Work Text:
Cioccolata is many things— violent, dangerous, malicious, sadistic, self-serving. But above all else, he is a doctor.
He imparts too little emotion and too much enthusiasm into his practise. It was a careless mistake that had his license revoked, after all, even if he was given the opportunity to slip away from the eyes of health officials after losing it. Yet even when there is no body to carve and torment and study, he is busy. He has plans; expectations; hypotheses. Not every minute can be spent enjoying himself with a new actor and the material they make.
As a doctor, he is, at the behest of others, the general practitioner of the Special Unit, and is the first person they must turn to for emergency medical treatment.
Carne does not ever require medical attention, having an inherent regenerative ability due to Notorious B.I.G. Doppio alleges he has his own doctor, by order of the Boss. Secco— well, he needs not explain the file he’s kept for Secco, so very intimate and personally kept, that it is less of a medical file and more of a story of how they've known each other ever since Secco's 'discharge' from the hospital they met in.
Which leaves the only two who insist upon living in Venice for most of the year. They arrived scathed and scorched, Tiziano shadowing Squalo to the point of it becoming an irritant for Cioccolata. He sends him away, suggesting the Boss would like to hear of your success, however bruised it left you, though Tiziano's icy exterior was but a one-way mirror into seeing his uncertainties and apprehension. He always enjoys it when he sees doubt flash in their eyes.
But — Cioccolata got him to leave, and it is just him and Squalo in his office, now.
Squalo stares at the walls— the decorations, the certificates, the bookcases, like he's never considered a modicum of personality to exist within Passione's touchiest subject. There are mementos of Cioccolata’s past behind him. Things that existed long before his employment with Passione— even things long before meeting Secco, at different hospitals at different parts of the country. A past that shadows the room without saying anything. Cioccolata wants Squalo to ask, but instead he sits on the examination table and leans his back against the cold wall without a word. Cioccolata tuts as he sees the red in Squalo’s clothes stain the plaster, closing the cabinet he turned inward to.
He opens his kit and pulls on his gloves, tugging the wrists down with a snap. Cioccolata smiles. Squalo looks at him and the bloody mess of his arm with palpable anxiety. Sharks are roused by blood in the water — this one worries too much over his own.
“Tensing up will only make you bleed faster,” Cioccolata lies. He’s cute when he’s nervous.
“I don’t trust you with needles,” Squalo finally says, keeping a protective hand over his half-dressed bloody bandage.
“And who do you trust with them?” Cioccolata replies, taking scissors into his hand. They are short, and Squalo swallows audibly. “Our Tiziano? He doesn’t understand a thing of field medicine, my dear. Lift the bandage for me, and do not let go."
Squalo listens, digging his dirty glove under a corner of the bandage. His right antebrachium is bleeding, shoulder pad missing and dressed in soaked gauze. It is the bulk of the injury; as Cioccolata cuts it away, he considers it may have been caused by a clean edge, such as a large piece of glass or the edge of a knife. Additional cuts along his skin suggest the former, an explosion of light and glass that Squalo crashed through as graceful as any erupting landmine. There is dirt and blood in the rest of Squalo's jumpsuit, but nothing so severe as the deep wound he frees with clean scissors. He bites a grin as Squalo winces at the cold and sterile air that stings the glistening wound, open and bare to the room. It bleeds, but not as much as it must have before — Cioccolata peels the plastic of a sanitary wipe to clean up the blood. The corners of the sheer brush Squalo’s wound, and the redhead whines.
“Enough of that,” Cioccolata scolds in a dangerous tone. “I’ve hardly begun.”
He takes a white bottle labeled with a green sticker. Squalo stares at it, but seems to understand its purpose when Cioccolata places a cotton ball pinched with tweezers on its spout and overturns it, the alcohol wipe tossed into a low black waste bin. Cioccolata waits for Squalo to note the error of procedure— but of course, he just stares at Cioccolata’s hands. “This will sting,” he informs Squalo, with great pleasure.
“Fine,” Squalo insists, but flinches again at the cold disinfectant dragging through his open wound, searing the sensitive flesh and cleaning it of blood and all else in the cut of his skin. Cioccolata grins and pushes the cotton ball a little harder against his skin than he needs to. “It d—doesn’t need cleaning! It’s fine.”
“And let you suffer a potential infection? Why, I’d never,” he croons, dropping the small ball of cotton into that same waste bin. “I’d sooner hand in my license than bring you harm."
Squalo squeezes his eyes shut. He wants to pull his arm away — but Cioccolata holds his wrist tight and firm, keeping the other where he sits. “You... l—lost that.”
“I am joking,” he chides. Squalo opens his eyes to glare something foul at him. “Don’t look at me like that. Lay down. This will be much easier on your back.”
Squalo looks behind him, and Cioccolata can see him consider defying the order. But when he concedes, Cioccolata moves his suture kit to give the other man more room, holding his wrist the whole time. On his back, Squalo bends his knees and puts his sandals on the examination table, and looks expectedly at Cioccolata— who just smiles, clicking the tweezers twice in satisfaction.
“Better.” With Squalo on his back, Cioccolata can put the tweezers down and reach for the hooked forceps. “Watch me.”
“I'd rather not,” Squalo murmurs, but catches Cioccolata's nauseating green eyes as he tries to turn away. He watches the suture needle press into his skin, face folding into something unpleasant, but he manages to keep himself steady and silent for the time being. His blood hasn't any time to well up and bead before Cioccolata pulls the sterile steel through, tugging the bump of thread around the needle's hole. Cioccolata pinches the wound shut with the forceps and moves quickly. He's confident. He could seal up a wound like this in his sleep.
Only by the time the stitch nears its end does Squalo stops flinching enough to focus on the localized pain shooting down his arm. He breathes shallow and quick— he closes his eyes and trembles, fingers at the end of his wounded arm twitching and flexing over nothing. The pain has become central, malicious and everlasting. Even when he is done, Squalo will yearn and ache.
What a sweet thing, in the throes of suffering. At the final stitch, Cioccolata tugs on the thread a little too sharp, and then cuts the excess thread. Squalo cracks open his eyes only when he hears Cioccolata begin to peel off his gloves, but shuts them once more when his hand presses against his hairline. Is he afraid? He has all the reason to be, but Cioccolata has yet to do anything. He pushes his hand back into Squalo's hair, brushing his bright red curls out of his face. It might not be caring, but it is gentle. He touches Squalo at the crown of his vulnerability, brushes back the crease in his brow.
"Up-up-up," he coaxes him. Squalo lifts himself up on his less-injured arm, looking down at the stitching. It is impeccable. Straight-laced and clean. Cioccolata removes fresh bandaging from the suture kit, and wraps his work up in the gauze. He cradles Squalo's arm from the underside, lifting and returning his touch with every rotation of fabric around his injured arm. The smaller cuts are covered by this, and as soon as Cioccolata finishes dressing his arm it is as if Squalo's injuries were nonexistent.
He looks down at his arm, turning off of the examination table and letting his feet dangle. Squalo looks up at Cioccolata, who smiles wide and expectant.
"Are you going to say anything?" Cioccolata asks.
"Am I meant to?" Squalo returns the question with his own.
Cioccolata places his hand on the other man's head again, tilting him back and forcing him to meet his eyes before he can dart them away. The threat in his smile feels a lot more sharper. Almost as if he could rip open the sutures with teeth alone.
"... Thank you," Squalo eventually lies.
"That's better," Cioccolata croons, brushing his hand into Squalo's hair with the same caress as he had previously.