Hi! Could you do one where a male med student is sent in to patch up a male supervillain that is being tortured? And although the supervillain is restrained and his power locked down, the student is still terrified to be in the same room alone with him. (Doesn't help that the supervillain is wild and terrifying) An maybe there's that ominous threat looming over the student from whoever his superiors are. Only if you find time for it or want to!
Dylan was painfully aware of the desperate thumping of his heart. He was painfully aware of the fact that the villain could hear it; the villain's worst powers might have been dampened, but the super-senses had been left alone, hadn't they?
He was painfully aware, too, that those had only gone untouched because it was so much easier to hurt someone when they had a superior sense of touch and sight and sound and smell. Everything was magnified.
The room smelled like chemicals and blood.
Dylan swallowed. He tried to will his legs to move closer to the villain, who was thrashing against his restraints in perfect vicious promise of just what he would do to everyone the second he was free. There was a low feral growl rumbling in the older man's throat as his wild eyes locked on Dylan.
Dylan did not, could not, get himself to move. He had to get himself to move.
"I'm - sorry -" He struggled to find his sense of calm, his professionalism, his everything he was supposed to have trained for and oh god medical school didn't cover this bullshit. "I can patch you up if you hold still. Er-" He managed to start crossing the room.
"You come anywhere near me," the villain bared his teeth, "I'll bite that little rabbit-thumping carotid right out."
Dylan stopped. "I am allowed to call someone in to restrain you or sedate you further. I-"
"-Are you threatening me, doc?"
"No! No. I -" oh god, oh god, oh god, "it is easier to treat you if you're conscious. But they told me I could. If you didn't cooperate. I'd rather not." He wet his dry lips. "I don't want to hurt you."
The villain eyed him at that, sneered, but then, after another (useless) yank at his restraints, settled still. It couldn't be called a slump, or anything so deflated or close to surrender. There was a beat of silence.
"Oh," Dylan said, and scurried forwards. "Thanks. Thank you."
The villain was wound tight and Dylan had to resist the urge to clamp a hand over his throat, just in case.
The villain probably couldn't reach to bite his carotid artery out. He probably couldn't actually do that anyway.
Dylan set his supplies down on the small side table, no doubt cleared of the devices that had left the villain's wounds in the first place. Even with the table bare, the observations still floated clinically through Dylan's brain without his permission.
Scalpel. Hard, blunt object. Cigarette.
He shoved it aside and got to work. Start with the worst and most urgent wounds, and work backwards. The familiar motions, the job, soothed him.
"You're a student," the villain said, breaking the silence after a long while.
"I know what I'm doing." Dylan tried (failed) for a reassuring smile. "You're in good hands."
"Why have they sent me a student? Are you being punished?"
Dylan swallowed again, and wished he could find something flippant and quippy to say. He felt like he'd tried to eat a mouthful of sand. Sand with bits of broken glass in it.
"I heal," he said instead. His superiors hadn't said he had to keep it to himself, so...maybe it would help if the villain thought they were the same. Maybe. Maybe then he'd stop looking at the top of Dylan's head like he was considering performing a brain autopsy with his bare hands.
The villain stared at him. Dylan did not feel less like the villain might snap and try an impromptu brain autopsy.
"You probably can't kill me," Dylan said, "even if you - er - that thing you said you'd do." Eloquent, so eloquent, really. He kept his eyes trained on anything that wasn't the villain's face. "I heal. It's my superpower."
Dylan shivered, because he was pretty sure the answer to that was not fast enough.
The villain laughed. It was a proper, maniacal laugh. Dylan wanted to curl up in a ball, but he didn't let his hands shake.
"Expendable little baby doctor," the villain cooed. "I see. No doubt you volunteered. Did it make you feel all noble, protecting your peers from the big bad monster in the basement?"
Dylan had most certainly not volunteered.
"I'm going to get the blood off your face now. Please don't bite me, I'm trying to help."
"Do you have your rabies shots?"
"I don't believe for a second you're actually rabid. You have none of the symptoms."
The villain grinned sharp and wide, making new blood crack along his swollen lip again and dribble down. But, when Dylan reached up with a warm-water damp cloth, he didn't bite. Dylan dabbed gently at the blood.
Up close, the villain's wild dark eyes looked more exhausted than his general demeanour let on. Dylan wished he could offer painkillers. Something. He quickly looked away again.
Dylan was painfully aware of the red bleeping light of the cameras watching them from every angle. He was painfully aware of how careful the villain's breathing had got, with his closeness, like the villain was counting each sore breath.
Dylan was just...in pain, and aware, how easily their places could have been swapped. The villain was no doubt painfully aware of everything too.
Dylan's still thumping heart. The cold sweat prickling along the back of his neck. Everything about him must surely have been too loud and too raw to the villain's already overloaded senses.
"I've told them," the villain said, "that when I escape I will come after everyone who held me here. Everyone who works in this damned place. Everyone who knew."
When. Not if. Dylan didn't know if that was fake confidence, arrogance, or something else. His heart skipped either way.
"I'm good with faces," the villain continued, much quieter, and Dylan almost wished he would go back to snarling and raging like an animal in a cage. Something just a tad less focused. "I'll remember yours too, doc."
"When I escape," Dylan said, so soft that only a villain with super senses could possibly hear the words in the breath. "I'm going to run so hard and so fast that no one ever finds me again. I suggest you do the same."
He stepped back, just as the villain jolted forwards again, missing him by inches. Dylan heard the snap of teeth clacking in the air where he had been.
Healing blood. It burned through all power dampeners. Through all painkillers and sedatives and chemicals that might wound. Through everything. It took most people a lot longer to figure that out. Dylan's superiors hadn't even figured that bit out.
The villain was smarter, more calculating, then he acted, wasn't he?
They eyed each other again.
He let the cloth fall back into the bloody-pink tinged bowl, job done.
"See you later," Dylan said. "Unless you escape before then."
"Until next time, little doctor."
He felt the villain's eyes on his back all the way out.
