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It's routine, at this point.
Feofan smiles through the pain and stays aware of every nerve ending in his body. He prefers this over waking up, groggy and defenseless, uncertain what chaos the Doctor may have wrought inside his body, beyond what they had agreed. Case in point:
"I don't believe you need to be touching that, Doctor."
He can feel Il Dottore's fingers cradling his beating heart, each pulse bringing those fingertips more firmly in contact. Before they'd begun this routine, this regular baring of Feofan's insides for close analysis and repair, Feofan hadn't imagined the Harbinger to be capable of such gentleness.
Or perhaps Dottore's hands can only be soft when covered in blood.
"I'm simply inspecting, Pantalone. It's beating awfully fast."
"Perhaps because I'm in a considerable amount of pain, I'd hypothesize."
Il Dottore chuckles, his fingers wandering along the inside of Feofan's ribcage. Each gentle tap reverberates through Feofan's skull. "If you were truly in so much pain, you wouldn't be speaking."
Feofan knows the Doctor is right; he is used to the sensations, now, of being awake under surgery, and the pain is an old friend. Dottore likes to remind Feofan every so often that most his patients are unwilling, in this way. That Feofan repeatedly submits to his knife, to local anesthetic and hyper-consciousness and scars that he prods later, over and over, looking in the mirror to see how his grin reaches his eyes.
This habit of theirs, it's a pantomime of power: having power over another, and choosing not to do harm with it. Or, in Feofan's case, giving power to another and trusting that they'll do no harm -- at least, nothing irreparable.
Any irreparable harm, Feofan does to himself, after all.
Feofan's breath hitches as Dottore drums gently along his diaphragm, skating against the bottom of a lung, a recent transplant. Though he'll voice his complains, Dottore does not fight against Feofan's vices; he looks on as cigarette after cigarette burns to ashes, smiling pleasantly as always, and repairs the damage afterwards -- scraping the tar from the inside the delicate organs, keeping track of which of his patients have particularly healthy lungs for harvesting when the time comes again.
"Are you quite finished?" Feofan curses himself for how out of breath he sounds. As if he were being debauched, not laying flat and still on a cold metal table. As if his flaying were less literal.
"Nearly, dear heart, nearly. You're quite impatient today; have you business at the Bank afterwards?"
"Of course not." The last time Feofan went straight to work after one of these surgeries, Dottore found him half-delirious, bleeding out in a snowbank. That, he did take umbrage to, gathering Feofan in his arms and redoing his pulled stitches, waiting for Feofan to awake so that his lecture on proper post-surgical care would be heard.
The Doctor will let him suffer, let him destroy his body, but he will not let him die. And so Feofan takes a little more care, a little more rest, and does not push the boundaries of his mortality lightly.
There's a caress on his sternum that he feels echo throughout the bone, that he swears will leave behind the faint imprints of Dottore's interest and affection, if only he is willing to rip the skin open to see beneath. Dottore picks up one of his instruments and Feofan feels the cool metal against an organ he can't quite place, that he hadn't realized he could feel at all til this moment.
"You ought to let me take this out," the Doctor says mildly as he swaps the tool for something sharper. "If you were to get gallstones, I'd need to remove it anyway. Isn't it easier if I do so now?"
"And what would you do with it?" Feofan asks, the route of least resistance. He knows well enough now that Dottore is not truly asking, too used to the man's habit of taking souvenirs. "What use does a gallbladder have in your research?"
He hisses as the knife makes contact, a soft noise drowned out by the beeping of the various monitors at his side, connected by wires to sensors on Feofan's skin, created from Dottore's various elemental powers. This way, his vitals fill Dottore's awareness; any changes will be immediately noticed, noted, and adjusted.
Feofan is unsure if the Doctor is aware of their reciprocity: in those sensors, Feofan feels Dottore's heartbeat, steady as his surgeon's hands, over dozens of points of his skin -- in the hollow of his wrist, in the sensitive curve of his neck, in the warm meat of his thigh, the soft back of his knee.
In these moments, when Dottore has his hands inside Feofan, when in Feofan's senses exist only pain and Dottore, Feofan feels he cannot be Pantalone, cannot be Regrator; he cannot be more than one of Dottore's segments. They are one many-limbed, bloody creature.
Dottore, his work finished, has begun slowly sewing the incision closed. He swaps an antibiotic IV to one of glowing blue liquid -- the life-force, created from Dottore himself, that sustains them both. Feofan knows when the final knot is tied that their play has come to an end, and the smile returns to his face as he breathes in, the air tangy with blood and antiseptic. There is a streak of Feofan's blood on the Doctor's cheekbone, highlighting it in the harsh mechanical lighting.
"I'll check up on your healing tonight, if that's amenable?" the Doctor asks, peeling back his gloves and setting them on a small metal tray. His hands bared, he picks up a small chunk of tissue, pink-red and glistening, cradled delicately in his palm like a baby bird fallen from a nest. The organ would grow back, thanks to Dottore's concoction; Feofan wondered how many bits of himself were in Dottore's office in jars, sitting on his shelves like pretty things to look at during long days of work. Perhaps the Doctor cooks them low in the fire and cuts into them with fork and knife; perhaps Feofan too has made his mark inside Dottore.
He does not ask; it would ruin the fun. What happened outside the clinic was not Feofan's concern. He had only this: surgery, and recovery. Trauma and rehabilitation in cycles, over hundreds of years, always fresh.
"I will await your call, Doctor."