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The next several minutes pass in miserable fragments.

You lie sprawled beneath the bathroom’s harsh lanternlight, while your stomach churns ominously. Sweat gathers beneath your arms and along the back of your neck until your tunic clings damply to your skin. With trembling hands, you wrench your cloak off and let it crumple beside you.

The knock at the door is soft enough that, at first, you mistake it for part of the throbbing in your skull.

Kuras steps inside carrying with him the clean scent of dried herbs and winter air, sharp and sterile against the sour reek of vomit and stale alcohol saturating the cramped washroom. A glass of water gleams faintly in his hand. His golden eyes settle on you where you lie on the floor, and he offers it to you with a look of concern on his face.

“Thanks,” you mutter hoarsely, forcing yourself upright enough to take it. “I don’t know what happened. I think Leander’s trying to murder me for refusing to sing along to whatever awful chorus he was leading downstairs."

A weak laugh escapes you, embarrassed by how pathetic it sounds. Another violent wave of nausea twists through your stomach. “Sorry,” you mumble as you bend hurriedly back toward the toilet. “I really don’t want you to see me like this.”

Kuras says your name quietly. “You needn’t apologise.”

You barely manage to brace yourself before another bout of vomiting tears through you. When it finally subsides, you cough raggedly, choking on saliva. Your throat and nose burn from the acid, and tears sting at the corners of your eyes.

When you glance up again, Kuras still stands in the doorway. The washroom light renders him luminous as he studies you carefully.

“Your face is flushed,” he observes.

You cough weakly into the toilet bowl. “Think I’ve got a damn fever.” A dry gag wracks your stomach, but nothing comes up.

“May I?”

To your surprise, Kuras kneels beside you.

You nearly flinch when the back of his hand brushes your forehead. He is close enough now that you can feel the soft warmth of his breath. Instinctively, you avoid his gaze. Looking directly into those strange golden eyes feels too intimate in your current state.

“The fever is mild,” Kuras says after a moment, though the crease between his brows suggests he is far from reassured. The backs of his fingers linger briefly against your forehead before he withdraws his hand reluctantly. “But you are running warm.”

You let your head tip wearily against the side of the toilet. “It’s just drink.”

“Mm, Leander handles alcohol with the same confidence he brings to spellcraft. It is rarely wise for anyone nearby.” There is the faintest trace of dry amusement beneath the remark, quickly overtaken by concern again. “I would feel more at ease,” he continues carefully, “if you allowed me to bring you back to the clinic for the evening.”

Leaving the Wet Wick like this while Kuras hovers anxiously beside you sounds like a humiliation devised specifically for your torment.  

“No,” you murmur. “I’m alright.”

Kuras says your name softly. “You are lying on the floor of a tavern washroom.”

“I noticed.”

His mouth tightens almost imperceptibly. “You look genuinely unwell.”

You exhale slowly through your nose, already tired of your own stubbornness. “Kuras, it’s fine. I just need to wait for it to pass.”

What you do not say is: please stop looking at me like that.

That quiet concern in his face feels worse than disgust would have. For a moment, he says nothing. You hope he finally understands the dismissal for what it is.

Instead, Kuras gathers the long white folds of his coat and lowers himself fully onto the floor across from you.

Lanternlight glances across gold embroidery and polished buckles as he settles down, as though this grimy washroom were no less appropriate a place for him than his clinic. “Very well,” he says calmly, folding his hands loosely in his lap. “Then I shall remain here until it does.”

You blink at him. “Kuras—”

“I assure you, this is not the least dignified place in which I have kept watch over someone.” His gaze lifts to yours then, steady and warm despite the exhaustion lining your face. “And I would rather you not suffer through this alone.”

Something tightens unpleasantly in your chest.

Kuras reaches for the washcloth draped beside the basin. Long fingers smooth the fabric flat before he runs it beneath the tap. He wrings the cloth once, neatly, before stepping toward you.

The cool cloth presses against the back of your neck, and relief shudders painfully through your overheated body. You had not realised how warm your skin had become until that moment. Heat-soaked skin drinks in the cold while Kuras’ hand lingers briefly at the nape of your neck.

“It may help bring the fever down,” Kuras murmurs.

You glance up at him despite yourself.

Concern softens the elegant lines of his face. For one disorienting moment, you are no longer crumpled beside the Wet Wick’s toilet with sweat soaking through your tunic.

You are back in his clinic on your first night in Eridia, waking half-delirious and frightened beneath clean sheets while Kuras looked down at you as though your suffering pained him personally.

You cannot reconcile the sight before you with anything you know about the world.

You remember the endless prayers whispered into cold stone halls until your throat went raw. The certainty that if anything divine truly existed, it had long ago turned its face from you.

But Kuras…

Kuras kneels with you beside a fouled toilet as though there is nowhere else he ought to be.

You do not understand him at all.

Your vision blurs suddenly. You blink hard, once, twice, viciously scrubbing at your eyes before the tears can properly gather. The motion only makes your headache throb worse. You turn your face away with a sharp sniff, pretending an interest in the cracked mortar between the stones.

Of course Kuras notices. “What is wrong? Are you in pain?”

You shake your head too quickly. Your eyes fix stubbornly on the far corner of the bathroom where a pale spider works diligently at its web. Anything is easier to look at than him. Your fingers worry restlessly at the bandages around your forearms, tugging at frayed linen until it bites into your skin.

His gaze flicks briefly toward your hands twisting helplessly in their bandages before returning to your face again. Slowly, carefully, one of his hands shifts across the floor between you, uncertain whether comfort would be welcome from him.

Before he can decide, another violent twist wrings through your stomach.

You lurch forward over the toilet with a strangled sound, gagging hard enough to make your ribs ache. Bitter saliva burns your throat as you retch helplessly around nothing.

A hand slips gently through your sweat-damp hair, gathering it back from your face while another rests against your cheek. The coolness of his palm seeps deliciously into your flushed skin, grounding you in your own body again piece by piece. Without thinking, you lean into it with a faint, exhausted hum, settling back onto your heels.

“Let me help,” Kuras says quietly.

You force your eyes open.

Up close, Kuras feels unreal through the haze of sickness. Harsh light catches in his golden eyes, lashes shadowing their strange glow, while loose strands of dark hair brush the white collar at his throat. Even kneeling beside a toilet, he possesses the terrible, unearthly beauty of something not meant to belong to this world at all.

Kuras’ gaze lowers to your mouth with disarming focus, studying the tremor in your lips. The examination is clinical in intent, but there is something intimate about the attention all the same.

Kuras cradles your jaw more securely in his hand. His thumb passes slowly across your damp lower lip, brushing away saliva. 

“Let me ease some of your suffering,” he murmurs. There is nothing forceful in the way he speaks. If anything, the softness of it unsettles you more. His thumb presses lightly against your lower lip, drawing it down just slightly. You think you understand what he wants before he says it aloud. 

“Open your mouth for me.”

You obey before pride can intervene. Bracing your palms weakly against the sticky floorboards, you part your lips with a shaky breath. Something strange flickers beneath the molten gold of his eyes; a sharp curiosity that makes your pulse stumble.

Kuras tips your chin slightly upward, cool fingers pressing lightly against your tongue, examining rather than invading. His skin feels unnaturally smooth against the wet heat of your mouth, the pads of his fingers slightly calloused from years of work, tasting faintly of the cold air after rain. He traces along the inside of your cheek, the shape of your teeth, the trembling muscle of your tongue. Before you can dwell too long on how strange this all is, Kuras’ fingers press a little deeper and your body reacts instantly.

You gag sharply and jerk back, coughing into your sleeve.

“My apologies,” Kuras says at once, though a faintest flicker of fascination in his expression, quickly hidden again beneath professional calm. “Your reflexes are rather sensitive at present.” 

You blink rapidly against the tears stinging your eyes and drag in a shaky breath. “Sorry,” you rasp weakly. 

Kuras hushes you immediately, his fingers combing carefully through the tangled strands to keep them from your face. “There now,” he murmurs. “Relax for me.”

Humiliatingly enough, you obey.

“Open,” he says gently. You part your lips again, wide enough to fit two fingers this time. “Good,” he coos, the praise warm and absent-mindedly tender. Your throat flutters involuntarily as he slips further in, brushing the back of your tongue. “Try not to fight it.”

Your stomach twists anxiously at the sensation of his fingers pressing deeper and your eyes squeeze shut. Every inch further draws another helpless contraction from your throat, and Kuras feels all of it.

“There,” he says reassuringly. “That’s it.”

He adjusts his fingers as they reach the downward slope at the back of your tongue.

Your throat tightens convulsively around his fingers and a shiver wracks through your entire body. Kuras holds steady, thumb anchoring carefully against your chin while the other hand remains threaded through your damp hair.

“Breathe,” he instructs quietly. “You’re alright.”

The bathroom fills with ugly, humiliating sounds, swallowed beneath the muffled roar of drunken laughter and music bleeding through the walls of the Wet Wick. Somewhere beyond the washroom door, men are still singing and shouting over one another, blissfully unaware that you are deepthroating the long fingers of an angel.

Kuras strokes his fingers once more against the back of your tongue. Your stomach heaves instantly. You wrench his wrist away with a wet sound just as vomit splashes into the toilet bowl.

You sputter through another fit of coughing while Kuras rubs slow and steady between your shoulders. “Do not force your breathing. It will pass.”

You cannot stop thinking about how wretched you must look sprawled across the floor like this; bitter bile clings to your tongue, saliva cools damply along your chin. You spit the last of the bitterness into the bowl. Your stomach still aches, but the terrible twisting has finally begun to ebb.

After several miserable minutes of dry heaving, you sink fully onto the floor again. The harsh bathroom light feels unbearable now, exposing every weakness. You wish you had not discarded your cloak earlier. Instinctively, you turn your face aside, trying to hide yourself as best you can.

Kuras rises only long enough to flush the toilet and rinse the cloth beneath the tap. When he kneels before you again, he tips your chin gently upward and wipes your mouth and jaw.

“There you are,” he says quietly. “That is a little more dignified, I think.”

Your voice feels like it might crack apart entirely if forced. So when he asks, “Do you feel any better?” you only manage the faintest nod.

He draws you carefully upright, one steadying hand lingering at your waist when your knees threaten to give beneath you. 

Kuras retrieves your cloak from where it lies crumpled beside the basin.  The sight of him handling it—handling you—with such gentleness twists strangely at something deep within your chest. He drapes the heavy fabric around your shoulders before fastening it carefully at your throat, fingers grazing your skin in fleeting passes.

Then he offers you his hand.

You hesitate only a moment before taking it.

“I still believe you should come back to the clinic,” Kuras says after a pause. “You are pale, feverish, dehydrated, and unfortunately at the mercy of whatever poison Leander convinced you to drink.”

Despite everything, a weak laugh escapes you.

Kuras’ mouth curves faintly at the sound. “I would feel at ease,” he admits, “if I could keep an eye on you through the night, if only to ensure your condition does not worsen.”

You should refuse again.

You should insist you are capable of surviving one miserable evening alone upstairs. Yet the thought of climbing into bed by yourself suddenly feels unbearable in a way you cannot explain.

So instead, after a long moment, you nod.

Something warm flickers across Kuras’ face, gone almost as quickly as it appeared

“Very well,” he says softly.

His hand settles lightly against the small of your back as he guides you toward the door.