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Where have you been, Luca thinks, but doesn't ask. He stays silent, and keeps to himself, gray gaze flickering over the sight of a water-drenched Emil.
Emil—soaked to the bone, enough that his black hair is oily against his face, that the tiredness beneath green eyes melts into the water droplets—sits obediently in turn. He draws his knees to his chest, the level of the water rising and falling with his stray movements, windswept leaves and small patches of mud coming off his body in waves.
I know where you have been, Luca thinks, but doesn't say, as he plucks the stray leaves out of the tub. I know it well. And what an absentminded thing, to remove dirty leaves and twigs from the water. What a thoughtless action, so much so that Luca's hand lingers in the bath for a few seconds too long, and he pulls away before the proximity between him and Emil becomes too unbearable.
But if the closeness disturbs the patient—if it turns him sour, and makes him wish for the touch of his lover, Ada, instead—he doesn't show it. His mind is elsewhere, lost in a haze murkier than the bathwater he sits in. Without the sterile white clothes that Emil usually wears, Luca sees his body for all it is: tall, lean, but bony, as though all the muscles on his body were formed out of necessity, that without it he might just collapse into himself like a house of cards. Bruises and scars are scattered along his arms, his back, and his neck. Luca notes a particularly nasty bruise on the patient's left shoulder blade.
Another leaf stuck to Emil's back sloughs off into the water.
Luca asks, "The salts are to your liking?"
"I don't really care for it," Emil mutters. "But it's fine."
The prisoner stares into the depths of the water. Beyond the shadows of the patient's body, he can see the largest grains of bath salt sit idly at the bottom. Slowly dissolving, bit-by-bit.
Emil doesn't even look up as he says, "You don't have to do this."
"The bruise on your back." Luca's voice is hushed, his hands feeling around for a sponge. "Was it…?"
"Th-the scientist…the old man."
"Burke Lapadura?" The brunet knows him well—fellow scientists are like birds of a feather, after all.
"Mad Eyes," Emil amends with a nod. "He's the one."
"His large staff certainly seems like the bruising type." Luca doesn't dare touch the bruise. Instead, he lifts the bath sponge and starts scrubbing on the opposite side of Emil's back. "That's a, a-um, a right shame, that is. For you to have bruised like that."
"It doesn't hurt very much." The patient sniffles and reaches for his nose. His voice falls to a quiet murmur. "You still don't have to do this."
Several more moments pass. The prisoner is bent over, his sleeves rolled up, attention fixated on making the soap into a lather. As bubbles spread over his fingertips, he continues brushing the patient's back, side-to-side and then in circles. "I know," he finally answers. "But we're both here and your back hurts, so. We ought to make the most of it."
"You think…you think pitiful."
Luca's brows furrow. "Pitiful?"
"Me. You think me…pitiful…don't you?"
"Oh, that? No, not at all." Luca pauses in his ministrations, soap bubbling at his fingertips. "It is merely more convenient this way for me to help you. Do you see? The dirt, and everything else, went much, much faster with my intervention. Dirt and leaves…so many of them, too."
"Ah, that…that is because of that place! That place is so moist, so wretched." Emil's laughter comes out in barks. "The lake! I hate it."
"I'm not very fond of it myself," Luca admits. "It is a dreary place, and It stays with you, long after you have left it: there, m-more so than…than any other place here."
Emil shifts uncomfortably, as though he's finally grown into the length of the tub—bones unable to set themselves without struggle, without strife. He moves back and forth, knees drawn before relaxing before being drawn back up again. He turns over his shoulder to finally look Luca in the eyes. "What stays?"
The prisoner does not answer right away. He stops scrubbing the patient's back, and instead opts for pouring some liquid shampoo into his hands, ready to lather up Emil's black, oily hair. "From the lake?"
"Yes. What part of it? What part of it, which part stays? You said it stays, so which part…?"
"Every part, of course. The weather, the water, the waves. The—" Luca can't suppress his giggles as he plucks off yet another leaf from the other's body, has he somehow become a tree?— "leaves. It adheres, it r-remains. And…and so…"
"So it stays." Emil finishes the musing with his own. "So it has stayed with me."
"So it has," Luca agrees. He reaches for Emil's hair, but then hesitates—wondering if this is truly okay, and hoping this isn't crossing another unseen boundary, somehow. It is one thing to bathe with each other and wash the day's burden away—it is another thing to assume the role of temporary caretaker, running another person's hair into a lather, rinsing away layers and layers of exhaustion. "So it will. If you really w-want me to, I don't have to do this, like you said. I can stop."
"Don't stop." Is it a plea? An order? Luca can't tell because all he recognizes is the hint of resignation and indignation in Emil's voice: a quiet admonition to keep going.
So he does—so Luca will. He lathers, and lathers, and lathers, Emil's hair becoming a black-and-white concoction of soap and oil, his head hanging back as he slinks against the long end of the bathtub, eyes closed as Luca massages his head with shampoo.
And Luca has his gaze affixed to Emil's calm face: how quietly his lashes cast shadows over his cheeks, how light his freckles which dust his nose, how thin his lips until they part, how quaint his features, how distinctive, yet how normal, how plain. That he could study the patient's features and find fascination, still, even if he's long since memorized the pattern of his freckles, and even if he's long since grown accustomed to the shadows of his face. Even then, Luca would find some interest, and like all fields of personal self-interest, study, until the foreign language became familiar, at once. Until all the strangeness no longer seemed like such, but instead appeared as normal as normal could be.
Luca stares for a moment too long, not yet realizing he is caught in the act of staring. Not recognizing the green of Emil's eyes until they're shining up at him—a curiosity so strong they burn at the edges of Luca's attention.
"Oh—" Luca stumbles, slips on his own knees, and almost falls face first into the tub, himself! His limbs go astray and it's only through sheer luck that he manages to catch himself, slippery hands gripping the rim of the bathtub. His words are strangled by his nervousness. "I hadn't meant to stare."
For a short moment, Emil says nothing. He stays in that position for some time: laying down, head up against the furthest end of the tub, one arm relaxed against the edge, the other motionless at his side in the water. He stays there, and doesn't move—doesn't even flinch when Luca slips on himself and stutters face-forward, inching closer by accident but in a way that their faces are mere centimeters apart, the longest strand of Luca's brown hair falling into Emil's face.
He doesn't say a word as Luca wordlessly loses himself in the sight of Emil: soaking wet and exposed, nonsensical yet practical all at once. Emil says nothing, and almost continues to say nothing, were it not for the sweetness of innocence found in the corners of Luca's voice. A stumble, a stutter, a mishap—I hadn't meant to stare, he says—dyed by hues of pleasant pink, curiosity-driven yet somewhat obsessive. A scientist's eye for interest, or perhaps, interesting things. People, even.
Luca falls into Emil in more ways than one; in every way but physical. And as the words escape his mouth, Emil finds himself answering without thought—without reason.
Green eyes focus on gray, their colors mixing and bruising together, but darkly. Not bright in the least. "Oh," Emil says. "But I had."
And the patient closes the distance between them in one fell swoop: leaning upward, lukewarm water sloshing as he moves around, free hand reaching up to cup Luca's face. He holds him there, brisk soap-water and dirty leaves and all, in the palm of his hand. He holds him there, relishes in the tiny noise of surprise that escapes the prisoner's mouth, and wonders what other sounds the other is capable of producing, and when. Wondering if a broken songbird still has the capacity to sing at all.
And if it does not—if a bird whose wings were clipped is doomed to never fly again—Emil supposes it is no large burden to sing with him, to supply an empty throat with a twisted melody.
Emil lets his words hang heavy in the air, an oppressive weight over them, both.
Then in the seconds between their thoughts—in the pause Luca has from one moment to the next—Emil makes his move, and steals the air from Luca's lungs.
He kisses him, quick and messy, eagerly tasting Luca's lips that are sickly sweet, saccharine, until the flavors disappear behind iron. Until the awareness melts behind impulse.
Luca doesn't move at first, but resigns himself to silence and stillness, as the mess of sensations and emotions overcome him, each separately and then all at once.
What happens next is the result: hesitance, a choked noise leaving his throat half-dry, filled with confusion, surprise. His hands hover in the air, moving from their place on the rim of the bathtub to the space around them, unsure of what to do or where to go. His knees tighten, only because if he doesn't resolve himself then and there, the force of Emil's kiss will send him reeling, instead. A messy and awkward realization that they are kissing upside-down, followed up by the stunning realization that they are kissing at all.
Ultimately, when the noise dies down—when the reason all melts away and reveals a baseless, twisted hunger—Luca reciprocates.
He kisses Emil back.
He kisses back, and the force is surprising to them, both. Like a wave, Luca crashes against Emil, cascading and spreading until every inch of available space is taken up by him. Luca inhales sharply, his head spinning from lack of air, his chest aching with the painful need to have more. His heart thundering so loud he can barely hear himself, and almost misses the way Emil's voice twists into a whine in the back of his sore throat, his emerald eyes fluttering closed as though trying to imagine an endless darkness, and Luca, its only light. Luca kisses him down, down, down, to the point where Emil is nearly sinking into the water with nowhere else to go, scarred hands trembling as the patient tries to move them up, tries to grasp onto the tub, or Luca, or something that will set him right.
Emil's hands reach feebly for the air and Luca has to reel back, before they both go falling into the water.
Luca reels back, and realizes his hands are still soapy and wet, and that Emil's black hair still pops and echoes with bubbly lather. He stares down at the palms of his hands (good eye following the length of a familiar electrocution scar that runs beneath his glove), before leaning over the bathtub and peering innocuously down at the man lying within it.
"Are you alright?"
Emil grins wildly, as though this had all been some sort of joke at the start. "Do I look out of sorts?"
Luca, rather than feeling hurt or confused, laughs. "Very!"
"Then I must be fine."
"You, you really must not…! You mustn't be; you're a taken man who has shown interest otherwise!"
"Taken? I suppose you could put it that way."
"What other way is there to describe your relationship with Dr. Ada Mesmer?"
To that, the patient considers, and the graveness that befalls his face is a more familiar sight: it's an expression that attests to the manic devotion he and the psychologist have for one another, a serious love that doesn't dissipate, and doesn't dare wane. And surely, up until now, it had been a relationship untested! And yet— "It's a relationship where we both have the things we want."
A sound observation, if not an inadequate one, Luca thinks to himself. Out loud, he agrees more readily. "Yes, it would seem so. Therein lies the problem."
"There is no problem," Emil mutters. "Because nothing has to change."
"But, did you not just say…you said something about having what you want. Miss Ada surely does not want this for you…?"
"Perhaps not, but what about me?"
Silence.
Then, after a beat, a brave inquiry from Luca: "What about you?"
Emil doesn't reply right away. Instead, he rinses his hair (Luca helps him with this, despite everything), soaps his body, and drains away all the excess in the tub. Luca offers a towel, and Emil wraps it around himself—as much of it as he can, anyway—before stepping out.
As he does so—and as Luca rolls his sleeves back down, stripes covering up the scars yet again—Emil places one hand on Luca's shoulder, the ends of his mouth curling up into the tiniest smile.
"Perhaps I am still left wanting."
Silence.
Luca pipes up a moment too soon, but speaks with wholehearted conviction, nevertheless. "That's too bad," he murmurs, gently casting Emil's hand away. "Greed is a sin, as they say."
Patient as ever, Emil doesn't take offense to the rebuttal at all—only nods in affirmation—and leaves the washroom with one last parting shot.
"So is pride."