There was something deeply satisfying in seeing Emery well-groomed again, though his shaved head was jarring; the man in question was wobbly on the plastic stool, half-lidded eyes refusing to open further.
The act of being shaved, passive though it might sound, had left him clearly exhausted.
Josh made quick work of sweeping the floor and putting the hair in a plastic bag to dispose of, his mind whirring. Emery showering by himself, with the level of dirt still on him and his state of weakness, would take far too long, not to mention it wouldn't be without danger. Josh didn't think what he was about to propose would be without danger either — namely, the danger of Emery spontaneously combusting at the sheer indignity of the suggestion — but there was no doubt it would be quicker.
"I could approach this with kid gloves, but it's late, you need to eat and sleep, I could do with both as well, and I'm going to take a page out of your book and be blunt: this would be quicker if you'd let me wash you."
Emery's head might have shot up, had the other man had the energy for it; as things stood it moved sluggishly upwards, and how half-lidded eyes could be brimming with outrage was something to ponder on another day. "I'm not an invalid."
Josh was too damn emotionally tired to pull his punches. "Emma would have ripped you a new one for that particular turn of phrase." Okay. Seeing outrage morph into utter defeat was not the outcome he'd had in mind with his outburst. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"
"You're right, she would have. This all, it's... I'm sitting in your bathroom spreading filth and lice everywhere and there you are, offering your charity and I keep trying to turn it away. I shouldn't have agreed to come in the first place."
"Damn it, Emery, it's not charity!"
A minuscule rise and fall of Emery's shoulders; a voice so resigned it made Josh's heart ache. "Charity, pity, call it what you'd like. A rose by any other name."
"It's none of those things!"
"A hobby, then?" At least he was a little more combative now. Josh would never have imagined he'd prefer an Emery who'd fight him every step of the way. "Do you make it a point to go hunting for homeless people in the park so you can bring them home, bathe and feed them every Thursday? Delightful. Do you keep a score?"
Josh hadn't decided to let anything as honest as his next words cross his lips, but he didn't always have a choice in what he said. His eyes zeroed in on Emery's, the pain in his voice difficult to pass off as anything else, when he replied, "Is that all we are then? A homeless person and the random guy who brought him home from the park?"
Emery went from sluggish and exhausted to completely frozen, his slightly parted lips and quiet intake of breath the only evidence of life. There was something charged between them as the moment stretched on, as if they were on the verge of something. Josh didn't dare speak.
"Josh," Emery said, barely a whisper.
Whatever Emery had been about to say was lost to a fit of coughing, bringing Josh out of his daze. He'd have to give Emery a piece of himself he hadn't planned on giving — not when the other man had forfeited the right to any piece of Josh long ago — to get him to understand.
He sat on the edge of the tub, fully facing Emery in his plastic stool. "How about me paying it forward? Repaying a debt to someone I'll never be able to repay directly?"
"If this is about the money Emma left you, she wanted you to—"
"Not everything is about Emma. If things had been different, I could have been you."
That got Emery's attention. "You? How?"
Josh didn't want to tell him, no, but he had to in order to mislead Emery. That was a conscious decision. Better give him some of his past as the full reason and leave out the part where it was Emery he couldn't bear to think of as homeless and alone.
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