His gaze was drawn to the small wooden house on his charm bracelet, a half-smile on his lips at the bittersweet memory as he rinsed Emery's foot. "And that's it. I'll never be able to pay her back, but if you'll let me help you then I'll feel like I did her proud. Then maybe you can go and help someone else further down the line."

Emery's lips twisted into something rueful but not unkind. "And that's why I should let you bathe me?"

"Unless you want me to sit outside with my ear to the door for two hours, listening for the sound of you drowning in the bathtub in your sleep. And I thought you wanted to stop 'spreading filth' in my bathroom? It'll be quicker with my help. Again, it's not like I haven't bathed people before. Please let me help you."

Emery sighed. "I don't mean to make you beg to help me when I'm the one in need, Josh. I don't mean to be difficult. It's just... Hard for me to accept help from someone when I don't have the ability to pay them."

Josh let go of Emery's foot as if he'd been burned. "Right," he said, unthinkingly, "we're both aware of your compulsive need to pay people for their services." The vitriol in his tone had been unplanned, but he couldn't quite swallow it down. Damn it. Emery had been trying to offer an olive branch, he knew, but it was the worst kind of offering, thorny and painful.

Emery shrunk in on himself and said nothing, looking small and lost with his shaved head and filthy torn clothes under the fluorescent lights. Josh took some care to make his voice more pleasant. "I know you're not actively trying to be difficult; it's just that it comes naturally to you and you're so very good at it."

The other man barely moved, locked away inside himself. "I'm sorry. If the offer still stands I'd be grateful for the help."

"Good." He turned the hot water back on. "I'm going to help you get in the tub, put the stool in so you can sit — don't give me that look, you're not in any condition to stand with your feet like that — and then you can wash whatever sensitive bits you'd like and I'll do the rest. If it suits your royal majesty," he added in an attempt at levity.

Emery's clothes, from the tattered remains of his socks to his once gloriously tailored shirt, went straight into the same plastic bag as the hair, and then they began.

Josh tried not to look, but he found his eyes repeatedly drawn to yellow bruises on the other man's abdomen; to ribs that seemed on the verge of breaking through the skin for lack of flesh. Once he'd seen those, then any lingering resentment he felt for Emery's previous comment faded into the background. He remembered his earlier resolution to offer the man plenty of chances to be touched and made it a point to use his bare hands, rather than the sponge, when rinsing his upper back for the final time.

He wasn't entirely sure all the droplets on Emery's cheeks were water. Maybe he was projecting — his own eyes stung whenever he looked at the evidence of what the other man had gone through. Emery's shoulder blades were right under his fingertips, far too sharp. When was the last time he'd had a decent meal?

Leaving Emery sitting on the plastic stool, hot water still cascading on him, Josh went to get the heaviest, most comfortable Turkish cotton robe he owned. It would have been comically large on Emery, had Josh felt the slightest inclination to smile.

All he felt was relief, to see Emery wearing something comfortable at long last. The bath seemed to have drained the other man of his fight, along with the grime; he didn't complain when Josh dried him, or when he tied the belt around Emery's waist as if he were a child. He turned his attention to the blood crusted on Emery's brow, wiping it gently as he pretended to need his other hand on Emery's face for support.

After the conversation they'd had, none of them had any words left. All that was left was to apply antibiotic ointment to Emery's feet before bandaging them with a long wrap of gauze. It wasn't a professional job by any means, but it had to be more comfortable than slipping into Josh's slippers with nothing to prevent the wounds from reopening.

If Emery shared the awkwardness Josh felt at having to wear a pair of borrowed too-large boxers, he didn't show it. He looked ready to fall asleep where he stood. Josh would have been glad to feed him Sam's soup, but he didn't think Emery's complacency would extend to being literally spoon-fed; he was left to hover near the sofa, watching the other man's shaky hand make its way from the bowl on the coffee table to his lips. Two spoonfuls in and he fell asleep, but at least he was safe for the time being, Josh thought while putting a blanket over him.

Josh was almost in his bedroom when he decided he couldn't risk Emery fleeing in the morning — and he wouldn't put it past him, to just get up and go in a bathrobe and slippers — without giving him the opportunity to talk him out of it. Back to the living room he went. Two perfectly usable beds in the house and Emery was lying curled on the too-small sofa while Josh would spend the night struggling to get comfortable in the armchair. What a pair they made.