Chapter 66: Early one morning
They stood under the spray until Logan’s fingers were numb and Roman’s punishing grip on his shoulder finally, slowly, began to loosen. The violent tremors had subsided into a deep, weary shiver. The water ran clear, then pink with diluted blood from Roman’s hand. Logan reached past him and shut off the taps. The sudden silence was a physical presence, broken only by the drip of water and the ragged sound of Roman’s breathing.
“Okay,” Logan said, his voice quiet in the humid tile space. “Come on.”
He nudged Roman forward, out of the shower stall. Roman moved like a man sleepwalking, his clothes a heavy, sodden weight. Logan grabbed a thick bath towel from the heated rack, the linen warm and absurdly soft. He draped it around Roman’s shoulders. Roman didn’t adjust it. He just stood, water pooling at his boots, his injured hand hanging at his side, the glass glinting.
Logan went to turn toward the door. Roman’s left hand snapped out, fingers clamping around Logan’s right wrist. The grip was instant, iron-tight, a reflex with no conscious thought behind it. It wasn’t a request. It was a possession. The pressure bordered on painful, promising bruises shaped like fingerprints.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Logan said, not pulling against it. “Let’s just get to the couch.”
He led, Roman following, a half-step behind, connected by that unbreakable tether of grip. They moved through the penthouse, past the wreckage of the console and the glittering carpet of glass. Logan guided him to the large sectional sofa, the only intact piece of furniture in the immediate area. He put a hand on Roman’s damp shoulder, pushing down.
Roman resisted. His body was a rod of tension, refusing to bend.
“Sit down,” Logan said, firmer. He pushed again, putting more weight into it. “You’re dripping on the floor. Sit.”
After a suspended moment, Roman’s knees buckled. He sank onto the cushions, the towel slipping. He didn’t notice. His gaze was fixed on the fractured window, seeing nothing. His grip on Logan’s wrist hadn’t lessened by a single ounce.
Logan gently tried to pry the fingers loose. “I need to get the med kit. Your hand’s a mess.”
The grip didn't yield. It tightened. A warning. The bones in Logan’s wrist creaked in protest. The message was absolute: any attempt to create distance would be met with breakage.
“Fine,” Logan breathed out, sitting down beside him on the couch. “Okay. We’ll do it here.”
He turned his body toward Roman, their knees almost touching. He looked at the profile of that cruel, aristocratic face, now stripped bare and shock-pale. “You’re in control,” Logan said, his voice low and steady, a mantra against the silence. “You hear me? This is your city. That glass out there?” He nodded toward the shattered window. “That’s just you redecorating. You own the air. You own the fear. You own every damn thing in it.”
He paused, letting the words sink into the hollow space around them. “You own me. Right here. I’m not going anywhere. So you can ease up on the death grip, because I’m already yours.”
Roman’s eyes didn’t flicker. He was somewhere far inside, trapped in the chemical aftershock where the fear of losing control metastasized into this silent, paralyzing vigilance.
“Your hand, Roman,” Logan said. “I need to see it. Can I take the glass out?”
No response. Just the shallow rise and fall of his chest under the soaked shirt, and the unrelenting pressure on Logan’s wrist.
Logan shifted. With his free left hand, he reached up and cupped the side of Roman’s face, his thumb brushing over the sharp cheekbone. He applied gentle pressure, turning Roman’s head away from the broken window, forcing that vacant gray stare to meet his own. “Hey. Look at me. Just me.”
Roman’s eyes focused, slowly, swimming up from some deep, private void. They landed on Logan’s face, confused, searching for a landmark.
“There you are,” Logan murmured. He kept his hand on Roman’s face, his thumb rubbing slow, soothing circles on his temple, then down along the taut line of his jaw to the rigid muscles of his neck. It was the same anchoring touch Roman had used on him, now returned. A grounding pressure. “Just breathe. In and out. Follow me.”
He took an exaggerated breath, held it, let it out. After a moment, Roman’s chest mimicked the motion, a shuddering imitation.
Logan kept talking, nonsense and reassurance woven together, his hand working the tension from Roman’s neck. “You’re here. In your penthouse. You crushed Selvig’s hand. You got the name. Peter Dyson. We’re going to find him. But first, I need to fix your hand. Nod if you understand.”
A long, silent moment stretched. Then, almost imperceptibly, Roman’s chin dipped. A nod.
“Good,” Logan said. “Good. Now, I’m going to use my other hand. Don’t break my wrist. It’s the one I need for flipping eggs.”
He slowly, so slowly, moved his right arm, the one still imprisoned. Roman’s grip shifted, adjusting, but didn’t release. Logan accepted it. He bent forward, examining the injury. The shard was large, a wicked spear of mirror glass buried deep in the fleshy part of the palm below the thumb. Blood welled sluggishly around it.
Logan’s fingers, steady despite the adrenaline crash, found the edges of the glass. He took a firm hold. “This will hurt. Don’t move.”
He pulled, straight and clean.
The glass slid free with a sick, wet sound. Roman didn’t flinch. He didn’t make a sound. His only reaction was a minute tightening of his jaw, and a corresponding increase in the pressure on Logan’s wrist that made spots dance in Logan’s vision.
Logan dropped the bloody shard on the floor. He reached into his own soaked jacket pocket with his left hand, fingers clumsy, and pulled out a rumpled but clean handkerchief. He couldn’t properly clean or disinfect it, not one-handed. It would have to do. He pressed the linen firmly over the weeping wound, then began winding it around Roman’s palm, using his teeth to tug it tight, tying a clumsy, bulky knot.
It was a temporary fix. A flag of surrender on a battlefield.
Task done, Logan returned his left hand to Roman’s face, his fingers sliding back into the damp hair at his temple, a continuous point of contact. He sat back, exhaling a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. They stayed like that, in the wrecked living room, the city’s cold light bleeding through the cracked window. Roman’s grip was a brand. Logan’s thumb stroked his skin, wiping away a trickle of blood that wasn’t Roman’s.
Finally, Roman spoke. His voice was cracked, hollowed out, stripped of all its silken menace. It was just raw. “It felt like dying. The anger. It felt like the end of everything.”
Logan kept stroking his temple, his own heart aching with a terrible, understanding rhythm. “I know,” he said softly. And he did. “But you didn’t die. You came back.”
Roman’s eyes closed. He leaned, just a fraction, into the touch on his face. His thumb moved, just once, a slow stroke over the bruised skin of Logan’s captive wrist. An apology. A claim. Both.
aim. Both.
They sat on the couch like that for hours. Roman’s grip on Logan’s wrist never faded. It was a constant, possessive pressure that only tightened every so often to an almost breaking point, a silent spasm of remembered panic. Logan never stopped stroking Roman with his free hand, his thumb rubbing light, persistent circles on Roman’s temple, a tactile anchor against the psychic storm.
They stayed like that long after Logan started shaking from the damp clothes clinging to his skin. The chill seeped into his bones, a deep, tremulous vibration that had nothing to do with fear. He still didn’t move. He just leaned his weight into Roman’s side, pressing closer to share what little body heat he could generate through the sodden layers. Roman’s breathing eventually deepened, slowed, syncing with the rhythm of Logan’s thumb.
Eventually, as the sun finally began to rise, its weak, gray light washing the destruction in a pitiless monochrome, Logan stirred. “We can’t stay here,” he murmured, his voice rough from disuse. He guided Roman up with a nudge of his shoulder, letting Roman’s hand remain locked on his wrist. Logan’s other hand made its way to Roman’s arm, fingers curling around a bicep still tense as stone, to guide him toward the bedroom.
There, in the relative order of the sleeping quarters, Logan began the practical work of undressing them both. Roman’s breaking grip finally left Logan’s wrist just long enough for Logan to peel the ruined jacket from his own shoulders, then to work open the buttons of Roman’s soaked shirt. Each separation was brief, a calculated risk. Logan moved with efficient, neutral motions, as if handling a dangerous artifact. The wet clothes made a heavy, damp sound as they dropped to the floor.
When they were both out of the wet clothes, Roman’s grip returned to Logan’s wrist instantly, a reflex seeking validation. Logan pressed himself into Roman’s bare skin, his free hand coming up to hug Roman supportively, palm flat against the cold, scarred plane of his back. He could feel the frantic beat of Roman’s heart beginning to settle under his hand.
Logan then guided Roman to the bed, a slow shuffle across plush carpet. Roman sank onto the edge, and then both of his arms encircled Logan in an embrace Logan couldn’t break if he wanted to. It was not a request. It was an ingestion. Logan let himself be pulled down into it, his nose pressed against Roman’s collarbone, the coppery scent of blood and fear sweat still clinging to his skin.
Logan embraced Roman in return, his trapped arm bent between them, his free hand carding through Roman’s damp hair. He talked softly into the space between neck and shoulder, his voice a low, steady stream. “You own the city,” he whispered, the words a familiar incantation. “You own the docks and the diamond district and the fear in their guts when the lights go out. You own every brick.”
He felt Roman’s breathing hitch, then even out. “You’re the only one that’s ever owned me. Right here. This is yours.” Logan’s thumb traced the shell of Roman’s ear. “So you can rest easy. There’s nothing to hunt right now. The city is completely under your control. It’s sleeping. You should too.”
The words were a fiction they both needed. Logan felt the exact moment Roman believed them, or chose to. A long, ragged sigh escaped Roman’s chest, warming Logan’s skin. The terrifying, wire-tight rigidity in the arms around him softened by a single, crucial degree. Not freedom, but a cease-fire.
Roman’s head grew heavier against his. The grip on his wrist finally, blessedly, lessened from a vise to a simple, solid hold. Roman’s breathing deepened further, sliding into the rough, uneven rhythms of exhausted sleep. Logan stayed awake, held in the cage of those arms, listening to the city’s distant growl outside the fractured window.
He watched the gray dawn light solidify on the far wall. His own wrist throbbed with a promise of spectacular bruises. His mind replayed the sound of breaking bone in the greenhouse, the wet, pulping thuds of fists in the gravel. He thought of Peter Dyson, a name floating in the chaos, a thread yet to be pulled.
Roman muttered something against his skin, a fuzzy, meaningless syllable. His arms tightened again, instinctively, in his sleep. Logan didn’t fight it. He adjusted his head on the pillow, his lips brushing a faded scar on Roman’s shoulder in a gesture that was neither kiss nor surrender, but a simple acknowledgment.
This was the control Roman needed. This was the ownership he claimed. And Logan, trapped in the warm, breathless dark, would let him have it. For now. The city outside was waiting, but here, in this quiet, the only thing that mattered was the slow, shared beat of two terrified hearts.
The city outside was waiting, but here, in this quiet, the only thing that mattered was the slow, shared beat of two terrified hearts.
Logan woke with a jolt, disoriented, the fading sun a bloody stripe across the far wall. He’d slept fitfully, pinned. Roman was a dead weight against him, still out cold, his breathing a deep, ragged drawl. Every one of Logan’s muscles screamed from being held in one position. He tried to shift his hip, a millimeter.
Roman’s arm, slung across his chest, tightened like a hydraulic press. A rough sound of protest vibrated in Roman’s throat, even in sleep. Logan went still. He waited, then gently brought his free hand up to Roman’s stubbled jaw. He stroked the skin there with his thumb. “Easy. Just me. Still here.”
The pressure eased, incrementally. Logan exhaled. He watched the room’s shadows lengthen and merge into full dark. Roman slept on, a complete, absolute shut-down. The adrenaline had incinerated everything, leaving only this hollowed-out shell of a man clinging to him in the gloom.
Somewhere across the city, while they slept, Viktor stood in a cramped kitchen that smelled of turmeric and wilting basil. Maya listened, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, as he relayed the facts in his monotone. The greenhouse. The stolen chemicals. The name Selvig gave up. “Two-Face’s operation was behind it,” Viktor said, his eyes on a struggling spider plant. “A chemist named Dyson.”
“Is Logan okay?” Maya asked, her voice thin.
“He is functional,” Viktor said. “He was with Mr. Sionis.”
Maya’s lips pressed into a hard line. “I need to talk to him.”
“I will convey the message,” Viktor replied, already turning for the door. “When the situation is permissive.”
Back in the penthouse, the deep night found Logan awake, staring at the ceiling. Roman’s sleep had finally cycled into something less comatose. He stirred, a full-body flinch, his nails digging into Logan’s side. Logan soothed him automatically, fingers threading through his hair, whispering nothing-words until the tension bled away again. This was the rhythm now. Movement. Crushing grip. Soothing touch. A brutal, silent dialogue.
Just past midnight, Roman’s eyes opened. They were clear. Empty of the earlier chemical storm, but filled with a weary, cognizant darkness. He looked at Logan, then at their entangled bodies, as if remembering how they got there. He didn’t let go.
“Your hand needs real stitches,” Logan said, his voice gravel from silence. “I’ve got a kit. Gonna have to let me up for five minutes.”
Roman’s gaze held his, calculating. The fear of distance warred with the logical need for repair. Slowly, like unclenching a rusted valve, his arms relaxed. Logan slid out from under him, the cool air a shock on his skin. He returned swiftly with the small black medical kit, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Roman watched, silent, as Logan cleaned the deep, ugly slice with antiseptic that made his breath hiss. The needle glinted in the low light. “This’ll hurt like a bitch,” Logan warned, not looking up from his work.
“Do it.”
The first stitch pulled the torn flesh together. Roman’s free hand fisted in the sheets, the fabric threatening to tear. He didn’t look away from Logan’s focused hands. Each puncture was a precise, practiced betrayal of the body’s integrity. Logan worked quickly, his own hands steady, tying off the final knot and trimming the thread with a small pair of scissors. The wound was now a neat, brutal line of black stitches against pale skin.
“Bathroom,” Logan said, standing. “You need to sweat the rest of that poison out of your system. A steaming bath. It’ll help.”
He expected argument. Roman just stood, following him. In the massive marble bathroom, Logan ran the water, hot enough to make the air thick and condensate on the mirrors. He poured in a generous amount of whatever expensive, pine-scented soak was on the ledge. Roman shed his robe and stepped in, sinking into the scalding water with a sharp intake of breath. He leaned his head back against the rim, eyes closed, his stitched hand resting on the edge of the tub.
Logan sat on the closed toilet lid, a folded towel under him. He watched the steam rise, beading on Roman’s eyelashes. Minutes stretched. Roman’s breathing evened out. His body, finally, seemed to unclench, the heat leaching the residual tremor from his muscles. His head listed slightly to the side. A light, uneasy sleep took him again, there in the water.
Seeing him under, truly under, Logan moved. He slipped out into the bedroom, leaving the door ajar. He found his phone, screen cracked, in the pocket of his ruined jacket on the floor. He called Viktor.
It picked up on the first ring. “Status?” Viktor’s voice was tinny.
“He’s stable. Sleeping. What’ve you got on Dyson?”
“We are tracking his financials. Cell triangulation is difficult. He is a ghost since the greenhouse.” A pause. “Maya wishes to speak with you.”
Logan’s eyes hardened. He looked back toward the steam curling from the bathroom door. The thought of leaving this apartment, of being across the city in that tiny kitchen, felt like a physical impossibility. “Not now,” he said, his voice low and final. “Not for the next few days. Tell her I’m… tell her it’s complicated. Everything is about him right now. Nothing else gets time.”
Viktor was silent for a beat, absorbing the order. “Understood. We are compiling possible locations Dent might stash a project like this. Abandoned textile mills in the Foundry District have the necessary ventilation and privacy.”
“Start there,” Logan said. “Discreetly. Don’t spook—”
A shape filled the bathroom doorway. Roman stood, water sluicing down his body, a dark robe hanging open from one shoulder. His hair was plastered to his skull. His eyes were not sleepy. They were laser points of cold, awake fury.
He crossed the room in three silent strides. His stitched hand, clumsy but strong, closed on the phone in Logan’s grasp. He didn’t grab Logan’s wrist this time. He took the device itself, his fingers brushing Logan’s.
“Viktor.” Roman’s voice was back, that low, silken wire. “Do it. Now.”
He ended the call and dropped the phone. It clattered on the floor. His other hand came up and gripped Logan’s shoulder, fingers digging into the muscle with a bruising, possessive certainty. The message was absolute. The perimeter had been breached. The connection, however necessary, was a threat.
Viktor, on the other end, heard the line go dead. His last understanding was the quiet, certain violence in his employer’s tone, and the faint, preceding rustle of someone else’s presence—someone who was now, clearly, the only permitted point of contact.
Roman’s gaze burned into Logan, searching for betrayal, for divided attention. Logan didn’t flinch. He lifted his own hand and placed it over the one gripping his shoulder. He leaned in, his lips close to Roman’s ear, his whisper a warm counterpoint to the cold fury. “You need to eat something. Right now. Then you can decide who else needs to disappear.”
Then you can decide who else needs to disappear.”
The silence after his words was a held breath. Roman’s grip on his shoulder didn’t lessen, but his eyes tracked Logan’s face, searching the green-hazel gaze for a lie. He found none. Logan saw the calculation click back into place, the terrifying machine of Roman’s mind restarting, oiled by that singular focus.
“Food,” Roman echoed, the word flat.
“Yeah. You’re running on poison and pride. It’s not a sustainable diet.” Logan waited a beat. The hand on his shoulder loosened, then fell away. Roman took a half-step back, allowing a sliver of space. It felt like a canyon.
Logan moved first, heading for the kitchen. He didn’t look back. He could hear the soft, damp sound of Roman’s bare feet on the floorboards behind him, a phantom presence hovering just past his shoulder. The penthouse kitchen was a gallery of stainless steel and cold marble, untouched by the night’s destruction. Logan went to the massive fridge, pulling out eggs, butter, a block of cheddar, a carton of orange juice. Roman stopped at the island’s edge, his stitched hand resting on the cool stone, watching.
The process was methodical. Crack eggs into a bowl. A splash of cream. Whisk. The rhythmic clack-clack-clack of the whisk against glass was the only sound. Logan could feel the heat of Roman’s body, a solid wall of tension standing just to his left and slightly behind him. Not touching. But close enough that Logan’s elbow would brush Roman’s robe if he turned.
He melted butter in a skillet. The sizzle was obscenely loud. He poured the eggs in. They hissed and bubbled, spreading into a pale yellow circle. Logan grated cheese over the surface, the flakes falling like snow. He didn’t speak. Roman didn’t move. The omelet began to set. Logan folded it with a deft flick of his wrist, the perfect half-moon yielding softly. He slid it onto a plate.
Next, the smoothie. Frozen berries, yogurt, a glug of juice. The blender’s scream was a violent, grinding intrusion. Roman didn’t flinch. His eyes were on Logan’s hands, on the simple domesticity of it, as if watching a foreign ritual. Logan poured the thick, purple mixture into a tall glass. He set the plate and the glass on the island.
“Eat,” he said.
Roman picked up the fork. He ate standing at the island, deliberate bites, his eyes never leaving Logan, who leaned against the opposite counter, arms crossed. The food was fuel. Nothing more. When he was done, he drank the smoothie in slow, continuous swallows.
Logan washed the skillet. He wiped the counter. The ordinary actions were a shield. Finally, he made a second, smaller omelet for himself, eating it quickly over the sink. Roman watched him chew, swallow, wash the plate. The scrutiny was absolute.
He nudged Roman’s shoulder with his hand. “Come on.”
They moved to the living room. Roman sank into the corner of the sectional, his body angled toward the broken window. Logan didn’t sit across from him. He sat right beside him, their hips and thighs pressed together from knee to shoulder. He leaned into Roman’s side, his head resting against Roman’s upper arm.
Then his free hand came up. It started on Roman’s stitched hand, his thumb tracing the uninjured skin around the black thread. Then it drifted up, kneading the rigid muscles of Roman’s forearm through the robe. Up to the bicep. Across the collarbone. His fingers worked into the knotted tension at the base of Roman’s neck, then up into the short, damp hair at his nape. It was a continuous, slow circuit—arm, neck, back, shoulder, arm again—a wordless assertion of connection, of grounding touch.
Roman didn’t react. He didn’t pull away or lean in. He just sat, staring at the distorted city, his breathing the only sign he was alive. But gradually, minute by minute, some of the wire-sharp alertness bled from his posture. He allowed his weight to settle more fully into the couch, into Logan’s side.
They stayed like that through the deepest part of the night. Logan’s hand never stopped moving. His own body ached with fatigue, his bruised wrist pulsing where it rested in his lap. The city outside cycled from silence to the distant wail of a siren, then back to silence. Roman’s eyes remained open, fixed on that fractured view, seeing something miles—or years—away.
The first gray hint of dawn was bleeding the darkness from the sky when the penthouse elevator chimed, its tone discreet. Viktor stepped out. He carried a thin tablet. He took in the scene instantly: the wreckage frozen in place, the two men coiled together on the couch in the midst of it, Logan’s hand moving in slow circles on Roman’s back.
Viktor stopped a respectful distance away. “Sir.”
Roman’s head didn’t turn. His gaze didn’t waver from the window. Logan felt the body beside him tense, the machine coming back online.
“We have identified three high-probability locations,” Viktor said, his voice cool and reporting. “An abandoned coolant plant in the Bowery. A private storage facility owned by a Dent shell corporation on 53rd. A decommissioned surgical theater at the old Gotham General annex.”
Logan kept massaging. Roman’s right hand, which had been lying inert on his own thigh, lifted. It crossed the space between them and found Logan’s left wrist, the one not currently touching him. The fingers closed. They didn’t grasp. They locked. The pressure was immediate and savage, a promise of bone-deep bruises to match the ones on the other side. Logan didn’t stop his soothing motions on Roman’s back.
Roman finally spoke, his voice distant, as if coming from the other end of a long tunnel. He still looked at the broken window. “Ransack them,” he said. The word was casual, clean. “Tear the walls down if you have to. I want any ledger, any sample, any whisper of where Dyson is. Anyone there, you make them wish the fear gas had taken them first. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly, sir,” Viktor said, his eyes flicking for a fraction of a second to Roman’s crushing grip on Logan’s wrist, then to Logan’s impassive face.
“Go,” Roman said, the single word dropping like a stone.
Viktor gave a short, sharp nod and turned. He did not look back. The elevator doors swallowed him. The image that went with him was indelible: his employer, unshaven and hollow-eyed in a robe, staring at nothing, his hand vise-locked on the pale, bruised wrist of the young man who leaned against him, that same young man’s other hand moving with a relentless tenderness on his back.
The elevator descended. Viktor walked out into the garage, the morning air cold and tasting of exhaust. He got into his car but didn’t start it. He pulled out a different, encrypted phone and dialed.
Maya answered on the second ring, her voice fuzzy with sleep and worry. “Viktor? What is it?”
“We are moving on possible locations,” he stated. “I need you to begin a different analysis. Cross-reference the chemical signatures from the museum and the greenhouse with any known Scarecrow variants, then expand. Look for theoretical papers, obscure botanical journals, black-market pharmacopeia. Determine if this Dyson could have developed a variant we have no physiological profile for.”
“Okay, I… I can do that.” A pause. “How’s Logan?”
In Viktor’s mind, the scene replayed. The silent, shattered room. The twin postures of ruin and restraint. The blatant, painful grip. The unceasing massage.
“He is with Mr. Sionis,” Viktor said, his tone leaving no room for nuance. “He is refusing to leave his side. The situation is… contained. For now.”
He ended the call. He started the car. The engine’s growl was a mundane sound. It did nothing to erase the quieter, more disturbing picture stuck behind his eyes, the one of a man clinging to a razor’s edge, and the only thing holding him there being the very thing he was trying to crush.