Work Text:
The listing was Hank's.
Scott corrected it three times: roommate wanted, non-smoker, respect for shared zones, one month's deposit. Hank took out shared zones and put in sunny apartment near campus. Scott put the zones back. What they posted pleased neither of them.
Bobby Drake left on a Friday. Another city, a contract he could not refuse, a hug in the doorway, and a tub of leftovers Scott labeled and filed on the shelf for things not used this week. Monday the landlord asked for the second name on the lease. Wednesday Scott ran the numbers on an adjunct's pay and extra hours at the faculty. The figure still did not fit. The other job would not be mentioned. Not in an interview. The radio ran from eleven to two and belonged to Slim, not to Scott Summers of 4B.
"You don't have to marry the man," Hank said from the couch that still smelled faintly of Bobby. "You only have to not hate him on Tuesdays. I'll stay. If it's wrong, I scratch my ear and you say you'll think about it."
Scott lined up three glasses on the counter in case the applicant wanted water.
Logan arrived at four o'clock. Not five to. Not three past.
Scott opened the door and the first thought was not punctual. It was a brief blank, the same one he got when someone moved a pencil and the room took a second to have order again.
A burgundy shirt, short sleeves, tight across the shoulders. Arms bare: dark hair, veins risen where he set a hand on the frame, a forearm thick in a way Scott had no word for at four in the afternoon. A scar ran under the sleeve. Hair still damp, as if he had showered to come and had not waited to dry.
Heat reached Scott's ears before he could invent a cause.
"Scott Summers," he said, too loud.
"Logan. Howlett."
Hank came out behind him with the face of a man who was not going to say what the other one did for a living.
"Hank. I wrote the ad. I'll try to keep quiet."
He did not.
They sat at the table. Scott had a ruler beside the list: rent, deposit, hours, noise, kitchen, bath, guests. Logan answered as if he were giving a report. Yes. No. He did not smoke. He slept little. Saturdays at the library, Thursdays at a support group. Former military. Insurance still good.
"Rent won't eat me," he said, without ornament. "If the place works, I pay my half on the first. We don't negotiate the first."
Scott wrote the first and did not look at the arms. He looked at the page.
"What do you do?" Logan asked.
"I teach. Contemporary history. At the university. Afternoons and some evenings when I have to cover."
"Do you cook?" Hank asked.
"When there's eating to do."
"That isn't an answer," Scott said, drier than was fair, because the other option was to keep watching the burgundy pull across the bicep.
Logan looked at him straight.
"I cook. I don't leave the sink like a camp if you ask me beforehand. If you ask after, it's already done."
Hank scratched his ear. Scott did not say they would think about it.
"My roommate moved," Scott said. "Bobby. They posted him out of the city. I get in late most days. I need someone who doesn't put music on at three. I need the fridge to have zones. It's written on the closet door. If that sounds stupid, say so now."
Logan read the list Scott slid over. He did not laugh.
"It isn't stupid. It's a map. I can use a map."
"If something happens. Medical. The building wants proof."
Logan set a card on the ruler, not on the list.
"Army. Current. You won't be paying for a bone."
The veins stood out again when he let the card go. Scott took it and set it flush with the edge of the table.
Hank, for him only:
"You're red."
"It's warm."
Logan did not comment on the warmth. He drank the water.
There had been others. A woman with a cat the rules did not allow. A man who talked forty minutes about his band. A student who said zones with a laugh that stayed in Scott's ear two days. Logan had come on the hour, called the list a map, and brought insurance that turned the rent into a problem with a solution.
He also brought that shirt.
Scott was not going to choose a shirt. He was going to choose a number that closed.
"I need someone soon," he said, and looked at the contract. "The landlord wants the second name this week. If you agree to the deposit and the zones, you have it."
"Logan," he said. "Not you have it like I'm furniture."
"Logan has it."
Hank did not scratch his ear.
Logan signed in a hard hand. When he leaned in, the burgundy pulled at the shoulder. Scott decided the color in his face belonged to the heating.
At the door Logan stopped.
"You get in late because of the university."
"Yes."
"The window. You leave it open?"
"Two fingers. For air."
"Fine."
He did not ask what Scott did after eleven. Scott offered nothing.
"The first, then," Scott said.
"The first."
When the door shut, Hank set his glass in the sink.
"You didn't tell him about the radio."
"He doesn't need to know. It's a job. It isn't the house."
"You picked the one who pays on the first."
"I picked the insurance and the punctuality."
"You also picked the hot army veteran with veiny, muscular arms."
Scott washed the three glasses. He put them in their zone. The ruler went in the drawer. The card went in the lease folder.
Scott Summers lived by lists.
Not as a figure of speech. Three on the fridge: dairy, protein, condiments. Towels at the same height, edge facing out. Pencils in order of thickness. If someone moved one by a millimeter, he knew before he had finished opening his eyes.
He was twenty-eight. On the air he was Slim. The station had printed it on a chipped mug and a worn sticker. Callers used it the way you used the name of a bridge at night: not intimate, only the thing you crossed to reach what you could not say in a kitchen. Hank said it between segments without thinking. Scott answered as he answered a label on a jar.
Logan Howlett was thirty-four and the opposite of a list.
He left his boots in the hall as if the apartment were a camp. He drank coffee from the pot. When he shaved, the sink looked shelled. At home he almost never said what he felt. He grunted, went quiet, or left the room.
They had shared 4B for seven months and still had not learned how to live in the same place. When one of them offered a gesture, the other read it wrong.
Scott did not read intention well. It was not unwillingness. The world arrived in pieces—a tone, a plate, a damp towel on a frame—and the pieces did not assemble themselves. Logan did not know how to offer anything that was not an act. Cook. Make space. Go silent. When Scott failed to answer as Logan had hoped, Logan shut like a metal door.
He did not have a temper that ran the house. He had a habit of aborting an approach when the supply came back untouched. Scott did not know the difference yet.
On a Tuesday in October Scott woke at 6:12, two minutes after the alarm. The apartment smelled of burnt coffee. In the sink: an unrinsed mug and a spoon laid across it like a charge.
On the counter, Logan's hard print:
There's coffee. It isn't burnt. You burn it when you reheat it.
Scott read it three times. Once for the words. Once for sarcasm. Once because you burn it caught under his ribs.
He folded the note, set it with the others Logan never read, and made coffee in the press. Measured grounds. Water at ninety-three degrees. Four minutes.
Logan came out with wet hair and a ruined shirt. Scott was already at the table with the thermos and the case.
"You moved the yogurts," Scott said, without looking up.
"I put them in front. They expire tomorrow."
"They belong on the top shelf. The top shelf is for what does not expire this week."
Logan stopped in the doorway, a hand on the frame.
"Are we fighting about yogurt?"
Scott blinked. It was not a fight. It was a system. If the system broke in one place, the rest followed: breakfast, the drive, the eight o'clock lecture, the night.
"It isn't a fight," he said. "It's the order."
Logan took his boots and left without eating. The door did not catch. Scott closed it and straightened the mat.
In the car he ran the scene again. Logan had tried to help, or to needle him, or to prove the system foolish. All three fit. None felt safe. He kept the version that moved him least: Logan did not know the rules.
At the university he taught Contemporary History. His lectures were exact, sometimes too exact. Students said Professor Summers ran like a clock. Scott knew. It did not trouble him. A clock did not have to guess offense.
Alex called on the walk in from the lot, loud even when he meant not to be.
"You still living with the war relic?"
"He's not a relic," Scott said. "He's thirty-four."
A pause. Alex had wanted a yes or a complaint, not a correction and a number.
"That's not what I asked."
"You asked what I'm living with. Logan is thirty-four. He's punctual."
Alex laughed, shorter this time. "Mom wants to know if you're eating."
"I eat."
"Things that aren't alphabetized?"
"Food isn't alphabetized."
"Great. That's practically a breakthrough."
Scott reached the university steps.
"I have class."
"That's not an answer either."
"It's a statement."
"Love you too, Scott."
Alex hung up before Scott had to decide what belonged after that.
He had corrected relic because relic was wrong. Logan was thirty-four, employed, capable of paying rent on the first, and considerably less old than Alex seemed determined to make him.
That was all.
Scott put the call in the same drawer as the yogurt.
By ten he was in the booth at 94.3.
Hank slid him the chipped mug. SLIM, in worn blue.
"You're early. Very inconsiderate. Some of us depend on your punctuality being intimidating from a distance."
"The board was wrong last night. I corrected the levels."
"Of course you did." Hank dropped into the other chair. "Lines are already lit. Your favorite gravel pit is in queue."
"Don't call him that."
"You call him Jimmy. I call him geological."
Scott put on the headphones.
On the air he was even. Questions came easier when the answers did not have faces attached. He could ask a stranger what he wanted and wait through the silence without trying to arrange it for him.
"You're listening to Midnight Confessions. This is Slim. If you can't say it to a face, say it here."
Almost every week, Jimmy called.
The voice was low and scraped, a man who seemed to ration words even while using more of them than Logan ever did. Veteran. Support group on Thursdays. Public library on Saturdays. A roommate who apparently made ordinary domestic life feel like hostile terrain.
Scott had never put the voice beside the man sleeping on the other side of his wall.
Logan at home was doors half-closed, answers pared down to what was necessary, a grunt from the kitchen if Scott asked whether he needed anything from the store.
Jimmy filled silences.
That difference was enough.
"We argued about yogurt this morning," Jimmy said that Tuesday.
Scott's pen stopped.
"I moved them so they wouldn't go bad. He gave me a speech about shelves. Like I was a recruit who didn't know where anything belonged."
Scott looked at the word Tuesday on the log.
Then at the microphone.
"What did you want to happen when you moved them?"
Silence.
Jimmy's silences always ran a second past the place where another host might have rescued him.
"That he'd eat breakfast," he said finally. "He forgets when he's in a hurry."
Scott's fingers tightened once around the pen.
"And moving the yogurt was supposed to tell him that?"
A rough breath came through the line. Almost a laugh.
"Sounds stupid when you say it like that."
"I didn't say it was stupid."
"You didn't have to."
Scott frowned.
"What did you expect him to understand?"
Another pause.
"That somebody noticed."
The answer landed strangely.
Scott looked down at the page.
"Did you tell him that?"
"No."
"Then you gave him information without the key."
Jimmy laughed properly this time, low and rough.
"Christ. He'd like you."
Scott's pen stopped again.
"Why?"
"You come with instructions."
"I give instructions."
"Exactly."
Scott wrote beneath Jimmy's name:
practical gesture / intention not stated
Then, after a second:
expected to be understood
"Sometimes a gesture doesn't read if it doesn't come with instructions," he said. "Especially if the person receiving it doesn't know what question it's answering."
Jimmy was quiet.
"Yeah," he said. Softer now. "He needs a manual, Slim."
Scott looked at what he had written.
For some reason, he thought of the yogurt on the wrong shelf.
He turned the page.
After the call, during the song, Hank turned his chair.
"You all right?"
Scott squared the log.
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"You've been staring at the same line since gravel pit hung up."
"I'm working."
"You underlined it twice."
Scott looked down.
He had.
"That doesn't mean anything."
Logan had lived through things he did not take to group. He told enough that the others would not feel alone. The rest he kept in the body: his back to the wall in a café, exits counted in a room, food left ready in case someone came home late and had not eaten.
Kevin Sydney had learned that in the army and had not unlearned it either. Once, after group, he and Logan ate Thai food from white cartons at a plastic table under a bad parking-lot light. Kevin pointed his fork at him.
"You keep cooking for a man who files your basil."
"He doesn't file it."
"He labels it."
"Different thing."
Kevin chewed, unimpressed.
"That's a crush or a punishment. Pick one."
Logan folded the lid of his carton back into place.
"It's dinner."
"Sure, Howlett."
Kevin went back to his noodles.
Scott came home late almost always. Logan thought it was the university. Scott let him.
Logan cooked on Tuesdays and Thursdays. At first it was simple—rice, chicken, a salad Scott rearranged before he ate, if he ate. One Thursday Logan made pasta with sauce that had not come from a jar.
Scott walked in and stopped.
Cutting board. Knife. Sauce on the stove. Fresh basil beside the labeled jar where dried basil belonged.
He took off his coat.
Then he started cleaning.
"You could leave that," Logan said from the couch.
"If the sauce dries on the stove, it'll take longer."
"I meant the dishes."
"They'll spot."
"Scott."
Scott stopped with the cloth in his hand.
"What?"
Logan looked at the plate he had left for him.
"Nothing."
"That isn't nothing."
"No."
"Then what is it?"
There it was: the question Logan had wanted and, now that he had it, no useful answer.
He put his headphones on.
Scott stood there another second.
Then he turned back to the counter.
He washed the knife. Wiped the board. Put the basil into its jar and rewrote the label because a drop of water had blurred the B.
By the time he went to his room, the plate was still on the table.
Logan stared at the closed door.
He had bought fresh basil because months ago, while Scott checked email, Scott had said dried basil tasted like dust. One loose fact. Logan had kept it the way he kept coordinates.
He could have said, I remembered.
He could have said, I made it because you said you liked it.
Both sounded worse in his head than silence.
So he called the radio.
"Jimmy again."
"Go ahead."
"I cooked."
Slim waited.
"My roommate came home and cleaned the kitchen."
"Was it dirty?"
"No."
"Then why did he clean it?"
Logan rubbed a thumb along the edge of the phone.
"That's what he does."
"What did you want him to do?"
"Eat."
"Did he?"
"I don't know."
A pause.
"You were there."
"Yeah."
"And you don't know?"
"I left."
Scott's pen slowed.
"Why?"
"Because he was cleaning the damn basil jar while the food got cold."
Scott looked down at the page.
"Did you tell him the food was for him?"
"It was on a plate."
"That wasn't my question."
Silence.
"No."
"Did you ask him to eat?"
"No."
"Did you tell him you'd made something he liked?"
"No."
Scott tapped the pen once against the margin.
"Then what did you tell him?"
Logan let out a breath.
"That the dishes could wait."
"And you expected him to understand the rest."
It was not phrased as a question.
"Yeah."
"Why?"
Another silence.
Because I remembered the basil.
Because I know what nights he comes home late.
Because I notice when he skips dinner.
Jimmy said none of that.
Instead:
"Because I was standing there."
Scott wrote:
expected presence to explain intention
Then underneath:
did not
"Sometimes being there isn't the same as saying what you're there for," he said.
Jimmy gave a rough, humorless laugh.
"You always this irritating?"
"Usually."
"Good to know."
Scott almost smiled.
"Are you going to ask him if he ate?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"If he says no, I'm going to be angry."
"At him?"
The answer took longer.
"Maybe."
"At yourself?"
Longer still.
"Next question."
Scott looked at what he had written.
For a moment, the sentence did not look entirely like a note about Jimmy.
There was something familiar in the shape of it—not the facts, exactly. The failure between an action and what somebody was supposed to understand from it.
He thought of yogurt on the wrong shelf.
Then of Logan leaving without breakfast.
Scott turned the page.
"Next call," he said.
Hank looked through the glass at him for a second.
Then he opened the line.
When Scott came home, Logan was already asleep.
For once, the boots stood together by the door instead of in the middle of the hall.
Scott stopped.
He could have moved them into their proper place.
He didn't.
He did not know why.
The towel was a Saturday.
Scott had genuinely forgotten the charger in his cubicle. He came back at four for the spare machine in the hall closet.
The bathroom was taken. The shower ran.
He waited in the hall, checking the same email twice, until the door opened.
Logan stepped out in a towel and nothing else.
Scott had seen him in a shirt a thousand times—the scar at the left shoulder, dark hair on his forearms, the way he moved as if his body both weighed too much and nothing at all.
He had not seen this.
Wet skin. Hair flattened across his chest. A line of water moving down his abdomen until it disappeared beneath the towel. Bare feet planted on the bathmat as if the apartment were ground that had to be held.
Scott stopped processing the hallway correctly.
Logan saw him.
One eyebrow went up.
"You need something?"
"I forgot the computer."
Logan looked past him toward the closet.
Scott heard himself continue.
"The charger. At the university. I left it in my cubicle, so I came back for the other computer."
A pause.
"The one in the closet."
"Yes."
"The one you came back for."
"Yes."
Logan's mouth moved at one corner.
Scott did not like that.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Like what?"
"You know what."
"I really don't."
Logan ran a hand through his wet hair.
The towel shifted.
Barely.
Scott looked immediately at the doorframe.
"It's in the closet," Logan said.
"I know where it is."
"Good."
"Label facing out."
"I know."
Another pause.
"You've said that twice."
Scott looked at him.
Logan's expression had changed. Not amusement exactly. Interest, maybe. Which was worse.
"You're red."
"It's warm."
Logan glanced toward the open window at the end of the hall.
"It's October."
"That doesn't determine the indoor temperature."
"No?"
"No."
Logan leaned one shoulder against the bathroom frame.
Scott became acutely aware that he was still wearing only a towel.
"I need the computer."
"Then get the computer, Summers."
Scott did.
Closet. Door. Bag. Strap. Close.
Manual movements.
When he turned around, Logan was still there.
Still wet.
Still watching him.
Scott tightened his grip on the bag.
"I'm going back to campus."
"You said."
Scott left.
In the car he sat with both hands on the wheel and did not start the engine.
Four in.
Six out.
Again.
The problem was not the temperature.
The problem was that a mind perfectly capable of sorting yogurt, lecture notes, radio frequencies, and every object in apartment 4B had no shelf for Logan in a towel.
That night Jimmy called.
"My roommate saw me coming out of the shower today."
Scott's pen stopped.
Jimmy continued.
"Guy looked at me like I'd pulled a weapon."
Scott stared at the log.
"What happened?"
"Nothing happened."
"That's usually when people call this show."
A rough laugh came through the line.
"He came home for something. Saw me. Forgot how sentences worked."
Scott's grip shifted on the pen.
"Maybe he was surprised."
"That's one word for it."
"What word would you use?"
Jimmy was quiet for a second.
"Interested."
The booth seemed to lose half an inch of floor.
Scott looked through the glass. Hank was adjusting a level and not looking at him.
"That's an assumption."
"Probably."
"You sound confident."
"I've been looked at before."
Scott wished very suddenly that Jimmy had called about yogurt again.
"And that bothers you?"
"No."
The answer came too quickly.
Scott noticed.
"So it doesn't."
"No."
"Then why are you calling?"
Another silence.
Jimmy's breathing moved softly through the headphones.
"Because I liked it."
Scott went still.
Jimmy laughed once, without humor.
"That's the part I don't know what to do with."
Scott looked down.
The word interested had somehow ended up beneath his pen.
He had not meant to write it.
"Did you say anything to him?"
"What was I supposed to say? Thanks for staring at my chest?"
Scott's face heated.
"Probably not."
"Glad we agree."
Scott cleared his throat.
"You could ask what happened."
"He'd deny it."
"How do you know?"
"Because he blamed the weather."
Scott shut his eyes.
Water ran down an abdomen behind his lids.
He opened them.
"People sometimes explain a physical reaction after the fact," he said carefully. "The explanation doesn't always arrive at the same time as the reaction."
Jimmy was quiet.
Then:
"Yeah."
His voice had gone lower.
"I know that one."
The call ended.
During the song Hank looked across the desk.
Scott kept his attention on the log.
Hank waited.
"What?"
"You tell me."
"I don't know what you mean."
"Sure."
Scott looked at him.
Hank pointed at the page with two fingers.
"You've written interested three times."
Scott looked down.
Once in the margin.
Once beneath Jimmy's name.
Once beside the timestamp.
He crossed out two.
Hank watched him do it.
"Better?"
"Yes."
"Great."
Hank turned back to the board.
After a moment he added, without looking over:
"You came in Saturday looking like you'd run a red light."
"I forgot a charger."
"I believe you."
Scott waited.
Nothing else came.
That was somehow worse.
At home Logan was already asleep.
The towel hung over the back of a chair instead of the rail.
Scott stopped beside it.
He should move it.
So he did.
He picked it up, folded it edge out, and hung it where it belonged.
The towel was dry.
It smelled faintly of cheap soap.
Scott kept one hand on it a second longer than necessary.
Then he let go.
He did not sleep well.
The blanket was a Wednesday.
Scott fell asleep on the couch at ten past midnight, shoes still on, a half-marked essay across his knees.
He had said five minutes.
His body believed him.
Logan turned off the hall light on his way to the kitchen.
Then he stopped.
Scott's glasses sat crooked across his face. His mouth had fallen slightly open. The red pen was still caught between two fingers, leaving a mark against the side of his hand.
The apartment was cold.
Scott kept the window open two fingers for air, even in October. Logan had learned not to argue with air.
He opened the hall closet.
The first blanket within reach was the thick wool one, brown enough to look like mud. Logan took it, crossed back to the couch, and laid it over Scott's chest, shoulders, and hands.
Scott moved once.
Logan froze.
Nothing.
He pulled the edge higher, just beneath Scott's chin.
Then he went to bed.
At 2:17, Scott woke scratching.
His throat first.
Then his wrist.
Then his cheek.
The wool had left a pattern against the side of his face and a sensation beneath the skin that did not stop when he moved away from it.
Wrong.
The thought arrived before language.
Scott shoved the blanket off.
Then, because his hands knew what to do even when the rest of him did not, he folded it.
Edge out.
He set it on the arm of the couch and scratched at his neck again.
The kitchen light came on.
Logan appeared in the doorway, hair flattened on one side.
"What happened?"
Scott looked at the blanket.
"That one."
Logan followed his eyes.
"What about it?"
"Don't put that on me."
Logan blinked himself more awake.
"It was cold."
"I know."
"You were asleep."
"I know."
"So I put a blanket on you."
"Not that blanket."
A pause.
Logan looked at the folded wool.
"It's a blanket, Scott."
"It's wool."
"Yeah."
"I can't have wool against my skin."
Logan's eyes went back to the red marks along Scott's wrist.
The irritation left his face almost as quickly as it had come.
"I didn't know."
"It's on the list."
"What list?"
"The closet."
Logan looked toward the hall.
"The inside of the door."
"I've never read the inside of the door."
Scott stared at him.
"I wrote it the first month."
"I open that closet for towels."
"Then you should have read it."
Logan's jaw shifted.
Scott heard the sentence after it was already out.
Too late.
He scratched his wrist again.
Logan looked at the movement.
"You always react like that?"
"To wool?"
"Yeah."
"Yes."
"And you were asleep."
Scott frowned.
"Obviously."
Something changed in Logan's face.
Not anger.
Scott could not place it.
Logan stepped toward the couch, stopped before touching the blanket, and pointed instead.
"Can I move it?"
Scott looked at him.
"Yes."
Logan picked up the wool and held it away from his body.
"Which one doesn't do that?"
"The gray one. Cotton."
"In the closet?"
"Yes."
Logan nodded.
He did not go get it.
Scott noticed that and filed it immediately.
Logan does not ask until after.
Logan does not read the rules.
Logan creates a problem and leaves.
The facts arranged themselves quickly.
There was no place among them for Logan had not wanted you cold.
"Don't use it again," Scott said, drier than he meant.
"I won't."
Logan went back down the hall with the wool over one arm.
His bedroom door did not catch.
Scott stood, closed it, and went to the bathroom to wash his face.
He did not straighten the mat.
The next night Jimmy called.
"I screwed something up."
Slim adjusted the headphones.
"That's unusually broad."
Jimmy gave a short breath that might have been a laugh.
"My roommate fell asleep on the couch. Place was freezing. I put a blanket on him."
"And?"
"Wrong blanket."
Scott's pen slowed.
"What made it wrong?"
"Wool."
A small pause.
"He can't stand it against his skin."
Scott looked at the page.
"Did you know that?"
"No."
"Did he expect you to?"
"Apparently there was a list."
Scott's pen stopped.
Jimmy continued before he could speak.
"Inside a closet door."
The line beneath Scott's pen went crooked.
He corrected it.
"Did you read the list?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I use closets for towels, Slim."
Scott stared at the microphone.
Somewhere behind the glass, Hank changed a level.
"What happened when he woke up?"
"He looked like he'd been attacked by upholstery."
Despite himself, Scott almost smiled.
Jimmy's voice softened.
"Skin was red. Neck. Wrist. Face."
The smile vanished.
"And what did you do?"
"Asked which blanket wouldn't do that."
Scott looked down.
He did not remember that part as clearly as the argument.
"The gray one," Jimmy said. "Cotton."
Scott wrote:
asked after / corrected after
Then beneath it:
still corrected
"What are you upset about?" he asked.
Jimmy was quiet.
"I was trying to keep him warm."
Scott's fingers tightened slightly around the pen.
"Did you tell him that?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Didn't seem useful after I'd already made him itch."
Scott looked at the words he had written.
"Intent doesn't erase the result."
"I know."
"But the result doesn't erase the intent either."
Silence.
Scott heard his own sentence a second after saying it.
Jimmy did too.
"That something you tell all your callers?"
Scott looked at the notebook.
"No."
The answer came before he could improve it.
Jimmy was silent for another beat.
Then:
"Good."
Scott frowned.
"Why good?"
"Means you might believe it."
The line went dead a few seconds later.
Scott stayed looking at the notebook.
There was something unpleasantly familiar in the geometry of the problem.
An action.
A bad result.
An intention that had never been spoken aloud.
He thought of wool against his neck.
Then of Logan standing half-awake in the kitchen doorway.
Scott turned the page.
Sunday.
Poor October light.
Scott sat at the table with a ruler along the margin of the essays and press coffee at his right hand—the kind Logan had bought without asking, the kind Scott had labeled anyway.
Logan crossed behind him on the way to the sink.
Stopped.
Scott kept marking.
Logan said, in the same tone he might have used to report rain:
"I like your cheekbones."
The red pen stopped.
Scott did not look up.
The sentence had nowhere to go.
I like.
His face.
Ten in the morning.
Logan, barefoot in the kitchen, saying it as if he had noticed they were low on milk.
First account: mockery.
Second: Saturday. The towel. Logan pulling at the thread because Scott had reacted badly enough to be memorable.
Third: a test.
Scott set the pen parallel to the page.
"No."
Silence.
Then:
"No what?"
"You don't have to do that."
"Do what?"
"Say things you don't mean to see what I'll do with them."
Logan's expression changed.
"I meant it."
Scott looked up at last.
Logan had one hand resting on the back of the chair across from him.
Not Scott's chair.
The other hung at his side.
"It isn't a joke," Logan said.
"People don't walk into a kitchen at ten in the morning and tell someone they like his cheekbones."
"I just did."
"That isn't evidence that people do it."
Logan stared at him.
Then one corner of his mouth moved.
Scott pointed the pen at him.
"That. You're laughing."
"I'm not."
"You are."
"I'm trying not to."
"Why?"
"Because you're arguing with a compliment like it's a parking ticket."
Scott's mouth tightened.
"It isn't a compliment if I don't know why you're saying it."
The amusement disappeared.
Logan looked at him for a second.
"Because I like them."
Scott waited.
Nothing followed.
"That's circular."
"It's the answer."
"It doesn't explain anything."
"Didn't know I needed a footnote."
Scott looked back down at the essay.
"There. That."
"What?"
"You're making fun of me."
"I'm not making fun of you."
"You compared me to a footnote."
"I compared your question to one."
"That's not better."
Logan exhaled through his nose.
Scott could hear the retreat beginning before Logan moved.
He hated that he could hear it and still did not know how to stop it.
"They're ordinary," Scott said.
Logan did not answer immediately.
Then:
"No."
Scott touched the bone under his eye without meaning to.
"What do you mean, no?"
"I mean they're not."
"They're cheekbones."
"Sharp ones."
"That isn't unusual."
"They show when you frown."
Scott lowered his hand.
Logan went on, because apparently he had already committed to the disaster.
"They showed when you were mad about the yogurt."
"I wasn't mad about the yogurt."
"Fine. When the yogurt violated procedure."
Scott frowned.
Logan pointed at him once.
"That."
"What?"
"Exactly that."
Scott became aware of his own face and immediately disliked the sensation.
"And Saturday," Logan added.
Scott went still.
Logan's gaze flicked toward him.
"When you went red."
"I was warm."
"It was October."
"We have already established that the month does not determine the indoor temperature."
"Sure."
"You're doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Laughing at me for blushing."
Logan's face settled.
"I'm not laughing at you."
"You keep mentioning it."
"Because I noticed."
"That's not better."
"It's different."
"How?"
Logan looked at him straight.
"Mocking you means I thought it was funny."
A beat.
"I liked it."
Scott forgot the next thing he had been going to say.
Logan seemed to realize what had come out only after it was already in the room.
Neither of them moved.
Scott swallowed.
"No one says that in earnest at ten in the morning."
Logan's jaw shifted.
"Apparently I do."
He turned toward the sink.
Scott watched him open the tap.
Too hard.
Water hit metal.
The coffee beside Scott's hand cooled.
He did not reheat it.
After nearly a minute, he said:
"It wasn't funny."
Logan kept his back to him.
"I know."
Scott waited.
Logan rinsed a cup that had already been clean.
"I wasn't trying to be funny."
Another pause.
"That's why it went worse."
That night Jimmy called.
He did not mention cheekbones.
He said:
"You ever say something plain and have somebody hear three other things?"
Slim's pen hovered over the log.
"Frequently."
Jimmy gave a rough little laugh.
"Yeah. Figured you might."
"What did you say?"
"A true thing."
"What kind of true thing?"
"The kind that should've been simple."
"That's not an answer."
"You're getting meaner."
"I'm being precise."
"That's what I said."
Scott frowned.
Jimmy continued.
"I told my roommate I liked something about him."
Scott's pen stopped.
Not completely.
Just enough for the line to thicken under the nib.
"And?"
"He decided it was either a joke or some kind of experiment."
Scott stared at the page.
"What did you do?"
"Got annoyed."
"Why?"
"Because I said exactly what I meant."
"And he didn't believe you."
"No."
"Did you tell him why you meant it?"
Silence.
Scott waited.
Jimmy finally said:
"I thought liking it was the why."
Scott's fingers tightened slightly around the pen.
"Maybe it wasn't enough information."
"For him?"
"Apparently."
"And what am I supposed to do? Submit supporting documentation?"
Despite himself, Scott almost smiled.
"No."
"Footnotes?"
The smile vanished.
Jimmy laughed under his breath.
Scott looked toward the glass.
Hank was bent over the board, paying him no attention.
"Maybe," Scott said carefully, "you could tell him whether you were expecting anything from him."
Jimmy went quiet.
Scott continued.
"If someone doesn't know what a statement is for, he may try to assign it a purpose."
"Everything needs a purpose?"
"For some people."
"And if there isn't one?"
Scott looked at the word true on the page.
"Then say that."
Jimmy breathed out.
"Just: I like this. I'm not asking you to do anything."
"That would be clearer."
"Christ."
"What?"
"Nothing."
Jimmy was quiet long enough that Scott checked the line.
Still connected.
Then:
"You're very good at this when it isn't your life, Slim."
Something caught beneath Scott's ribs.
He looked down.
He had written:
truth stated / purpose unclear
Below it:
assumed hidden intention
For a second he saw Logan at the sink.
Water running too hard.
His back turned.
Scott closed the notebook.
Two days later Wade Wilson sent Logan a photograph of a steel beam from a job site.
Crooked as hell.
Then:
still not telling note guy you want to climb him?
Logan stared at the message.
Another one appeared.
or are we calling cheekbones a neutral architectural observation now
Logan typed:
Fuck off.
Wade replied immediately.
so that's a no
Logan locked the phone.
Wade named things until they became performances. Put a spotlight on them. Added an audience.
Scott would have hated that.
Logan knew that much.
Naming was easier with Slim, who existed only in a speaker after midnight and did not look back at him across a kitchen table.
Slim did not live down the hall.
Slim did not leave the window open two fingers.
Slim did not have sharp cheekbones and a ruler beside his coffee.
As far as Logan knew, Slim did not share a lease with him.
The stew was a Friday.
Scott had mentioned it once, months ago, half asleep after a stack of midterms: his mother's beef stew with red wine and rosemary, the only thing she made that could convince him winter would eventually end.
Logan had changed the channel.
Scott did not remember saying it.
Logan did.
He left group early, bought the beef, a cheap decent wine, fresh rosemary, and cooked without hurry. Low flame. No radio. By midafternoon the smell had worked its way through the apartment.
He left a covered plate on the table.
A note beside it:
Eat. It'll go cold.
Then he went for a walk.
If he stayed, he would watch the door.
Scott came home at 10:20, spent.
A colleague had needed covering. Twenty-seven essays were marked. Traffic still hummed somewhere behind his eyes.
He opened the apartment door and stopped.
Rosemary.
Wine.
Beef.
For one disorienting second the hallway belonged to another house.
His mother's kitchen in winter.
Then 4B returned.
The plate was on the table.
Scott set down his bag.
He washed his hands.
He lifted the lid.
Steam reached his glasses. Wine and rosemary and something browned slowly enough to have taken hours.
He stared.
Then pulled out the chair.
His phone buzzed.
Gabe.
Scott looked at the screen.
Then at the plate.
The phone buzzed again.
He answered.
Gabe only called when something had already gone slightly wrong.
It was not an emergency.
It became twenty-two minutes of one.
A missed deadline. A missed bus. A paragraph that apparently could not survive until morning.
Scott stood beside the table with the fork in one hand.
"Yes."
A pause.
"Send it to me."
Another.
"No, don't call Alex."
He put the fork down.
By the time Gabe stopped talking, the food no longer steamed.
Scott wrote him a list for the morning because otherwise Gabe would call again.
The list took the last clean edge of the day with it.
Scott put the lid back over the plate.
After the shower, he thought.
He showered.
Changed.
Passed the table on the way to his room.
Heat it when I come back.
Sleep took him before there was a coming back.
The plate remained where Logan had left it.
Only now the lid sat slightly crooked.
A fork rested beside it.
Proof that Scott had seen.
Which, to Logan, would be worse.
Logan came back at eleven.
The bathroom was wet.
Scott's clothes were in the hamper.
The kitchen light was still on.
He saw the plate before he took off his coat.
Lid crooked.
Fork out.
Food untouched.
Logan stood there with his keys in his hand.
Scott appeared in the hall, glasses off, already halfway toward his room.
Logan looked at the plate.
"You opened it."
Scott stopped.
"Gabe called."
"Who's Gabe?"
"My brother."
Logan looked at him.
"The younger one. He missed a deadline and then his bus and—"
"I don't care."
Scott went still.
Logan heard it too.
He dragged a hand over his mouth.
"No. That's not—"
"You said you don't care."
"I don't care why the stew's cold."
Scott frowned.
"Those are different statements."
"I know."
"Then don't say the first one."
Logan's jaw tightened.
Scott waited.
Logan looked back at the plate.
"You opened it."
"Yes."
"You got a fork."
"Yes."
"And then you went to bed."
"I was going to come back."
"But you didn't."
"No."
The word sat there.
Logan set the keys in the bowl.
Too hard.
Scott looked at them.
"I made it because you said you liked it."
The sentence came out before Logan seemed ready for it.
Scott looked up.
"What?"
Logan's face closed almost immediately.
"Nothing."
"No. You said—"
"I heard what I said."
"When did I tell you that?"
"Months ago."
Scott searched for it.
Found nothing.
"I don't remember."
"I know."
That landed worse than anger.
Scott looked at the plate again.
Logan continued, voice flatter now.
"You said your mother made it. Red wine. Rosemary. Said it made winter feel shorter."
Scott stared at him.
He remembered the couch.
Maybe.
A stack of exams.
Maybe.
He did not remember Logan listening.
"You remembered that?"
Logan gave a short laugh without humor.
"Apparently."
Scott had no response prepared for apparently.
Logan opened the refrigerator.
"I'm putting it away."
"I was going to eat it."
"You can eat it tomorrow."
"Logan—"
"I'm not asking you to eat it because I cooked it. I'm not your mother."
Scott flinched slightly.
Logan saw.
Too late.
"I'm saying if you don't want something, tell me."
"I did want it."
"Then I don't know what that looks like with you."
Scott's mouth opened.
Nothing came.
Logan put the plate in the refrigerator.
He did not slam the door.
That would have been easier.
Instead he closed it carefully.
Click.
"I walked around the block because I knew if I stayed here I'd sit like an idiot waiting to see if you liked it."
Scott looked at him.
There.
Something had finally been said plainly.
Too plainly, maybe.
Logan looked away first.
"Forget it."
Scott's thoughts arrived in the wrong order.
He remembered the smell before the sentence.
His mother's kitchen.
The note.
Gabe.
The fork.
Logan walking around the block.
"I wasn't testing you," Scott said.
Logan stopped at the hallway.
"I know."
Scott swallowed.
"I wasn't rejecting it."
A pause.
"I know that now."
"You didn't five minutes ago."
"No."
Scott needed that answer to be something else.
It wasn't.
Logan went to his room.
His door did not catch.
Scott stayed in the kitchen with the keys crooked in the bowl.
He could have straightened them.
He didn't.
At 94.3, Scott was settling the headphones when the line came up.
Hank tapped the board.
"Gravel pit."
Scott adjusted the microphone.
"Jimmy. Go ahead."
A breath came through the headphones.
"I screwed up."
Scott's hand paused over the log.
"How?"
"I tried to do something nice for my roommate. He came home exhausted. It didn't go the way I thought it would."
Scott looked down at the page.
"What happened?"
"I took something personally that probably wasn't personal."
"Did he say something?"
"No."
"Then what did you take personally?"
Jimmy was quiet.
"Nothing, I guess."
"Nothing made you angry?"
"That's not what I meant."
Scott waited.
Jimmy exhaled.
"I wanted him to notice."
"Notice what?"
"That I'd been paying attention."
Scott's pen slowed.
"And when he didn't?"
"I got pissed."
"At him?"
"At the whole damn thing."
"That's broad."
"I know."
A pause.
Then Jimmy said:
"I said something wrong. Made it sound like I didn't care when I cared too much."
Scott's fingers tightened around the pen.
Something caught.
Not a fact.
A shape.
A sentence spoken badly in a kitchen.
Logan's flat voice.
Scott looked at the log.
"Did you tell him that?"
"No."
"Why not?"
Jimmy laughed without humor.
"Because apparently I only know how to say the important part after midnight to somebody I've never met."
Scott stopped moving.
The booth seemed suddenly smaller.
"What would you say to him if he were listening?"
Silence.
Long enough that Hank glanced through the glass.
Then:
"I'd tell him I wasn't angry because he did something wrong."
Scott's pulse moved once in his throat.
Jimmy continued.
"I was angry because I wanted it to matter."
Rosemary.
A crooked lid.
Keys hitting the bowl too hard.
Scott stared at the microphone.
Not proof.
Still not proof.
But the drawers had begun to open.
"Wanting something to matter isn't the same as saying that it matters," Scott said.
"I know."
"Then maybe you have to tell him."
"Yeah."
A pause.
"Maybe."
Jimmy shifted on the other end of the line.
Then, almost under his breath:
"Should've just told him to eat the damn stew."
Scott stopped breathing.
Hank looked up.
The word did not belong to Jimmy.
It belonged to Friday night.
To rosemary.
To the plate in Scott's refrigerator.
To Logan.
The pieces did not fall together gradually.
They snapped.
Veteran.
Thursday group.
Saturday library.
The yogurt.
The basil.
The wool.
The roommate who went red after seeing him in a towel.
Cheekbones.
Scott put one hand flat against the desk.
"Jimmy."
Something in his tone made Hank sit forward.
"Yeah?"
Scott swallowed.
"Do you live in apartment 4B on Oak Street?"
Nothing.
The silence went on long enough for Hank to lift one hand toward the board.
Cut?
Scott shook his head.
The line stayed open.
Then, very quietly:
"Scott?"
Not Slim.
Scott closed his eyes.
"Yes."
A breath.
Then:
"Jesus Christ."
Scott could hear movement on the other end.
Fabric.
A chair, maybe.
Neither of them hung up.
"You—" Logan stopped.
Scott opened his eyes.
"You didn't know."
It was not a question.
"No."
"Neither did I."
Another silence.
Scott looked through the glass. Hank was staring at him now.
"I have to finish the show."
Logan let out one disbelieving breath that might have become a laugh in another room.
"Yeah."
A pause.
"I know."
Scott's hand remained flat on the desk.
"Don't hang up yet."
Logan went quiet.
Scott had not planned the sentence.
"I won't."
They stayed connected until Hank pointed at the clock.
Scott closed his eyes once.
Then:
"I have to take the next call."
"Go."
The line disconnected.
Hank waited until the song started.
Then he came into the booth.
"Well."
Scott took off his glasses.
"Don't."
"I wasn't going to."
"You were."
"I was going to say that explains a lot."
Scott looked at him.
"Did you know?"
"No."
The answer was immediate.
"I knew those calls got under your skin. I thought you were recognizing yourself in the roommate."
Scott stared at Jimmy's name on the log.
"I was."
Hank followed his eyes.
"Apparently."
"The pieces were there."
"Pieces usually are."
"I should have known."
"Why?"
Scott looked at him.
"The veteran. The library. Thursdays. The yogurt. The blanket."
"And how many veterans call this show?"
Scott said nothing.
"How many people complain about roommates?"
"That's different."
"Now it is."
Scott looked back at the page.
Hank leaned against the console.
"You weren't listening for Logan."
"No."
"And Logan wasn't calling Scott."
Scott looked at him.
"He was calling Slim."
"Exactly."
That sat differently.
Scott put his glasses back on.
Hank nodded toward the clock.
"Forty-one minutes."
"Forty."
"There he is."
Scott put the headphones back on.
Logan was on the couch when Scott opened the door.
No light in the kitchen.
The plate was gone from the table.
Scott locked the door.
Keys in the bowl.
In line.
Then one off by a millimeter.
Logan looked at the keys.
Then at Scott.
"You really are Slim."
Scott stood with one hand still over the bowl.
"You really are Jimmy."
"Was."
Scott considered that.
"Yes."
Neither moved.
Logan rubbed his hands once over his thighs.
Scott took off his coat.
Hung it.
Adjusted the sleeve.
Then stood beside the rack longer than necessary.
"You gonna stay over there?"
"I haven't decided."
"All right."
Scott looked at him.
The answer helped.
He crossed the room and sat at the far end of the couch.
One cushion between them.
Logan looked at the cushion.
"Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You looked at it."
"I have eyes."
Scott folded his hands.
Silence.
Then:
"You told me about me."
Logan leaned his head back against the couch.
"Yeah."
"I gave you advice about me."
"Yeah."
Scott frowned.
"That's upsetting."
"It's not great from this side either."
"You called me difficult."
"You are difficult."
Scott turned toward him.
"So are you."
"Didn't say I wasn't."
Another silence.
Then Logan laughed.
Scott looked at him sharply.
Logan stopped.
"What?"
"That."
"What?"
"The laugh."
"What about it?"
"I know that laugh."
Logan's expression changed.
Scott stared at him.
"I heard it every week."
"Apparently."
"And I didn't know."
"No."
Scott looked down.
Logan was quiet for a moment.
"Neither did I."
Scott nodded once.
That mattered.
"The voice is different through the phone," he said.
"So is yours."
"My voice isn't different."
Logan gave him a look.
"Slim sounds like he knows what he's doing."
Scott frowned.
"I know what I'm doing."
"Sure."
"I do."
"On the radio."
Scott stopped.
Logan's mouth twitched.
"At home you argue with compliments."
"Your compliments require context."
"See?"
Scott ignored that.
"The stew."
Logan looked toward the kitchen.
"It's in the fridge."
"I was going to eat it."
"I know."
"You didn't know earlier."
"No."
"Gabe called."
"Your brother."
"The younger one."
"Yeah."
"He missed a deadline."
"Scott."
"I'm explaining."
"I know."
Scott stopped.
Logan rubbed a hand over his face.
"I shouldn't have said I didn't care."
"No."
"I meant I didn't care about the reason."
"Those aren't the same sentence."
"I know that now."
Scott looked at him.
"You remembered the stew."
Logan looked away.
"Yeah."
"I said that months ago."
"Yeah."
"I don't remember saying it."
"I do."
The answer was simple.
It made Scott's chest feel strange.
"Why?"
Logan looked back at him.
"Why what?"
"Why remember it?"
Logan gave him a long look.
"You really need me to answer that?"
"Yes."
Logan exhaled through his nose.
"Because I listen to you."
Scott went still.
There was nowhere to misfile that.
Logan continued before Scott could respond.
"You say things when you're tired. Half the time you don't know you've said them. You hate dried basil. You leave the window open even when it's freezing. You forget breakfast when you're late. You don't like wool. Your brother calls when his life catches fire."
Scott stared at him.
"You notice a lot."
"Occupational hazard."
"From the army?"
"No."
Scott waited.
Logan realized he had walked into it.
His jaw shifted.
"From you."
Silence.
Scott looked down at his hands.
"That's clearer."
"Good."
"I prefer clear."
"I'm starting to get that."
Scott glanced toward him.
"If you're doing something because of me, tell me."
"All right."
"Before calling a radio show about it."
Logan groaned.
"You're never letting that go."
"I don't know yet."
"Fair."
"And if you're angry, tell me you're angry."
"I can do that."
"If you're not angry but sound angry—"
"That one's harder."
"I know."
Logan looked at him.
Scott noticed the small change in his shoulders.
Less held.
"Then ask me," Logan said.
"Ask what?"
"If something's an attempt."
Scott frowned.
"An attempt at what?"
"Whatever."
"That's imprecise."
"Jesus, Scott."
"It is."
Logan looked at him for another second.
Then:
"Fine. Ask if I'm trying to do something for you."
Scott considered that.
"That's better."
"Glad we negotiated the wording."
Scott ignored him.
"Was the yogurt?"
Logan groaned again.
"Yes."
"The coffee?"
"Yes."
"The gray blanket?"
"After the wool disaster, yes."
Scott nodded.
"The cheekbones?"
Logan looked at him.
"Definitely."
Heat rose immediately.
Scott looked toward the kitchen.
"The towel?"
"No."
Scott's face got hotter.
Logan smiled.
"The towel was just me coming out of my own shower."
"Don't."
"You asked."
"I regret it."
"I liked that you went red."
Scott turned back.
Logan was not laughing.
That made it worse.
Or better.
Scott could not sort it fast enough.
"Why?"
Logan's eyebrows lifted.
"Scott."
"You've established assumptions are ineffective."
For a second Logan just stared.
Then he laughed again.
Scott knew the sound now.
Logan shook his head.
"Because I like you."
Everything in Scott stopped.
No radio static.
No anonymous voice.
No note.
No inference.
Just Logan sitting six feet away saying it badly enough to be true.
Scott swallowed.
"Oh."
Logan looked at him.
"Oh?"
"I need a minute."
"Take one."
Scott did.
Logan did not fill it.
That helped too.
After a while Scott said:
"I like your arms."
Logan blinked.
Scott immediately looked away.
"Forget that."
"No."
"Logan."
"Absolutely not."
"I didn't plan it."
"That makes it better."
"It does not."
"The burgundy shirt."
Scott closed his eyes.
"Stop."
"You stared at me through half the interview."
"I was evaluating the applicant."
"Sure."
"I picked you because you paid on the first."
"And the arms."
"And the insurance."
"And the arms."
Scott opened his eyes.
Logan was smiling now.
Not cruel.
Scott could finally see the difference.
"You're impossible."
"So are you, Slim."
The name landed differently in the apartment.
Scott looked at him.
"Don't stop calling me that."
Logan's smile disappeared.
Something quieter replaced it.
"All right."
At three in the morning Scott reheated the stew.
He ate standing at the counter.
Logan leaned against the doorway.
Scott took another bite.
"It's good."
"I know."
Scott looked at him.
"You're supposed to say thank you."
"For what?"
"The compliment."
Logan snorted.
Scott kept eating.
A few weeks later, near the end of an hour, a familiar voice came through the line.
Scott knew it immediately now.
He opened the channel.
"Go ahead."
"Hey."
Scott smiled.
"Hello, Logan."
A pause.
"Still weird."
"You called."
"Yeah."
Another pause.
"I'm not anonymous."
"I noticed."
"The roommate situation got better."
"Did it?"
"Some."
"Only some?"
"He's still difficult."
Scott leaned back.
"That sounds exhausting."
"Terrible."
He could hear Logan smiling.
"The problem is I don't know what to do when things go well."
Scott looked through the glass.
Hank had deliberately turned his chair away.
"Start by not hanging up."
Logan was quiet.
Then:
"All right."
He stayed.
Hank, still facing the other direction, lifted one hand.
Scott ignored him.
Later, in 4B, the gray cotton blanket lay crooked on the couch.
Scott picked it up.
From the kitchen Logan said:
"If you fold that now, I'm going to assume you're nervous."
Scott stopped.
"I am nervous."
The sentence came out before he could organize it.
Logan turned.
Then set the dishcloth down.
Crooked.
"Good."
Scott frowned.
"Why is that good?"
"Because you said it."
That stopped him.
Logan crossed the kitchen.
Slowly.
He stopped close enough that Scott could smell rosemary and coffee and the end of the day.
He did not touch him.
Instead, he lifted one hand.
Waited.
Scott understood the question.
He nodded.
Short.
Clear.
Logan kissed him.
It was not careful in Scott's definition of careful.
It was sure.
A little rough.
Warm mouth. One hand settling at the hinge of Scott's jaw as though Logan needed one fixed point.
Scott made a small sound that surprised him.
Logan pulled back a fraction.
Scott caught his shirt.
"Don't."
Logan stopped.
"Don't what?"
"Stop."
Clear.
So Logan kissed him again.
When they separated, Scott's glasses were crooked.
His hand started toward them.
Stopped.
Logan noticed.
Neither said anything.
Then Logan said, very quietly:
"That was an attempt."
Scott looked at him.
"Received."
Scott leaned in first the second time.