It would be a lie if Kaito said he’d expected Hakuba to shy back now. The horror on his patient’s face was more than obvious and made the therapist almost stumble with his words. But his pokerface saved him just in time and he continued to smile politely. He’d learned to deal with this at school and just because it was Hakuba, he didn’t need to fret. Even though it did irk his curiousity as to why. Just because he barely knew him privatly in the past? That was a rather weak reason for a guy like Hakuba. So something deeper must be going on there.
“The shirt’s fine and I can cover up everything I don’t need to look at for the moment. I know it can feel uncomfortable to show off scars. But it is necessary for me to see for your treatment and I need to touch it, to feel the tissue, I can’t judge from looking only, because a lot of it is going on beneath the surface. I’ll also be telling you what I’m going to do the whole time and you can tell me to stop whenever it gets too uncomfortable. How’s that sound?” Kaito still gave off an air of being relaxed, no awkwardness at all.
The worried reaction also caused him to sit back down on his chair and turning a quarter away from his patient, grabing the file once more, opening the doctor’s report to read a few things over while watching Hakuba only from the corner of his eyes and letting him go on undressing on his own.
“Yes, that’s fine.” There was a definite tone of relief in his voice at that; leaving his shirt on meant that there was less chance that his back would be shown, and though there were many medical professionals who now knew of the scars’ existence, he really didn’t want to add to the list. He went about, unbuckling his belt, undoing his trousers, and very awkwardly slipping down from the table onto his good leg to remove it all.
It was a long process, and Hakuba realized quickly that he should have gone in an entirely different order. These days when he got undressed for bed, he was usually too tired and drugged to really pay attention to how he stripped, but in the office, it was an entirely different matter.
Still, he was stubborn and determined, and far too proud to ask for help. With a few false starts and a lot of leaning against the reclining therapist chair, the detective did manage to get his socks, shoes, and trousers off, all of which ended up haphazardly strewn on the floor with little energy left to sort them out. And while it was unlike the detective to not care about wrinkling his clothing, he was so far done with the experience that he just ignored it, and scooted back onto the chair.
“All right…” he said, looking down past his boxer-briefs to the brace around his leg, and unstrapped it to reveal the very nasty-looking scarring and still-healing wounds. “Do your worst."