WARNING: very mild implied torture

Thrawn scrubbed his hands under the warm water and watched with a cold gaze as the liquid turned red. He dragged his nails over the skin hard enough to leave faint purple lines as he scrapped away the dried blood. The pain didn't make him feel any better.

So he dug his nails in harder on the next pass.

A hand pressed against his back and he stiffened in preparation to whirl around, but the hand only slipped around his side and tugged him slightly backwards into a chest.

Thrawn relaxed into the grip, took some comfort in the warmth of the other man's body through their uniforms, and continued to wash his hands. There was only one person who would ever dare get so close to him. "Good evening."

He heard Pellaeon hum behind him in response and he felt him lean his head on his shoulder.

"The officer in charge of interrogations told me what you've been doing."

Thrawn frowned in annoyance but kept his voice neutral as he spoke. He had known that someone would have told Pellaeon eventually. "The assassin is not dead."

Pellaeon remained silent behind him, long enough for the heavy "But he wishes he was" to hang in the air between them.

The water that flowed down the drain slowly turned from a tinged pink to clear. Thrawn shut it off and started to dry his hands. Pellaeon didn't move from his position; the silence left the alien to wait for the other shoe to drop.

"I'm worried about you," Pellaeon said against his back and that cut deeper than anything else he could have said in that moment. Some mild berating Thrawn could handle, he even expected it. But Pellaeon should not have been the person worrying. He should have been focusing on getting better. "I'm worried that you're angry with yourself about what happened, and that once you realize you are not receiving any closure from taking it out on the man who caused it, you'll start taking it out on yourself."

"You shouldn't worry about me. I'm—"

Fine.

But he wasn't fine.

Pellaeon wasn't right though, he wasn't angry with himself – he was furious. It was his fault Pellaeon got hurt - if he had paid better attention, been more alert to his surrounding, the all of this could have been avoided. Pellaeon wouldn't have had to protect him. He wouldn't have gotten hurt due to mistakes that were not his.

"You're not fine, Thrawn."

He turned around and Pellaeon dropped his arm back down to his side. He hoped that the other man wouldn't be able to see the tension in his face even though he already knew he would. It might have even mirrored the worry written across Pellaeon's own features, which only deepened when Thrawn faced him.

Unable to hold the eye contact, he glanced away from him only to then focus on the neatly pinned sleeve of Pellaeon's uniform.

"Pellaeon, we've talked about all of this already."

"We talked about me, Thrawn. We didn't talk about you which was clearly a mistake."

Thrawn tried to step around Pellaeon. "There's nothing to talk about-"

Pellaeon's hand came up and grabbed his arm. He froze at the touch, wanted to pull away and make his escape and lean into Pellaeon's grip in equal measure.

"You're not fine."

But he should have been fine. There was no reason for him to be so upset at himself, at the situation, when he wasn't even the one who got hurt.

Yet he made himself nod in agreement to Pellaeon's words. Just because it shouldn't have been true did not mean that it wasn't.

Pellaeon relaxed somewhat, and slid his hand down Thrawn's arm until he held his hand. "Come with me back to the room. And damn it, stop coming here and doing this. You're worrying me more than usual and I don't like it."

That only made Thrawn feel worse; it must have shown on his face because Pellaeon sighed and squeezed his hand. "This isn't the place for this talk, but you stress yourself out too much, you know that right? I'm not angry with you for any of this, I don't blame you."

Some of his guilt welled up in Thrawn's throat, slipped out from his mouth: "Maybe you should."

"Maybe I - you're lucky I don't have both my hands because I would use the one not holding yours to smack some sense into you."

The tiniest of smiles spread over Thrawn's mouth. "Luckily I'm holding the only one then, hm?"

"Yeah, and lucky that I love you." Pellaeon started to walk away, and pulled Thrawn along behind him. "Now, we're going to have a talk to clear up any misconceptions you have about this situation. And if I ever hear about you coming down here again for this just know that you won't be so lucky to be holding my hand again."