Toxic Yaoi Ken Doll Anon, here. Can I request Aiden genuinely just like... being sick. Like, he genuinely just caught a virus or something completely independent from Harrison's horrific experiments. I'm curious how that would go when Harrison is faced with like... normal sickness.
Unfortunately, nothing is ever 'normal' with these two... but that's why you're here, right? This is the post I was talking about in this ask, where the silent treatment hurts Aiden a lot more than Harrison.
cw: captive surgical lab rat whumpee, doctor whumper, noncon drugging (ibuprofen), sickfic, finger whump, weird power dynamics
Masterlist
“Harrison?” He’s opened and closed his mouth a dozen times in the last half hour. He can’t decide what exactly he’ll be inviting by pulling out this jenga block. Would it be worse to say nothing?
“Mmm?” Harrison is only half paying attention, noiselessly working at the counter behind the table. “Yeah, what?”
“Uhm.” He swallows, wincing at the lancing pain in his throat. “I don’t—I don’t feel very good.”
Harrison sighs long-sufferingly. He doesn’t bother to check his reactions and the heart monitor announces just how much that exhale sets him on edge.
After a minute, Harrison finishes whatever he’s working on and comes to his side, looking bored like he’s already decided this isn’t worth his attention. “Be more specific.”
“My throat is sore,” he admits quietly. “And I have a headache—but that might just be… I don't know.”
Harrison pulls out his penlight. “Open.”
He does as he’s told, grateful that the head of the table is raised today. Having Harrison looking down his throat is ten times worse when he’s pinned flat on his back. Harrison walks away without comment and returns with a thermometer. He’s not gentle as he shoves it into his ear, eyes flicking impatiently around the ceiling as he waits for it to beep. His heart feels like it’s beating in his cheeks.
“You have a fever,” Harrison grits, even though the double tone on the thermometer announced it already.
His chest tightens. “I’m sorry,” he says automatically.
“No,” Harrison corrects and he holds his breath. “It’s good you told me.”
He searches Harrison’s face, still feeling precarious but Harrison turns away. “I’ll be back.”
It feels like it’s taking ages for Harrison to come back but the next thing he knows, the door slams and he’s there. He must have fallen asleep waiting, and if he had any luck at all, he’d think he was still in a nightmare.
Harrison is wearing a mask.
His pulse shoots up, the monitor blaring. “Wait, what—what are you doing?”
Harrison has something in sterile packaging in his gloved hands.
“Wait—I don’t need—”
Harrison stops at his side, eyebrows raised. “Listen—”
“Please, don’t—” He pulls at the restraints. “I’ll get better, I promise. Please.” Tears start running down his cheeks. He pulls against the limits of the restraints and his eye sockets to watch Harrison’s hands.
“Are you finished?”
He tears his gaze away for a second to take in Harrison’s frown. “Yes, doctor,” he whispers.
Harrison rolls his eyes. “What’s gotten into you?”
He blinks at him. “I thought…” He bites his tongue.
“You thought what?” Harrison repeats slowly, emphasizing every word. Impatient at having to ask a second time.
He wants to shake his head. He wants to run away. He’s locked to the table, locked in Harrison’s stare.
Harrison clears his throat, the look in his eyes just as plain: Last chance.
“Uhm…I thought—” He swallows. “—you were going to take my tonsils out...”
Harrison stares at him flatly, long enough that he has to blink. Expression still frozen, he lifts the sterile packet between them and tears it open with taunting slowness. Inside is a long Q-tip and a little plastic tube. “With a strep test?”
His stomach curdles a little. “But…but the surgical mask,” he defends weakly.
“You’re probably contagious.”
“Oh.”
Harrison finally moves, a deep crease settling between his brows. “You really think I’d cut your tonsils out because you got one sore throat?”
He presses his lips together. There is no right answer.
Harrison raises his eyebrows.
An answer is expected nonetheless. “I’m not a mind reader.”
Not good enough. Harrison waits, brows still furrowed. Does he really care about the answer or is he just trying to goad him into something worth punishing?
“There’s a non-zero chance…” he admits quietly.
“Hm,” is all Harrison says. The apology rises to the tip of his tongue but Harrison doesn’t give him time. “Open.”
He doesn’t gag at all when Harrison swipes it across the back of his throat. Now does not seem like the moment to make a suggestion or joke about that.
Harrison drops the Q-tip into the test tube and scribbles something on the label before putting it and the pen into the chest pocket of his lab coat. He reaches into the pocket at his side and produces a syringe. The flat kind with no needle that fits right into the ports of his central line.
“Relax,” Harrison drones, taking in his panicked expression. “It’s ibuprofen.”
He isn’t sure if he hears Harrison over his ragged breathing. He tries to pull in a longer one but it feels like there’s a new restraint binding his ribs tight over his lungs.
“It will reduce your fever and help with the pain.”
“That’s it?” he gasps out.
“Oh my god.” Harrison lifts his eyes to the ceiling in a bid for patience.
He flinches. “Sorry.”
“I’m not an actual sadist, you know.”
It takes him a second to find his voice. “...do I?”
Harrison lets his hand fall. “Seriously?”
He wants to look away but can’t tear his eyes away from Harrison’s gaze, not recognizing what he sees there. “Well…”
“Let’s start with the fact that I wouldn’t be able to take your tonsils out without properly sedating you. You’d asphyxiate.”
He flinches at the venom in Harrison’s tone.
“You’ll recall that I often offer to sedate you and you are the one who declines.”
“Yeah but—”
Harrison holds up a gloved index finger and he bites his tongue. “Not that I have to explain myself to you but analgesics and sedatives are very limited and highly controlled here. I take a risk every time I bring down any supplies but the risk with those is tenfold.”
He swallows. “I know,” he offers quietly when Harrison waits for his acknowledgement.
“It both hinders my focus and annoys me to no end to have you awake and whinging on and on or actively antagonizing me while I am trying to work.”
He bites his lips together. Harrison hasn’t raised his voice like this in a long time. It sets his hands shaking and he curls them into fists, pulling until he feels the grounding bite of the restraints at his wrists.
Harrison opens his mouth to say more but snaps it shut, schooling his anger away with visible effort. “Whatever.” His tone is flat, words equally shallow. “I don't need you to understand me.”
“I—”
Harrison tears the buttons at his shoulder open and grabs the port roughly, making him hiss at the painful tug on the thick needle buried in his chest. He jams the syringe in and empties it quickly, tossing it in an underhand throw so that it clatters onto the counter somewhere. Against all reason, Harrison moves to the other side of the table and unclips his left arm.
Harrison unceremoniously drops a bottle from his other pocket onto his lap. “Here’s some fucking Pedialyte. Drink it yourself. I’ll be back with your results.”
He doesn’t move. His mouth opens and closes like a fish on dry land, his arm like an alien limb at his side.
“I’m sure you and your melodramatic imagination can invent plenty of possible catastrophic consequences if you touch any of those ports or electrodes.”
He tries to nod but the restraints remind him he can't.
Harrison doesn’t wait for him to find his voice, letting the door slam with its own weight behind him.
He stares at it in disbelief.
Slowly, like it might betray him or disappear at any moment, he reaches up to touch his face. Runs his fingers down his cheeks, wipes his nose with the back of his hand, and itches a spot on his neck. He can’t bring himself to touch his head even though he knows all the incisions are healed enough to not have bandages.
It takes a few tries to unscrew the lid with one hand. His grip strength is weak from lack of use and the dexterity tests have been fewer and further between. It’s heavenly to sip a drink himself, hold the weight of it in his hand and tip it against his lips at will. Harrison must have gotten it out of a fridge and the cool liquid is soothing on his throat.
Too soon, he’s wondering if Harrison really isn’t a sadist or if he just can’t admit it. A sadist wouldn’t get mad at begging or screaming, probably. He must still be psychotic in some kind of way to be doing all of this, even if he thinks it's for some greater purpose. It can’t all be absolved by his pursuit of replacing training and conditioning with modifications and implanted electrodes.
He tries to guess the sweet spot between savoring the drink and his unexpected freedom or getting interrupted before he gets a chance to actually finish it. He winds up draining the last drop too soon and then he’s left with the empty bottle for what feels like at least an hour.
When Harrison finally comes back, something feels off immediately. A feeling that is only confirmed by the meticulous way he’s arranged his expression into one of boredom, at least what can be seen around the mask.
Harrison produces a small bag of fluid to hang on the IV pole.
“Is it strep?” he asks quietly, the tremor of his voice giving away his anxiety at a new infusion even as he tries to keep his heart rate steady.
Nothing. Not even a blink. He loses his control and his pulse kicks up to a sprint, monitor blaring. Harrison thrusts the new line into the open port, flipping the shoulder of his shirt back together and haphazardly buttoning it closed.
“What—what are you giving me?”
It’s like he isn’t even here. His breath grows ragged, mind catastrophizing just like Harrison said.
“Harrison?”
He grips the bottle hard enough to dent the plastic with his fingertips. The tension makes his whole disused arm shake.
Harrison walks around the table to stand beside his free arm and holds out his hand. He relinquishes the bottle instead of his wrist. Harrison just drops it onto the floor and reaches out again.
He pulls away, dodging his gloved hand. Not that he has a huge range of motion but Harrison is making a point of not engaging, not trying harder than the bare minimum.
“Is this about the sadist thing?”
Harrison reaches for him again. He lifts his arm back over his head, shoulder protesting at the sudden, foreign stretch.
“Look, I’m sorry.”
Nothing.
“Harrison.”
Harrison won’t even meet his eyes, just holds a hand out for his wrist. His heart stutters in his chest at his brazen, desperate defiance.
“You can’t just stop talking to me.”
Harrison stands there frozen, waiting for him to surrender his free arm.
“At least tell me what you just hung or I’ll pull it out.” He starts to lift his hand to the port at his chest.
The look in Harrison’s gaze, fixed on the spot where his central line is implanted into his chest, stops him dead.
He feels the cool liquid spreading through his chest, down his arm. It sets his pulse racing, makes his fingertips tingle and his vision blur. Is it just his own panic or the effects of some new drug? “Please? I said I was sorry.” He hates the raw sound of his voice.
Harrison tries to catch his arm again. Before he realizes what he’s doing, in the arc of dodging him, he brings his palm across Harrison’s cheek in a sharp slap. “Look at me!”
Harrison does, eyes ablaze as he finally grabs his wrist in a bruising grip and breaks his smallest finger. No hesitation. So fast, he’s confused by the crack-pop until the pain hits. He chokes out a strangled cry.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry—” Harrison grips his ring finger. “Wait— No, please. Harrison—”
Another crack.
He screams.
“Fuck you,” he rasps, voice already lost thanks to his sore throat.
Harrison grabs his middle finger, holding his gaze without blinking like he’s still deciding if he should break this one or not.
He stares right back despite the tears running down his cheeks as his broken fingers start to throb.
Something in the air shifts, gathering weight, momentum. It feels more brittle than their habitual challenges or daily standoffs. He has no idea who has the upper hand. His finger is already broken, they've both already lost something.
“Fucking sadist,” he hisses, releasing them both.
Harrison matches his surrender and breaks his finger with a decisive snap.
He bites through the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out, blood mixing with his saliva until he doesn’t want to swallow.
Harrison drops his hand like he’s surprised he’s still holding it. He disappears behind the bed and pulls open a drawer, it rattles as he slams it closed. Harrison returns with a plastic ice pack and breaks the chemicals inside with a crack that makes him flinch against his restraints. Harrison pretends not to notice as he collects his swelling fingers and gingerly cradles them against the quickly-cooling ice pack.
When the monitor falls into a monotonous background rhythm, Harrison says, “You don’t get to hit me.”
“You can’t ignore me,” he snipes back.
Harrison takes a deliberately measured breath. “You don’t call the shots here.”
“You’re the one who dignified my shot with your middle school silent treatment crap.”
Harrison blinks at him, real slow. “Are you happy with what we’ve learned today?”
“Fuck off. I hate you.”
“Then why do you care so much if I don’t talk to you?”
This fucked up power struggle is his single lifeline. They both know he wouldn't survive without it and Harrison needs him to survive. He thinks there's probably more to it on Harrison's side but now doesn't feel like the time to pull that thread. “Go to Hell.”
Harrison holds his gaze for a minute, just long enough to unsettle his pulse again. “Done,” he finally says.
He rolls his eyes. “Now who’s melodramatic?”
Harrison ignores him, focused on his fingers again. He bets the mask is hiding more than a flat expression now and it brings a smirk to his own lips. Maybe Harrison isn’t the only one he should be trying to label after all.
Masterlist
@octopus-reactivated @maracujatangerine @nick-pascal @whumpy-writings @cracked-porcelain-princess
@meetmeinhellcroutons @thingsthatgo-whump-inthenight @jo-doe-seeking-inspo @neuro-whump
@wolfeyedwitch @skyhawkwolf @haro-whumps @onlybadendings
@peachy-panic @fillthedarkvoid @rabass @crystalquartzwhump @dont-touch-my-soup
@mylifeisonthebookshelf @hold-him-down @guachipongo @creetchure @leyswhumpdump
@aseasonwithclarasblog @catawhumpus @magziemakeswhatever @pigeonwhumps @batfacedliar-yetagain
@whumpinthepot @dustypinetree @whump-in-progress @light-me-on-pyre @whumps-and-bumps
@i-eat-worlds @hellodecisionparalysis @heartfullofhoney @alternateminds @taterswhump
@handsinmotion @arobear @dj-subwoofer @deluxewhump @wildliferehabstudent
