They didn’t sting, those Doctor’s fingers. She was not one for needless pain and knew just how to touch. Sometimes her touch needed to sting, but she didn’t think even sting would teach this one to hold his tongue. 

She put the pot on the table near the laughing man with his unsettling smile and absently picked his crumpled shirt from where it sat next to him. She made quick work of smoothing the fabric and putting it into the order that pleased her and then placed, folded, it not far from him. She didn’t want his shirt, she didn’t want his chaos. She wanted order and control.

Originally she had intended to give him the pot of salve and send him on his way. She wanted nothing to do with him and his wound was not terrible. But somehow her mouth had opened and she had told him to take off his shirt and now she was stuck with the consequences of that as she kept her eyes down but let them roam over his body with veiled interest simply in the anatomy of him, nothing more. She was a Doctor, such things were important to her calling.

She didn’t meet his eyes as he spoke, instead paying far too much attention to the removal of the pot’s lid, which was not usually as difficult for her to remove. Her expression tightened as she heard his words about addressing the Captain about the party. Her face showed her displeasure though it was not felt in her touch as she smoothed a green balm that smelled of herbs and sunshine filtered through leaves across his chest. A broad chest that spread out into broad shoulders which were populated by muscles well defined enough to act as an anatomy study. She itched to draw even as she itched to strangle and maybe to touch. 

But his words pulled her back. She liked threats just about as much as she liked chaos. 

“Do it.” She said to him, daring him to ask the Captain, her voice as sharp as her hands were soft as they lightly glided over his skin. “He commands my time on this ship as well as my loyalty. But I am not a slave. He cannot command me to attend such an event unless it had consequences for the ship and its crew. If he goes and he needs skirts with him either you can don them or he can ask Antonia. I think we know that she would not refuse him.”