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Sterility is not an unfamiliar scent to them: it is one that they have known their entire life – one they have surrounded themself with. It is one they have smelled with every new physician they have consulted alongside of, seeking an answer to the question that plagued them (What is wrong with me? How can I stop it? How can I FIX me? Why me Why me Why ME?) and the same scent that they smell in their own home as they bandage their wounds, as they pour their medicine, and as they disinfect tools to begin their study anew in private. The scent bordered being one of comfort to Baizhu at this point as they lay there surrounded by it, slitted eyes squinting up at the bright lights above them.
The cold, metal table beneath them, however, is another story entirely. As are the manacles that secure their wrists in place by their body: their ankles are similarly trapped, willing them immobile in the frigid air of the lab. Baizhu shivers, chest rising and falling as nictitating lens swipe over their eyes.
“Fascinating,” a voice breathes from beside of them, figure approaching to leer over their prone form; his face momentarily blots out the bright laboratory lights as Dottore looms, all carmine eyes and shark-toothed smiles. “Do you always use those instead of your normal eyelids for blinking? Or is this a stress-induced response?”
“I’m not stressed.”
Dottore snorts softly, his lips curving into an amused smile. “Your heart monitor tells me otherwise, my friend.”
Baizhu scowls up at him and pulls at their restrains, met only with firm resistance and no give. The doctor above them chuckles and reaches out to tap their nose – as if chiding a child before pulling away from the table.
“Now, now, none of that. Remember, you came to me for help, Baizhu. We made an agreement. I would help you with your nasty little problem, but in return, I. . .?”
Dottore looks back over his shoulder, standing at a small table; Baizhu cannot quite make out what is on the table, and this rolls uncertainty in their stomach. But they have made an agreement with their friend. This is someone that they have known – someone that Baizhu trusts. Someone that, Celestia help them, has wormed his way under their skin in the same way their illness has: he has spread just as far – through their skin and muscle, penetrated to the bone and lungs, constricted their stomach and made their heart erratic.
Baizhu was hesitant to assign it a name. A name made it too real – much as they were loathe to assign their illness a name.
“In return, I?” He is prompting, urging Baizhu to say with their own lips the terms of agreement.
Baizhu briefly gnashes their teeth at his methods. “. . .in return, you are allowed to. . .explore my teeth.”
“No, no, not just your teeth, Baizhu. Please be specific, my dear.”
“My fangs.”
“Now you got it.” Dottore chirps, turning to wheel the table into Baizhu’s line of view.
It is a low surgical table: Baizhu recognises it from their own studies and work. They can hear the monitor uptick – beeping just a little louder and a little faster – as their eyes roam over what he has lain out on the tray: needles, scalpels, picks. . .some of these things Baizhu does not understand why he could need them for their fangs. Strange metal contraptions that they don’t recognise also sit on the tray, but most importantly are the numerous vials: currently empty but with thin, elastic-appearing tops. Baizhu rolls their wrists in the bindings as they observe these tools and swallows with a suddenly too-dry throat, desperate to coat it.
“Dottore—”
“Shh,” he soothes, though there is little placation behind it – he is too busy lifting up dark surgical gloves to slide onto his hands; they snap into place, leaving little red welts around his wrists, like red rings of promise that Baizhu feels both compelled to kiss away and grip until it is worse. “None of this will hurt, Baizhu. Just lay there and let me do what I want with your body, my darling.”
Dottore is not fully dressed in his usual garb; he has foregone his long coat for the occasion. His shirt is unbuttoned at the wrist and rolled up to his elbows, exposing the full length of his pale forearm. Somehow, on the normally covered doctor, it borderlines obscene. It flusters Baizhu and makes them turn their eyes away, unable to focus on the expanse of arm that they can see above the glove or below the sleeve.
The first tube is lifted and catches the light above: it shines like a grail, and for a moment Baizhu is fascinated by this sense of reverence – both in how holy the moment is as well as how ritualistic Dottore’s motions even appear to be – but the moment is shattered as his free hand suddenly grabs their jaw. Baizhu hisses at the sensation, wanting to gnash their teeth, wanting to bite at him, and feels him press hard at the connective hinge of their jaws. Their mouth yields without them meaning to: an open, gaping maw of human and serpentine teeth on display. Thirty human teeth and two serpent fangs that jutted down.
They usually took great care to conceal these from sight, but when their mouth was grabbed like this—
“Collecting sample one now.” Dottore spoke to them – to himself? To no one? Baizhu was not certain – as the tube from earlier flashed back into their vision.
His grip remains firm upon their jaw, never once wavering as the tube was placed up against their first fang. Baizhu could feel it pierce the elastic and understood it’s function now: it was less about the protection of the specimen and more to act as a makeshift skin barrier – something for them to faux bite so the venom would have an easier time injecting. Still, to be injecting into emptiness felt so hollow. It made Baizhu shudder slightly as Dottore held the tube against their fang. They could feel as he slid the tube along their fang – stimulating it, trying to get more from them. . .
“Is that it?” Dottore scoffs softly. “I feel like you can give me more venom than that.”
The hand gripping their jaw releases them before fingers reach in to their mouth. Baizhu cannot protest: there is not enough room to close their mouth to. They can feel as his two fingers grasp their fang and begin to stroke and caress it, gently massaging at the gumline, urging more venom along the channel and into the tube. And oh, Baizhu whines— They writhe on the table, their eyes fluttering as limbs pull against their bonds. It feels – gods it feels so much—!
“There! That is so much better! I knew you had it in you.”
Baizhu gasps softly as his fingers and the tube are simultaneously removed from their mouth, leaving them panting breathily and ragged.
Dottore draws the first vial back and holds it up to the light for both of them to observe: the liquid swirls around within the glass as he lightly rotates it, a brilliant sickly honey – venom the colour of life in the ultimate irony that makes Baizhu want to curse and spit at it and tear their own fangs out at the vile mockery. But all the same: it’s beautiful, and it cannot be denied. But moreso than their toxin is the childlike wonder that shines across Dottore’s face as he turns the vial in the light, watching it dance in the glass like captured sun.
He's beautiful.
“Marvellous. . . Marvellous, Baizhu! Look how much you produce from a single venom pouch. Thick and potent—Ah, I cannot wait to test the effects of your venom. Do you even know the full limitations of your toxins? I imagine you don’t.” He swirls it again, watching the hypnotic catch and twinkle of light before the elastic is stripped from the tube and capped: milky sunlight permanently caught and suspended inside a glass coffin – life and death, life and death. “I could amplify your toxin. Bring out the true capabilities of it.”
Baizhu has no idea what he’s talking about.
“That is for later. Let’s collect our second sample, shall we? Now, open up again, my dear. Yes, yes, just like that—”
He is gripping their sore jaw again, forcing the reflexive muscle to yield, and Baizhu’s jaws ache to gnash and close on him. It’s a mixture of instinct and their own irritation with their companion: he could simply ask for them to open their mouth and bite, but he’s always been this way – a little too brusque, a little too forward, a little too blunt. He rarely means anything by it, much as a child speaks or acts without thinking. . .But where the child has youth and naivety on their side to protect them, Dottore has no excuses.
Baizhu overlooks these issues every time anyway. They say love is blind – snakes never did have very good eyesight.
Their fang pierces the elastic barrier on the second tube and this time they whine at the sensation: not from pain or discomfort, but from a sense of overstimulation. The veritable true milking that Dottore had given to their opposite fang had been electrifying, sending sparks up into their skull, and this round would prove to be no better. As he reaches in to stroke and caress the tooth and gum, Baizhu can feel his warmth blooming and spreading throughout their body: dancing across their lips and racing like his own toxin through their veins – filling every corner and making their body shudder and tremble as their body twist on the table.
They were unsure if they were trying to get closer or get away at this point.
Baizhu heard their breaths coming faster as he milked them, felt their cheeks warming as their eyes glassed. It felt so good—! Better than it should have. This was medical science. It was analytics. It was—
(If that was all it was, then why do you want to kiss him?)
“Did you know that you produce more venom from your right fang?” Dottore is speaking idly as he draws the vial back, raising it to investigate in the light as the others that came before; the liquid gold splashes invitingly, coating the side and slowly dripping down. “Easily an extra two cc came from that fang.”
As he releases Baizhu’s jaw, the serpent caves to their instinct – or desire, they still have not determined which. He is turning to place this vial with its sister vial when Baizhu bites down on his exposed arm – hard. They taste his flesh on their tongue (sterile and clean – a hint of the soap used to scrub himself down for the procedure – but there are traces of something more bitter and acrid; Baizhu wonders if this is from his numerous projects beginning to leech into his skin) and can feel his pulse thrum in their mouth. It makes Baizhu moan softly as their fangs go through the motions of injection, though nothing will empty into Dottore: he has milked them dry, leaving nothing in Baizhu until they build up their store again.
They can feel his sudden start at the bite and hear his sharp intake of breath as he freezes, and they slowly roll glassy amber eyes up to look at him. Dottore is breathing hard himself, staring down at the point where they connect. His lips curve back, showing each of his own teeth – sharp, brilliant, wonderful teeth that could tear a man apart – as he grins down at his partner before reaching up with his free hand. Gently, the doctor massages at their jaw, willing the bite to relax, to release him, to let the prey go, and Baizhu takes a sharp breath as they slowly withdraw their fangs from his arm.
In the blink of an eye he has caught them again with his wounded arm to leer over them: his bloodstained scarlet gaze looms down at them as he invades their mouth with his thumb, pressing down upon their tongue. He holds them like this – open, virtually defenceless, with no venom at their disposal and looking at them as if they are a project to be understood and taken apart – and Baizhu wants to open their mouth wider for him. Wants to hold it open like a good snake.
They curse that part of them that is yielding so easily.
“Do I need to take these fangs away?” Dottore speaks, leaning in closer – he is close enough now that their noses are brushing: Baizhu can feel every breath he takes and it only makes their eyes flutter and their body tremble more.
The threat should not make their body blossom in heat the way it does.
Dottore chuckles softly, dipping his head to kiss them. “No, you would like that too much.”