Chapter 5: The Talk
The observation room was quiet today, the usual hum of the surveillance banks muted. Daniel sat very still in his chair, his posture rigidly professional. He’d spent the night awake, the memory of his own desperation in the bathroom stall a sharp, sickening counterpoint to the reports on his desk—mission assessments from the takedown of the Venom syndicate. Titan’s metrics were off the charts. Efficient. Lethal. Exactly as programmed.
“The post-mission psych eval indicated a elevated sense of satisfaction from you,” Daniel began, his voice carefully neutral. “Can we talk about that? About using your power again, but within parameters?”
Marcus watched him. The circles under Daniel’s eyes were faint, but he saw them. He saw the way Daniel’s pen trembled just slightly before he stilled it. A cruel, familiar ache bloomed in his chest.
“Satisfaction,” Marcus echoed, the word tasting flat. “It was good. Felt… right. To stretch. To feel that expansion in my limbs, the ground becoming something I could mold.” He leaned back, the chair protesting. “But it’s a tool now. A fucking wrench. Before… before it was everything.”
He let the silence hang, thick and expectant.
“Before?” Daniel prompted, though his eyes flickered with something else—dread, anticipation.
“I had fun,” Marcus said, a slow, dark smile touching his lips. “Let’s not sugarcoat it. The destruction. The pure, unfiltered fucking dominance of it. It was a high no drug could touch. I came harder levelling a city block than I ever have with anyone.” He paused, watching Daniel flinch. “But you come down. You’re left standing in the rubble, and it’s just… empty. Quiet. You’re a god in a wasteland of your own making. And you realize you’re just a man in a giant suit, alone. I started looking for something to fill that quiet.”
Daniel’s breathing had shallowed. “What did you look for?”
“Distractions. At first. Then… I found him.”
The air in the room seemed to solidify. Daniel went perfectly still.
“Met this guy,” Marcus continued, his gaze drifting to the grey sky beyond the glass, a practiced affectation of reminiscence. “A random bar. I was wound so tight I could have snapped a battleship in half. Needed to blow off steam. He was… cute. Smart. Had these kind eyes behind his glasses, like he hadn’t seen the real shit yet. Talking to him was like putting down a thousand-pound weight. Sex was supposed to be a release valve. One night. Get the poison out.”
He shook his head, a genuine, rough laugh escaping him. “But the sex… fuck. It wasn’t just fucking. It was… he took all of me. Wanted it. Wrapped those skinny legs around me and held on like I was the only solid thing in the world. He’d look up at me, wrecked, and call me…” Marcus trailed off, biting the inside of his cheek. “He saw the man, not the monster. For the first time, someone saw me. Not my power. Not my size. Me.”
Daniel’s throat worked as he swallowed. His notepad was forgotten.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen,” Marcus whispered, the rawness in his voice unmistakable now. “I found it. The thing that filled the quiet. Love. Trust. Chemistry that fucking ignited in every room, every bed, every stupid conversation over burnt coffee. He was my baby. My only good thing.”
The confession landed between them, fragile and devastating.
“What happened?” Daniel’s question was a breath.
“I got sloppy. Or he got curious. I realized we were being watched. My old life, circling like vultures. They’d have used him. Hurt him. To get to me, or worse, to make me watch.” Marcus’s hands, resting on his knees, clenched into massive fists. “I had a choice. Stay, and let the villainy I loved poison the one person I loved more. Or leave. I chose to leave. Like a coward. I vanished from his life in the night because I was too fucking terrified to let him see what I really was. I wish, every goddamn day, I could take it back. Find another way. But I can’t. So I live with the ghost of him. It’s my life sentence.”
The silence was a physical weight. Daniel cleared his throat, the sound painfully loud. “If he were here,” he said, his voice strained thin, “what would you say to him?”
Marcus looked directly at him then. No mask, no villain, no patient. Just a raw, bottomless hunger and regret.
“I’d say I’m sorry. That I was a fool. That I love him. That I dream about the smell of his skin and the sound he makes when he comes. That I want to hold him again, just once, and never fucking let go. That I’d burn the world down differently, just to keep him safe.” He held Daniel’s gaze, pouring the truth into the space between them. “But I know I can’t. That door’s closed.”
Daniel looked away first, a sheen of moisture in his eyes he rapidly blinked away. He fumbled for his notes, the professional armor slamming back into place with visible effort. “The… the mission. The syndicate takedown. You felt in control?”
“Yeah,” Marcus said, the vulnerability sealing over, replaced by a cooler, more observational tone. “I was. It was clean. A different kind of power. Directing it. Containing it. Felt… useful.”
“And outside of missions? The… interpersonal evaluations note some fraternization with staff.”
Marcus’s eyebrow quirked. “Fraternization. That’s a word.”
“Nadia” Daniel stated, clicking his pen once, twice.
“What about her?”
“Is there a relationship?”
Marcus let a slow, dark smile spread across his face. He saw Daniel’s jaw tighten. “No relationship. She threw herself at me. I was… available. I fucked her.”
Daniel’s pen stopped clicking. “I see. And that’s… advisable? Given the protocols?”
“Wasn’t thinking about protocols. Was thinking about her big tits in my hands and how wet she got the second I touched her.” The words were deliberate, calibrated to wound. “She’s a needy little slut. Came to my room, pretty much begging for it. Who was I to say no?”
“Marcus, this isn’t—”
“She sucked my cock like she was trying to win a prize,” he continued, leaning forward, invading the space with the graphic detail. “Deep-throated it, tears in her eyes, gagging all over it. Loved it. Couldn’t get enough. When I bent her over, she was dripping. I fucked her so hard she screamed into the pillow. Told her she was a good fuckhole for my dick. She came twice before I finished.”
Daniel was pale. He stared at a point on the wall behind Marcus, his nostrils flared. “That’s enough.”
“Why? You asked.” Marcus’s voice was a low, taunting rumble. “She’s nothing. A warm, willing body. A distraction. Helps with the quiet. But it’s just noise. It doesn’t… it doesn’t mean a thing.”
Daniel stood up abruptly, his chair scraping violently. He gathered his folder, his movements sharp, mechanical. “Session is concluded. We’ll… we’ll pick this up next time.”
He was almost to the door when Marcus spoke, softly.
“Daniel.”
Daniel froze, his hand on the door's brushed steel handle, refusing to turn.
"What."
The word was sharp, a shard of ice.
"You asked if Nadia meant something," Marcus said, his voice low, stripping away the earlier cruelty. "It wasn't the same.Not even close. It was just a fuck. Fun, I guess. But it's paint on rust."
He stood, the movement causing the floor to groan. Daniel tensed but didn't move, his back a rigid line.
"Being with her was... noise. A bar fight. My baby..." Marcus stopped, swallowed. "When I was with him, it was a symphony. The first fucking music I'd ever heard in my head."
Daniel's shoulders tightened impossibly further.
"Sure, he was a slut for me," Marcus continued, a raw, soft laugh escaping him. "The best I ever had. Mouth like a blessing, took me so deep it made my vision blur. But that wasn't it. That was just the echo of the real thing. It was the connection. The way he'd look at me after, not scared, not impressed. Just... happy.Loved. I could fucking taste his happiness on my tongue. I loved him so much it felt like a weapon in my own chest."
Silence stretched, thin and fragile.
"My old man," Marcus mused, the words drifting. "Hard-ass son of a bitch. Died thinking I was just another grunt wasting his life. He would've shit a brick of pure outrage if he knew I slept with men, too. The thought would have never computed in his fossilized brain." He took a slow step forward, then another, closing the distance. Daniel didn't flee. "I never cared. Not then, not now. I like what I like. I fuck who I want to fuck. Most of them? They were just that. People I fucked. Warm holes and wet mouths. Footnotes."
He was directly behind Daniel now, a wall of heat and memory.
"But the man I loved? That was a whole other fucking country. The air was different there. It was home."
Marcus reached out. His huge, battle-scarred hand, the one that had crumpled armored vehicles like soda cans, came to rest not on the door, but on Daniel’s shoulder. Daniel flinched, a full-body tremor.
Slowly, Marcus turned him around. Daniel’s eyes were tightly shut, a wetness clinging to his dark lashes. He was shaking.
"Do you have any idea," Marcus whispered, his breath stirring Daniel’s hair, "how quiet the world is without you?"
He released Daniel’s shoulder. He lifted that same hand, his touch impossibly gentle, and cupped the side of Daniel's face. His thumb brushed just under Daniel’s eye, catching a tear before it could fall. The skin was fever-hot, heartbreakingly soft.
The contact lasted only three seconds.
Marcus pulled his hand away as if burned, his fingers curling into a fist. He turned and walked to the other door, the one leading to the detainee corridors. He didn't look back. The heavy door sighed open, then shut with a solid, final clunk.Daniel remained. He slid down the door until he was sitting on the cold floor, his arms wrapped around his knees. He pressed his own hand to his cheek where Marcus’s touch still bloomed like a brand. He sat there for a long time, staring at nothing, feeling the phantom pressure of a giant’s hand.
Three floors up, in a darkened observation booth overlooking multiple therapy rooms, Charlotte Zimmerman watched the bank of monitors. One feed was frozen, zoomed in on the therapy room door from a high angle, capturing the moment Marcus’s hand had cradled Daniel’s face. Her lips were pursed in clinical disapproval, but her eyes were alive with a cold, sharp calculation.
She replayed the last sixty seconds, listening to Marcus’s confession through the tinny speaker.
"The man I loved? That was a whole other fucking country. It was home."
She leaned back in her chair, the synthetic leather creaking. She muted the audio from the room where her son was now sitting in shattered silence on the floor. Fingers steepled, she tapped them against her chin, her gaze fixed on Marcus’s retreating back as he vanished down the hallway, powerful, vulnerable, and exquisitely predictable.
Emotional leverage was messy. But it was effective. Marcus Ashcroft’s weak point wasn't his power. It wasn't his past. It was this stupid, sentimental, tragic love for the one person he couldn't have. The same boy her Daniel had mooned over for years after a sudden, inexplicable breakup. Garrett. She’d never made the connection until this program, until she’d reviewed the background materials and seen the face. The truth had been a surprising, but ultimately irrelevant, piece of data.
Now, it was the cornerstone of her plan.
The High-Value Asset Containment Initiative wasn't working as hoped. The villains were effective, but they were balky, resentful, and watched too closely by Elena and her ilk. A revolution was simmering in the ranks, led by Frostbite, subtly guided by Mindbender. She needed a new axis of control. A puppet string tied not to a threat, but to a heart.
She picked up her encrypted tablet, her stylus moving with quick, precise jabs. She typed a brief memo to her assistant: "Draft file transfer request: One Daniel Morales, PsyD. Reassign from general therapy pool to individual attaché, Asset ASH-01 (Titan). Cite emerging breakthrough in psychometric bonding and individualized de-escalation protocols. Effective immediately."
She needed him inside Marcus's orbit again. Let them dance around each other in a professional cage. The tension would build. The old pattern would reassert itself. And when they finally cracked, when they came together again—and they would, she could see the desperate need in both of them—she would own it.
She would own him.
A smile, thin and without warmth, touched her lips. She wondered, idly, what sound a Titan would make when the one thing he loved most in the world was held directly over the fire. She suspected it would be very, very quiet.
Then he would do anything she asked.
She saved the memo, sent it, and moved to the next monitor. It showed Cole "Velocity" Brewer, in the gym, running Malik "Assassinator" Johnson ragged with some arrogant point about reaction times. Another problem. Another piece to be moved.
Her job was complete. The plan was now in motion. All she had to do was get them back together first.
She picked up her coffee. It had gone cold. She drank it anyway, her eyes never leaving the screens.