternum. His breath hitched, a small, invisible stutter. He turned away from the crowd, pretending to examine a giant amethyst cluster. His vision speckled at the edges. Not here. He begged his body silently. Not now, you traitorous piece of shit.
He set the glass down on a pedestal, his hand unsteady. The cough clawed its way up, a tight, painful constriction. He clamped his jaw shut, stifling it into a harsh, choked sound. His eyes watered. He fumbled for a handkerchief—a linen square Roman had insisted he carry—and pressed it to his mouth.
The second cough broke through. It was wet and ragged. He bent slightly, turning his back fully to the room, his shoulders hunched. He coughed into the white linen, a deep, wrenching spasm that felt like it was turning his lungs inside out.
When he pulled the cloth away, the sight was both horrifying and sickeningly familiar. A vivid, blooming rose of crimson against the pristine white. Bright red. Not the rusty old blood from before. This was fresh, alarming.
Panic, cold and absolute, drenched him. He was exposed. In public. Malfunctioning. The meticulous performance was over. He could feel the curious glances starting to land on his back like insects.
He needed to vanish. Now. A bathroom. A service corridor. Anything.
“Logan.”
Roman’s voice was at his ear, low and immediate. A hand settled on the small of his back, firm and guiding. Logan hadn’t even seen him approach. He tried to speak, to wave him off, but another cough seized him, and he bent double, the handkerchief a desperate, bloody shield.
Roman’s arm slid around his shoulders, pulling him upright and into the solid wall of his body. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t express alarm. He simply turned them both, using his own frame to block the view from the party, and began walking, his pace steady and deliberate, toward a discreet door marked ‘Staff Only.’
“Breathe slowly,” Roman murmured, his lips almost touching Logan’s hair. “In through the nose. The car is close.”
Logan tried. His breath whistled. The coppery tang of blood filled his sinuses. Shame burned hotter than the fire in his chest. He was being escorted out like a broken thing, hidden against Roman’s tuxedo jacket. He heard a faint, concerned murmur from someone. Roman’s voice, smooth and unconcerned, floated back. “A sudden allergy. The floral arrangements. Dreadful.”
Then they were through the door, into a stark concrete corridor smelling of floor polish and garbage. The distant sound of the party was muffled. Logan stumbled, his legs weak. Roman’s grip tightened, hauling him along.
“Almost there,” Roman said. His voice had changed. The public polish was gone. It was pure, focused intensity.
They burst through a fire exit into a damp loading dock. The black sedan was there, engine running. Roman yanked the door open and virtually pushed Logan inside onto the cool leather. He followed, slamming the door, sealing them in silent, dim privacy.
“Drive. Now,” Roman ordered the driver, and the partition slid up.
In the sudden quiet, Logan fell apart. The coughs wracked him, uncontrollable now, each one a brutal fist squeezing his core. He was crying, he realized, tears of sheer frustration and terror mixing with the sweat on his face. He choked, gasping for air that wouldn’t come, the bloody handkerchief a ruined mess in his fist.
Roman acted with terrifying efficiency. He pulled a small, sleek nebulizer from a compartment in the seat. He shook a vial, snapped it into place. “Lean forward,” he commanded, his voice leaving no room for resistance.
Logan obeyed, his body trembling. Roman slid an arm around his chest from behind, supporting him, and placed the mask over his nose and mouth. “Breathe. Deeply.”
The cool, medicated mist hit his ravaged airways. It was a lifeline. He sucked it in, greedy and desperate. The violent spasms began to ease, incrementally. The vise on his chest loosened one painful notch at a time. He slumped back, his head falling against Roman’s shoulder, utterly spent. The only sounds were his ragged, improving breaths and the soft hiss of the machine.
Roman held him. He didn’t speak. His free hand came up and brushed the sweat-damp hair from Logan’s forehead, a gesture of absurd, chilling tenderness. His fingers traced the line of a scar on Logan’s temple, left by a flying shard of a dinner plate years ago.
The humiliation was complete. Total. He was a child having a seizure in the backseat. He was a patient. He was owned.
When Logan could breathe without crying, he whispered, his voice raw and shattered, “I left the inhaler in the car. I thought I was fine.”
“You are not fine,” Roman said, his voice a soft vibration against Logan’s back. “You are mine. And I do not lose what is mine to carelessness.” There was no anger in it. It was a statement of cosmic law. “Your body reminds you of its terms when you forget.”
The car glided through the city. Logan didn’t move. The warmth of Roman’s body, the steady rhythm of his heart against Logan’s spine, the safe, confined darkness of the car—it was the only harbor in the storm of his own failing flesh. He hated it. He clung to it.
“The blood was fresh,” Logan said, the words muffled by the mask.
“A minor capillary rupture. Stress and inflammation. It will be noted. It will be addressed.” Roman’s thumb stroked the side of his neck, right over the pounding pulse. “No more galas for a week. You will work from the apartment. You will rest.”
Logan closed his eyes. A week in the tank. No pretending. No Maya’s texts to break the monotony. Just the hum of the filters and Roman’s watchful presence.
He was too tired to fight. The last of his defiance leaked out of him with his final, shuddering breath into the mask.
“Okay,” he said.
The word was a surrender so profound it echoed in the silent car. Roman’s arms tightened around him, just for a second. A victor claiming his spoils.
In the clinic the next day, Maya was wrestling with a state-mandated compliance inspector—a woman with a clipboard and a demeanor like stale crackers.
“These labels must list potential interactions with all major classes of prescription medication,” the woman droned, tapping a bottle of Maya’s calming tincture. “Not just ‘consult your doctor.’ Specific interactions.”
“It’s lavender and chamomile,” Maya said, her knuckles white on the counter. “It interacts with ‘being a dickhead.’ It’s right there on the bottle.”
The inspector didn’t smile. She made a note.
Maya’s phone buzzed. A text from Logan. It was just a photo. A dismal view from a window, rain streaking a gray sky. No caption.
She stared at it. It wasn’t like him. The daily check-in had been a silly meme, a gripe about work. She thought of Ivy’s words: You are fighting a sigh.
She typed back, slowly: That view sucks. I’ve got Gerald in a little raincoat. It’s deranged. Will send pics. Hang in there, pirate.
She looked at the inspector, at the endless checklist. She thought of Logan’s hollow photo, of Roman Sionis’s sleek, controlling world, of Ivy’s waiting, verdant dark.
She was done fighting sighs.
She made a decision. While the inspector was scrutinizing her storage room, Maya opened a different, encrypted app on her phone. She typed a single line to an untraceable contact: I’m in. What’s the first move?
The reply was almost instantaneous, three words that felt like a key turning in a long-locked door:
Starve the soil.
The reply was almost instantaneous, three words that felt like a key turning in a long-locked door:
Starve the soil.
Maya stared at the screen. The inspector’s voice faded to a tinny buzz. Starve the soil. It wasn’t about plants. It was about the infrastructure. The money. The complacency. She looked at the woman’s clipboard, the reams of city-issued forms, the branded pens from the “Gotham Resilient” initiative. This was the soil. And she was supposed to help it wither.
A cold, clean clarity washed through her. She deleted the message and the app. “You know what?” she said, her voice bright and sudden. The inspector looked up. “You’re right. The labeling is inadequate. I’m going to pull this whole batch. Effective immediately.”
She walked to the shelf, grabbed the box of tinctures, and carried it to the large industrial sink. The inspector blinked. “What are you doing?”
“Complying.” Maya unscrewed the first bottle and poured the deep amber liquid down the drain. The earthy, calming scent of lavender and chamomile rose up, a sweet ghost. She poured another. And another. The liquid swirled, a small, expensive waterfall of wasted care. Each empty bottle clattered into the metal sink.
She felt a jolt with each one. Not regret. Something sharper. It was violence. Quiet, administrative violence. It felt better than filing a form.
“This seems… excessive,” the inspector stammered, her paperwork forgotten.
“You wanted specific actions,” Maya said, not looking at her, unscrewing another cap. “This is specific.”
Logan’s phone buzzed on the imported marble of the bathroom vanity. He was sitting on the closed toilet lid, wrapped in a thick robe, steaming from the shower he’d been ordered to take after his nebulizer treatment.
The screen lit up with Maya’s name. A photo of Gerald the cat in a tiny, ridiculous yellow raincoat, looking profoundly insulted. Hang in there, pirate.
He smiled, a weak twitch of his lips. He should send a laugh emoji. A heart. Something. He typed three letters: hah.
He deleted them. His thumbs hovered. Anything he said would be a lie. I’m fine was a lie. This sucks was an invitation for questions he couldn’t answer. The distance between his reality and hers was now a canyon, and he was fresh out of paper airplanes.
He put the phone down, screen facing the cool stone. It buzzed again, maybe her following up. He ignored it.
The apartment was silent. Perfectly climate-controlled. Roman had left an hour ago for “business,” the nature of which Logan no longer bothered to guess. His absence should have been a relief. It just made the space feel larger, a exhibit titled Convalescence.
On the kitchen counter, next to the terrifying coffee maker, was a new, printed schedule. Roman’s handwriting, precise and sharp.
9:00: Nebulizer.
10:00: Light calisthenics (15 min max, monitor heart rate).
11:00: Admin work for Ellery (remote).
1:00: Lunch (provided).
2:00: Rest period.
4:00: Respiratory physiotherapy.
It was a cage made of concern. A prison of meticulously timed recovery. And the terrible, shameful truth, the one that curled hot and nauseating in his gut, was that he was grateful for it.
Without this schedule, he would have stared at the walls. He would have tried to go for a walk, coughed up blood on the sidewalk, and spiraled. He would have texted Maya something stupid and desperate. Roman’s control was a straitjacket, but it was also the only thing holding the splinters of his panic together. He relaxed into it, a slow, submersible sink. Letting Roman dictate the terms of his healing was the easiest choice he’d ever made.
He followed the schedule. He did the breathing exercises. He ate the bland, nutritious food left in the fridge. He answered emails for Marcus Ellery, his responses clipped and professional. He was a very good patient.
When Roman returned that evening, Logan was on the sofa, a legal pad on his knees, supposedly reviewing contract addendums. He’d changed into soft sweatpants and a thin, old t-shirt. He heard the deadbolt turn, the coat being hung, the quiet footsteps.
Roman entered the living room, his gaze sweeping over Logan, assessing. “Color is better. The schedule was followed.”
“To the letter,” Logan said, not looking up from his pad. “I’m a model inmate.”
Roman moved to the sideboard, pouring two fingers of whiskey. The ice clinked. “Sarcasm is wasted energy. Redirect it.”
Logan set the pad aside. He watched Roman’s back, the expensive cut of his shirt, the absolute certainty in his posture. A familiar, rusty wire of defiance sparked, but it was guttering, low. It wasn’t enough for a fight. It was just enough for a gesture.
He stood up. The room didn’t spin. He walked over to the sideboard, his bare feet silent on the floor. Roman glanced at him, his expression neutral, waiting.
Logan didn’t speak. He reached out and took the glass from Roman’s hand. His fingers brushed Roman’s. He brought the glass to his own lips and took a slow sip, his eyes locked on Roman’s over the rim. The whiskey was smoky, expensive. It burned a clean trail down his throat. He held the glass out, offering it back.
It was flimsy. Transparent.
Roman’s gray eyes didn’t change. He didn’t take the glass. He simply closed his hand over Logan’s, guiding the glass back to Logan’s lips. “Finish it,” he said, his voice a low vibration. “You’re allowed.”
Logan drank, the warmth spreading in his chest. Roman’s hand stayed over his, solid and warm. The attention was a laser point. It was possession, yes. It was also a fierce, absolute focus that made the vast, silent apartment shrink to just this moment, just this point of contact. Logan leaned in, just an inch. An invitation. A surrender wearing a mask of provocation.
Roman took the empty glass and set it down with a soft click. He cupped Logan’s jaw, his thumb stroking the hinge. His gaze was analytical, appreciative. “You’re trying to reclaim a semblance of agency. Through this.” His thumb pressed lightly on Logan’s lower lip. “It’s a predictable gambit.”
Logan’s breath hitched. The analysis should have killed the mood. It didn’t. It deepened it. It meant Roman saw him, understood the pathetic machinery of his rebellion, and was still here. Still focused.
“Is it working?” Logan asked, his voice barely a whisper.
Roman’s answer was to kiss him. It wasn’t gentle. It was a claim, deep and thorough, an physical echo of the sentence he’d uttered in the car. You are mine. Logan melted into it. He let himself be pushed back against the sideboard, let Roman’s hands map the territory of his body through the thin cotton. The fear of the coughing fit, the shame of the gala, the hollow dread of the schedule—all of it was consumed by the sheer, overwhelming intensity of being wanted. Of being the sole object of this monstrous, focused attention.
He wasn’t taking back power. He was trading one kind of dependence for another, more visceral one. And in the quiet, candlelit dark of the apartment later, with Roman’s breath warm against his shoulder, Logan knew it. And he didn’t care.
His phone, forgotten on the bathroom vanity, buzzed again in the empty room.
This time, the text was from Marcus Ellery. Logan, the amended filings for the Cornwall deal need to go to the city by 10 AM. Please confirm receipt.
The screen went dark.