"Yes. We need to get you into a cool bath. Your fever is too high."
He nodded vaguely, which I took as consent. I hooked my arms under his shoulders and braced to lift. Even prepared, I wasn't ready for how difficult raising his deadweight would be. He tried helping, movements uncoordinated and clumsy, but between us, we managed to get him upright.
The journey to the bathroom stretched into infinity. Luka sagged against me, his skin scorching through my clothes. His ragged breath filled my ear, hot and copper-tinged. By the time we staggered through the door, sweat plastered my shirt to my back, my thighs trembled, and my shoulders burned from carrying his dead weight.
I sat him on the closed toilet lid where he swayed dangerously, eyes unfocused, while I turned on the bath, adjusting the temperature to lukewarm. Not too cold, I remembered reading, or it could shock his system. Just cool enough to gradually bring down the fever.
Luka had already stripped down to his boxers, which made things marginally less awkward, but I still found myself hesitating. "Do you want to keep those on or...?"
"S'up to you, doc," he slurred, a weak echo of usual flirtatiousness. "Doesn't bother me if it doesn't bother you."
For medical purposes, it would be better having his entire body exposed to cooling water. For my peace of mind... well, that ship had already sailed. I'd seen him naked before.
"Let's take them off," I decided, focusing on clinical necessity. "It'll be more effective."
Getting him standing again was challenging, but he managed with support. I helped him step out of the boxers, averting my eyes as much as possible while ensuring he didn't fall. Getting him into the tub was another challenge entirely. He was unsteady, his usual grace abandoned to fever and weakness. I had to practically lift him over the edge, arms wrapped around his torso, weight threatening to topple us both. When he was finally settled in the water, I knelt beside the tub, grabbing a washcloth to bathe his burning skin.
He hissed as the cool water hit, instinctively trying to pull away.
"I know it's uncomfortable," I said soothingly, "but we need to bring your temperature down."
As I ran the cloth over his shoulders and chest, I was finally able to see his body in detail. In the harsh bathroom light, his torso told a story written in scar tissue. Puckered bullet wounds on his shoulder. A long, jagged slash across ribs. Smaller nicks and cuts too numerous to count. Burns in circular patterns that looked disturbingly deliberate. And on his back, visible as he leaned forward, thin parallel lines crisscrossed skin in an unmistakably deliberate pattern.
This wasn't just the body of a professional killer. This was a testament to suffering, a map of violence both inflicted and endured. Itraced the path of a particularly vicious scar running from his shoulder blade to his spine, wondering what weapon had caused it, what pain he'd endured.
I assessed the marks as trauma indicators, each one representing potential psychological wounds beneath the physical. The parallel lines, the controlled, methodical application of pain. I noted how these physical traumas would manifest psychologically: hypervigilance, attachment disruption, compartmentalization. Yet beneath my professional analysis, something darker stirred, the same inappropriate fascination that had drawn me to dangerous men before.
What kind of therapist was I becoming? The ethical line between professional care and personal involvement had vanished entirely. Here I was, analyzing trauma indicators while simultaneously responding to the body displaying them. My professors would revoke my license on the spot.
As I worked down his body with the washcloth, I couldn't help noticing his more... intimate modification. My brief glimpse the night before hadn't prepared me for the full reality. A series of metal bars—six of them—ran up the underside of his shaft in a ladder-like arrangement. I'd never seen anything like it. The thought of voluntarily subjecting such sensitive anatomy to that much metal made me wince.
"Did that... hurt?" I asked before I could stop myself, immediately regretting the unprofessional question.
Luka's eyes cracked open, somehow managing a weak smirk despite a fever. "Pain is temporary. Sexy is forever," he slurred, somehow maintaining his brand even while cooking from the inside out. His eyes rolled back before I could formulate a suitably sarcastic response.
I quickly moved the washcloth to safer territory.
"Jesus, Luka," I whispered before stopping myself, fingers hovering over a cluster of small round scars, perfectly circular and uniform, scattered across his ribcage.
His fever-glazed eyes suddenly widened, focusing on something—or someone—beyond me. The blue of his irises seemed unnaturally bright, almost luminous.
"Sorry," he murmured, the word slurred and barely audible.
"What for?"
He reached up with trembling fingers, grazing my cheek in a touch so gentle it seemed impossible from hands that had killed so many. "For not saving you," he whispered, fevered gaze looking through me rather than at me.
I blinked and placed my hand over his, brows furrowing. "But... you did. Sort of."
"Do you hate me for not saving you, Ana?" he asked, and I froze.
Something in Luka's eyes... The desperation there was unlike anything I'd ever seen, but he clearly wasn't talking to me.
"Ana," he said again, and I thought maybe it was a name. His words trailed off into mumbled words in another language, head tossing restlessly against the tub edge. I continued the methodical task of cooling him down, which seemed to be working.
"Papa's crawl space," he muttered suddenly, eyes unfocused. "Ana... hide... soldiers coming." He thrashed weakly, water sloshing over the tub's edge. "Blood... so much blood..."
The fragmented phrases painted a horrific picture of a traumatized child witnessing violence. Classic dissociative flashback triggered by fever. I'd seen similar reactions in my PTSD patients, but never this raw, this unfiltered by conscious restraint.
