Chapter Text
Letho had never particularly been a fan of music back in the days of traveling bards. It was a distracting background noise while he tried to enjoy a meal at best, and a grating noise that pushed him to spend his nights on the road when he could otherwise have enjoyed a hot meal and a warm bed at worst.
The White Wolf’s bard had been the closest to any kind of decent entertainment in those days, simply by virtue of his subject matter, though Letho couldn’t help scoff at the tales of heroics and sweetness that rolled off the bard’s tongue, always praising the wolves even though they didn’t have the guts to do what needed to be done to really keep people safe.
But though he had listened to that bard, and would begrudgingly give him credit for what had been the slowly increasing reputation of witchers, his music just hadn’t been to Letho’s taste. Music was too sweet, too soft, too boring. So, after the bard had died and the time of traveling minstrels had moved on, Letho had stopped engaging with music at all.
That is, until one day hundreds of years later he stumbled off the street into a basement bar, and his whole world changed.
---
Those days, almost any night of the week could find Letho of Gulet, former assassin for hire, dressed in strappy boots and spiked belts with black padded motorcycle vests reminiscent of his armor of so long ago, nodding along with whatever underground band made its way screaming through the circuit.
He kept a back against a wall where he could keep an eye on the whole room, and though he wasn’t actually security, the punk and metal scene looked out for their own and he wasn’t beyond punching the lights out of anyone who wanted to disturb the peace. It wasn’t quite the rush of blood or anticipation of the hunt that he had long found to be his only comfort, but the music was angry, and loud, thrashing deep into his bones and digging at the scars buried deep under his skin. It had fury and bite and it actually meant something, was trying to enact real change.
After the Viper school had fallen, and after the betrayal that had branded him with the name Kingslayer with nothing to show for it, Letho had lost any hope he had been holding onto that anything he would do might mean something. Being a part of this music, however small a part he was, gave some of that back to him.
And, as it turned out, he wasn’t the only one who felt the same. Though he had long since settled midway between Oxenfurt and Novigrad within easy travel distance of both, most of the witchers from other schools he loosely kept contact with continued on the Path. Only rarely did he see them, but with travel and technology what it now was, he felt no need to keep himself from the roots and home he had so long been denied since the fall of his school. Any monsters that needed killing could be reached quickly enough by motorcycle, and notice boards were almost all digital, so why would he need to keep to the Path? He could load up his home computer and search the official Northern Kingdoms message boards from anywhere, so why not do it from a place he could call his own?
The remaining witchers had exchanged contact information unhurriedly as they encountered each other on the path, and eventually, they had all ended up connected in one way or another. Though he had all their information, no one ever reached out to Letho unless they had a job they needed to split with him, and even then he knew he was one of the last available choices.
Which is what made it a surprise when who had walked into the basement club he found himself in on a Thursday night but Geralt of Rivia. The man was actually dressed like he belonged: sinfully tight ripped black jeans and studded fingerless gloves that Letho suspected might actually be re-purposed armor, his long white hair hanging loose but shorn short on the sides in an almost-mullet that Letho was begrudgingly willing to admit was working for the man. He watched as Geralt nodded to a few of the people that Letho also recognized as familiar faces from the circuit, and made his way over to snag an ale from the counter without being asked what it was he wanted.
Geralt wasn’t only here. He was a regular.
Last they had parted hadn’t been on bad terms, but Letho wasn’t entirely certain what to do with the knowledge that he and the man shared something that had been so pivotal and important in his life. Discovering the punk and metal scene had given him something back that he had been missing since the grasses took his ability to express his emotions and the trials took his brothers in arms, something that he had thought he had lost forever when the Viper school fell for good.
He wondered if it did the same for the White Wolf.
Over the following weeks, he didn’t see Geralt every night, but when and if he decided to head out to Oxenfurt for the night and not Novigrad, he and the other witcher ended up haunting the same spots for the same bands. At some point over the course of years, they had started acknowledging each other’s presence with nods, and when they ended up at the same shows they took up posts on opposite walls, working together to keep their community safe.
It felt significant, like maybe he was making a difference and doing good. Even if they never spoke to each other, they fell into an easy if unspoken friendship, and something that was strung through Letho’s chest and ratcheted tighter over the days turned weeks between their serendipitous meetings loosened again each time he spotted white hair across a crowded room. Each time they exchanged the small nod that meant they were both still here and breathing, the tension released to flood from his chest to his fingertips, leaving only the trembling exhaustion of relief.
He tried not to put too much thought into what that might mean. It didn’t really have to mean anything at all. It probably didn’t mean anything important, anyway.
---
They were so used to looking out for the human sort of threat that came with words of hate or vitriolic anger. The kind that they could clear out of these shows with a glare or their fists. Neither Letho nor Geralt were prepared when the screams of the crowd and the band that was playing descended into screams of terror and chaos. Letho still had his smaller knives, silvered and otherwise, tucked into the back of his belt and his boots, but this deep in the heart of Oxenfurt, he had left his better weapons on his bike.
The crowd too packed for him to even draw a weapon, he shouldered his way through the commotion in the direction of the screams, and when he glanced to the side, he could see Geralt doing the same across the basement. In the crush of bodies and spiked leather, progress was slow, and grunts and groans of pain as people shoved to get away built to a dull background sound that was easy enough to filter out as he focused on the noises ahead.
A piercing scream led him to curse again, and the bar of tension in his chest tripled as his stomach dropped to his boots. A fucking alghoul, here in the city, and it had to be here. The crunch of frenzied monsters chewing through bone and the slick sound of claws through flesh settled it, and as he twitched his hand to make the sign for aard, casualties be damned, he heard a shout from ahead.
“Everyone calm down and get the fuck out of our way!”
Gerard stood on the stage, all intimidating fury and power, and Letho was beginning to think that he may have had the right idea with converting his armor to club clothes, because he looked ready for the fight and more protected than Letho felt with only a vest and jeans between him and the monsters. Gerard repeated his shout and pulled out a gods-be-damned sword from behind one of the amps, and the crowd in front of him looked around to find the other person this witcher might be speaking of.
“You heard the man,” growled Letho, “get out of our way or I’ll make you get out of the way.”
The crush of people parted just enough to let them both through, the fear of the threat directly in front of them with blades battling with the fear of the unseen threat further behind them, and together they dashed forward toward the consuming stench of blood and rot and the sound of screams quieting to low gurgles.
Well, at least they somehow burst into the storage room, and had a small entrance blocking their egress from the enclosed space more than one at a time. A few of the regulars were hanging back preparing to try to fight to protect the rest of the group, and Letho was notably impressed by one of the musicians who looked ready to smash something’s face in with her guitar, but they fell back when they noticed the real monster hunters’ arrival.
“We’ve got this,” Letho announced as they approached. “Up front needs help wrangling this crowd before it becomes a mob. Think you can take care of it?”
One of the guys with a tall line of bright green spikes through his hair scoffed. “You talk as if we’ve never had to settle a mosh pit that got too rowdy. You do your thing, don’t worry about us.”
Geralt grunted and inclined his head to the group before turning to Letho, eyebrow raised in question at the fairly small, silvered knife he had finally had space to unsheath without hurting anyone.
“…left my good knives on my bike. Last time I fucking do something like that, these fuckers.”
The white haired man smirked before turning back to the fight at hand. “As long as you think you can keep up.”
---
That night found them staggering back to Letho’s bike, the adrenaline of fighting a pack of ghouls and an alghoul in an enclosed space with just two witchers, a knife, and a sword, no potions to speak of, tripping through their veins. The basement club was wrecked, and half of their sound guys had become necrophage food, but no one from the crowd, the volunteer crew, or even the band had any more than a few puncture wounds and scratches from the scramble away in so many spikes, and bruises the equivalent of a good pit.
Letho, on the other hand, had a new gash that ran from his shoulder to his hip, and Geralt was hobbling on a leg that had been torn open almost to his groin and a shoulder that had been wrenched out of place. Letho eyed Geralt’s bike, which seemed to be packed for the Path, and not for a stay in a tavern.
“Tell me you’re not going to try to ride out and camp like this tonight.”
Geralt shrugged, and groaned when it upset his wounds, leaning more heavily across Letho’s shoulders where they were holding each other up. “Didn’t bring coin enough for an inn,” he muttered. “Didn’t figure on fighting in the city.”
Letho had to resist rolling his eyes. Of course the famous White Wolf wouldn’t keep his finances somewhere he had easy access to them.
“Well, come on then. You’re not riding like that, and my place isn’t far.” Letho hauled Geralt next to his bike before turning to pull swallow out of Geralt’s saddlebags, lingering before snapping them shut. “You have anything you wouldn’t want to leave overnight in these?” At the shake of Geralt’s head, he nodded and swung himself onto the bike. “Bike’s not made for this, so I’m going to have to get close. Problem?” Geralt grunted and shook his head again, waiting to see how Letho wanted them arranged.
Letho knew that he should probably just have Geralt ride behind him and hold on with one arm, knew it was the safer way to go, but he didn’t trust the wounds not to throw off Geralt’s balance, and didn’t know what might happen if the man fell off. He wasn’t looking so good, and Letho wanted to have a better look at his shoulder before he trusted the swallow to not worsen the problem.
“So. Well, I’m going to have you climb in my lap and hold onto my shoulders with your good arm and we’re going to do our best here. It’s… not ideal, but.” Geralt raised an eyebrow before sighing, grunting as he leaned his full weight on Letho’s shoulder to swing his fucked up leg over the side of the bike. He hissed in pain and the bike almost went down as the wobbled, Letho questioning all his decisions as he felt the added weight and shift in balance to the bike.
But Geralt was on, and he hefted his good leg up over Letho’s hip, and suddenly Letho was questioning this arrangement in ways he hadn’t even considered as he felt Geralt’s groin snug against his own as he got his leg locked in place. They pressed together tight and the crush of Geralt’s body against his burned a hot line of fire from crotch to chest, cooled not one bit by the sharp pain of Geralt’s armor pressed hard to his still sluggishly bleeding wound. Letho inhaled a shaky breath and was caught by the deep musk of his fellow witcher’s hair, followed closely by the tang of blood and sweat from the battle.
This close to the man’s neck, the stench of the fight faded to the background, and if he hadn’t been bleeding for the last half an hour, all of his blood rushing to his groin would have been a hell of a different problem. As it was, he was lightheaded for a moment before he shook himself back into place and leaned into his handlebars, steadfastly ignoring the warm puffs of air he felt against his own neck, and the soft silk of Geralt’s hair fluttering against his face with every breath he took.
Somehow, they wobbled their way back to his home.
If Letho hadn’t been a witcher, it wouldn’t have worked at all. If both of them hadn’t been witchers, it wouldn’t have gone nearly as well. But twenty minutes after Letho pulled onto the road on unsteady wheels, he was cursing and gasping his way down the dirt pathway that ran to his house, a very small cottage he had built himself in a small copse of trees that he had also planted himself a few centuries back. As they bumped along, every jolt pressing them closer together while aggravating sharp thrills of intense pain from their wounds, he kicked himself for never taking the time to pave the pathway, or at least level it out and put down some gravel.
Finally, he parked his bike in the attached garage he used for brewing potions and repairing his gear, and let out a heavy breath of air as he could finally relax his core muscles. His shirt was soaked through with blood, the ride having done him no favors, but Geralt was in worse shape.
“If I let go of you at all, I’m not going to be upright anymore,” the man admitted into Letho’s ear through his clenched teeth, sucking in a breath of pain as he shifted. Letho had expected as much, had felt Geralt’s muscles trembling by the time they were even ten minutes down the road, going far faster than was advisable while riding incorrectly with no helmets. Feeling the man struggle had made him push even harder, and frankly he wasn’t sure how they had both made it home in the same number of pieces as they had been before they left the city.
Heaving a heavy breath, he put everything he had into lifting the man nestled in his arms as he swung his leg over the bike, stumbling backwards before catching himself and tightening his hold around Geralt’s thighs where they wrapped around his waist. The frission of tension in his lungs that he felt every time they went more than a couple weeks without passing each other at the same show was building back in his chest again, and Letho wasn’t emotionally stunted enough now to not recognize it for the worry that it was.
He was worried for Geralt, was worried each time they parted ways to fight other monsters, was worried that the man wouldn’t take care of himself on the road. None of the witchers ever took care of themselves on the road, not nearly enough, but he had known Geralt long enough to know that he had a particularly low rate of self-care, and an exceedingly reckless bearing that reeked of low self esteem and pressure to perform.
Letho squeezed the man tighter against his chest without thinking too much about it and hurried inside when the man’s deep groan reminded him that they were on a deadline, stopping only to grab the Swallow. There was no time for him to sink into the worry; he simply had to act.
Letho dropped Geralt unceremoniously on his bed, thankful once again that he had forsaken keeping the quilt on the bed ages ago when he realized how much more of a pain in the ass it was to launder blood out of a quilt rather than sheets, simultaneously realizing how unlikely he was to take the energy to remove a quilt when he was bleeding enough to need to do so. The sheets they soaked blood into now were expendable, and when waterproof mattress pads had been invented he had almost wept for the convenience.
Geralt bounced a little on the fall, and Letho winced at the hiss the man let escape through his teeth, eyes clenched tightly shut against the pain.
If the man was in less danger, Letho might have enjoyed ripping the buttons off his armored vest to get him naked, but as it was the unceremonious stripping was the furthest from enjoyable he’d experienced in a long time. Geralt’s leg was still openly bleeding through the strip of shirt the man had tied around it before they had left the pile of corpses burning in the parking lot, but Letho was more concerned about his shoulder. Without setting it into place and making sure there wasn’t additional damage, he couldn’t administer the Swallow without risking more issues or chronic pain down the line.
It wasn’t pretty. The place where Geralt’s arm met his torso could barely be called a shoulder any more, gnarled and split as it was, and the bone looked to be crushed in a few places where the alghoul had tried to rip into him. Letho held back a sympathetic wince as he shoved the shoulder back into place with a sickening grind of flesh, and stepped to his dresser to grab his medical tray where it stood always at the ready. He was no medic, but he could do basic sutures, and these muscles would need suturing before stitching the flesh together if Geralt wanted to be able to use the arm with the same finesse as before.
Somewhere between Letho digging through his arm to remove bone shards that would impede healing best he could and the second set of sutures, Geralt passed out.
Letho would call it a blessing if he weren’t also worried that the leg still hadn’t stopped bleeding, and he sped up as much as he could. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be better than nothing at all. Internal sutures finished, he forwent the outer stitches and the bandages to rip what was left of Geralt’s pants to the crotch, exposing the gouge that ran from the man’s kneecap nearly to the silvery white pubes that were fully exposed because of course the man didn’t wear anything under his jeans. They were so tight, where would the undergarments even go?
He averted his eyes, pinning his focus to the wound. Thankful that the creature had narrowly missed the artery, Letho placed a few sutures near the knee and the hip where Geralt would need the most help healing his range of movement, messily stitched the whole thing together because what was another massive scar on top of all the others, and immediately tilted the man’s head to tip some Swallow down his throat.
When half the dose was in Geralt and the bleeding had slowed to a sluggish crawl, he took a swig of the potion himself, grimacing at the awful taste before wiping his mouth and leaning forward to give the rest to Geralt. Urgency eased, he fell back onto the bed beside the man, booted feet still flat on the floor, and allowed himself to follow the man into darkness.
---
Geralt woke up to a cool breeze against his junk and soft, snuffling snores being pressed into his neck, and froze.
He didn’t recall bringing anyone back to an inn, hadn’t intended to even get a room, and he didn’t recognize the ceiling above him, or the feel of the mattress below him. He scented the air as subtly as he could, searching for any indication of what had happened, and was inundated with the heavy stench of blood and the foul aftertaste of Swallow. With sudden clarity every ounce of the pain of deep healing slammed back into his body and he groaned with the weight of it.
The soft snuffling noises against his throat violently stilled, and he only realized that the soft warmth pressed against his side was a body when it tensed to rock.
Geralt blinked his eyes open against the bright ray of light that must have woken him, and took a moment to take a deeper breath, cataloging his injuries. The pain in his thigh was deep and aching, but the dull ache of a mostly-healed wound that was still putting the finishing touches on wholeness. He remembered the Alghoul getting in a lucky swipe while he was handling the minions that had swarmed him, and put that injury to the side. His lungs felt taxed, but the pain wasn’t sharp; he probably had a few bruised or cracked ribs. Maybe from the Aard he had told Letho to send his way to blast him out of the swarm, consequences be damned. Oh, that must have been who was by his side. That explained the body at least.
His shoulder, though, was still a bright starburst of pain when he focused on it, massive bruising still extending deep into his chest even after a rest and when he flexed his fingers they felt weak, but they moved, so at least there was that. Every tiny shift sent more pain ricocheting through his arm and into the side of his neck and jaw, so he shifted his focus away from it and tried his best not to move.
By his side, Letho was still as stiff as a corpse, barely breathing at all, and not moving an inch. Geralt wondered if he was cataloging his own injuries, or if he was simply worried about their fairly compromising position. Even without taking the chance to look, it certainly felt like his whole dick might just be out on display right now.
He wished he could turn his head, or even roll onto his side to see the man’s face, but it seemed as though that sort of movement might be off the table for the foreseeable future. He couldn’t even truly move his hand to reassure the man, not that it was a good idea given his arm was by his side and Letho still pressed against it.
He could only hope that he had bled enough that he wasn’t currently hard. It was difficult to tell with all the throbbing throughout his pelvis and leg, and though he wasn’t one to enjoy receiving pain in that way, it wasn’t unusual for his body to confuse the signals between pain and pleasure when the injury was this severe. The last time he had someone by his side to patch him up had been centuries and centuries ago, and it hadn’t mattered much if he was hard or not, because his bard would have been hell-bent on sharing an orgasm “for the pain relief, darling” whether he had woken up ready or not.
But this was Letho, not his long-dead lover, and as far as Geralt knew, Letho didn’t have those sorts of feelings about anyone, and wasn’t interested in engaging in any sort of coitus, whether for pain relief or not. Even when they had crossed each other’s paths, when they were both still on the Path, Letho had always been alone. And rumor had it that no one had ever known him to visit a brothel or even take a roll in the hay with a pretty barmaid.
Which is why it came as a surprise when the body next to Geralt’s relaxed with a sigh and Letho pressed a small kiss to his shoulder before maneuvering to sit up beside him.
Geralt slammed his eyes shut again and tried to even his breathing, trembling as he attempted to slow his heart rate where it had shot up at the shock and stuttered at the pleasure of such a small act of intense familiarity and care. It pulsed through his veins and tingled in his fingertips, nerves alight with the newness of it, and he found himself unwilling to open his eyes lest it be a dream.
---
Letho gazed down at the man beside him with unrestrained fondness and gentle exasperation. When Letho had woken up pressed against another man’s side as he hadn’t been since he and his brothers had stolen forbidden comfort in one another before Gorthur Gvaed had fallen, the fear that had pulsed through him had nearly taken his breath away. It wasn’t allowed, it wasn’t safe… here was another reason for him to be hurt.
But with wakefulness came the clarity of remembrance, the knowledge that he wasn’t a young trainee barred from emotional ties, and the added knowledge that it wasn’t seven hundred years ago when such comforts were forbidden or outlawed. He had breathed through the initial fear, breathed relaxation and safety into his every muscle, and allowed himself to give in to something he hadn’t even allowed himself to want in far too many years.
Now, looking at the man below him to whose shoulder he had pressed a soothing kiss pretending to still be asleep while his heart did seeming somersaults within him, he snorted.
“Wolf, you do remember that we’re both witchers, right? I can both hear and smell that you’re awake, and it does rather seem that the rest of you is awakening, too. And they call me the viper,” he teased, flicking his tongue salaciously against his lips in a small movement that he knew was audible to witcher hearing.
Geralt jolted, heartbeat rabbiting faster before slowing back to steady, and raised an eyebrow without deigning to open his eyes.
“Oh, come on, Wolf. You can’t tell me you mean to lie there with your pants half around your knees, half chubbed from one single kiss to your shoulder no less, and pretend this is a normal situation for us to be in? I don’t know about you,” he hefted himself to his feet and started stripping off his bloodied and ragged shirt, “but I left that pretense in the dark ages where it belonged.”
Geralt’s mouth tilted into a frown, before the man opened his eyes and pinned his golden gaze on Letho. Letho grinned, exposing his sharp teeth and feeling more on even footing even as the man across from him looked more off kilter. “See anything you like, here? Or was it just the warmth that did it?”
After years of showing up in the same places, being part of the same community, he felt safe around Geralt in a way he never had around anyone else, even his brothers. He loved and trusted them like no one else, but even when unguarded there was still a bit of himself that knew that if the job was right, if the situation was right, they were as like to stab him in the front as in the back, same as he would them. But Geralt was a wolf, and that wasn’t the way of the School of the Wolf, and Geralt was the most noble-hearted of the wolves by far.
Slowly, intentionally, he turned his back on Geralt, and bent down to unlace his boots.
Letho could hear the sharp intake of breath when Geralt processed what Letho had done, and Geralt's low, keening whine was quick to follow with a burst of the sweet, hot scent of arousal that curled around Letho until his own pants felt tight with it. He yanked off one boot and put it beside the dresser so he could clean it later, throwing the sock in the hamper before working on the other boot, keeping his back toward Geralt.
They both knew that Geralt couldn’t do any harm even if he wanted to right now, that he couldn’t even easily sit up on his own, but Letho could hear in the man’s ragged breathing how the continued show of trust was affecting him, symbolic though it might be. He placed his other boot beside the dresser and slid off his other sock, until both bare feet were pressed into the cool wood of the floor. He lingered for a moment and, without turning around, began to loosen his spiked belt to peel his jeans, sticky with blood, first over his ass and then down his thick thighs, before they, too, dropped to the ground.
The blooming spice of arousal thickened the air around him, and he took only a moment to breathe it in, relishing how beautifully it combined with the sharp tang of blood and the heat of both of their breaths before turning around slowly and sauntering back toward where he had the White Wolf himself in his bed, gazing up at him like he was something unexpected and delicious.
Letho trailed his hand over the man’s stomach, relishing the shiver it chased across his skin, before lifting his gaze to meet golden eyes once more. “Let’s get these pants off you, Wolf. I didn’t have a chance to check us both for bites before we passed out, and the only bites that I want on my skin while we shower are yours.”
Letho watched Geralt’s dick jump where it jutted up from his ruined jeans at the statement, and smirked as precum beaded at the tip before dribbling down to combine with the mess of blood and ichor and the sour sweat of healing. Geralt thumped his head back on the bed and moaned, hips twitching in arousal followed by a flinch as the motion was followed by immediate pain. Letho’s smirk grew at the sight, and he knelt between the other witcher’s legs, running his palms up his inner thighs to begin the painstaking process of pulling the jeans away from healing scabs and blood-stuck skin. He did his best to make it pleasurable, or at least not uncomfortable, but at some point he had to admit that there was no way to do this that was fun.
“I’m going to have to pull these off hard. It’s going to hurt. Try not to kick me when it does, Wolf.”
Geralt nodded, his good hand tossed over his eyes, and Letho yanked.
The pants came away in pieces with a deep grunt of displeasure from the man on the bed, and an awful slick shredding sound that Letho knew to be reopening wounds. He grimaced and patted the man’s thigh before lifting his foot to work each piece around his ankles and off.
The jeans didn’t go in the hamper; even if ripped jeans were in fashion these were an unsalvageable mess of gore and shredded fabric. Letho just tossed them to the side and rubbed his hands across the fine hairs of Geralt’s legs soothingly before looking up at the man where he still lay, eyes covered and chest heaving with the exertion of gritting his teeth through the pain.
“This okay?” Letho found himself murmuring, uncharacteristically softly, and had to bite back the urge to say something cutting to cover it up. He wasn’t a particularly nervous person, as an absolute rule, but it had been ages since he had touched anyone, and he had never touched someone quite like this, where every place his fingers pressed felt precious and where he wanted to swallow every sound they made with his mouth and tongue until they shivered apart in ecstasy that he caused. The newness of it left him trembling, or maybe it was just the comedown from the adrenaline of surprise and pain. He directed his gaze down to the thighs under his hand, at the newly healing and angry red scar that arced across the pale flesh in the shape he had stitched it together, like a mark he had made himself. His tongue caught in his throat as he tried to swallow back the possessive emotion of that, of having a part in having marked Geralt forever. It felt slick and oily, like if he just breathed it in he might drown in it and never come up for air.
Geralt’s voice cracked as he responded, good hand reaching down to lightly touch Letho’s fingers where they rested on his thigh. “More than okay. I’ve been…” he drifted off and cleared his throat against an onslaught of feeling and looked to the side. “It’s more than okay.”
Letho knew that if it were in his biology to blush, he would likely be a garish shade of pink right now, and had to thank the gods-blasted mages that did this to them for getting at least one thing right. “Good. That’s… good.” He huffed a small laugh and squeezed Geralt’s fingers before heaving himself to standing. “Let’s try to get you to the shower. I have a built in bench, and there’s a huge tub that I can start filling so we can soak some once we’re clean. I want to get one more dose of Swallow in you, and then maybe we can talk.”