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He’s beautiful when he’s covered in blood.
That is the first, wildly messed-up thought that goes through Il Dottore’s head when he squeezes his way into the factory rather unceremoniously through the broken window.
Pantalone, with a gun in his hand and face painted gruesome red, stands amidst carnage, corpses splayed out before him. There’s a man whose collar he’s grabbed hold of— the owner of this run-down factory, most likely. His immaculately manicured fingers tighten over grimy cloth as the tip of the gun is pressed to the man’s forehead.
His warm starlight eyes are nowhere to be found. They’re malicious, cruel, apathetic, that front he puts up when faced with his debtors. It’s a far cry from what Dottore is used to, but he doesn’t mind.
“I warned you, did I not?”
His voice reverberates around the vast hall. No sound follows but for the slightest creak of rusted cogs in the background. A sugary smile graces bloodied lips, and were it not for the unhinged look in his eyes, most would have thought he looked pretty.
(Dottore still thinks he looks pretty.)
Pantalone leans in, playfully tapping his index finger against the trigger. The man he’s holding is twitching and begging for mercy.
“I have a family. I have mouths to feed, you must understand, Monsieur— Lord Harbinger, I beg of you…spare me—”
“Oh?” Pantalone blinks innocently, jamming the gun deeper so the metal leaves a pinked imprint on sheet-white skin. “Well, then, my lovely client, you should have thought of the consequences of unpaid debts, no?”
His gaze sweeps the bodies at his feet. The slightest curl of his lip signals disgust.
“Your workers are all dead,” he says softly at the shell of the factory owner’s ear. “But not even that much blood is enough to repay your debt.”
From the shadows behind fragments of broken machinery, Dottore watches his Regrator deliver threats in that sickly-sweet tone and shove the man to the ground, kicking him aside with little effort.
The scientist is surprised, to say the least.
He’d been sent here to help the Ninth with his list of debtors, but apparently the so-called “feeble banker” does not need help of any sort.
The factory owner hastily chokes out excuses as Pantalone runs a finger along the flow of his hair, almost lovingly, then stops smiling.
“I wish we could all play nice. What a pity.”
Then there’s a bang and the thud of the last corpse and the Regrator is left standing in the middle of a bloodbath, swathed in a sheet of light filtered in through the windows.
“There goes my money,” sighs Pantalone, adjusting his tangled curls into something remotely decent to look at, then tucking his gun back into the folds of his coat. He turns, carefully walking around bodies to approach the shadow behind the machine. “Oh well. Why are you here?”
His tone is one of complete and utter disgust. Dottore pitches his voice to match it.
“I was sent to help you,” he says haughtily. “You know, just in case your frail mortal self couldn't handle a few murders.”
“Such insolence,” grumbles Pantalone, moving in and swatting at his face. It leaves the slightest trace of red on scarred skin.
Dottore grins and wipes it off. “I hope none of that blood is yours.”
“Is that concern I hear?” Pantalone’s voice is a snake’s melodic hiss by his ear. “Charming.”
“I wouldn’t want to waste hours fixing your broken bones again, would I?”
“Hmph.”
Pantalone doesn't bother refuting this statement, choosing to change the topic instead. “You’re here because you’re a weird old man with nothing better to do than gape at machinery.”
“Gaping at how messy your kills are, more like,” mutters Dottore, painstakingly climbing onto the assembly line where half-finished toys sit. “Come here. We've got time to kill.”
“What?”
“Perfect place for a date, don’t you think? This is quite the scenic view.”
Said scenic view is a pile of corpses drenched in blood, but Pantalone doesn’t argue. He just groans, climbing up after him. “You were staring at my face, I believe.”
There’s a light note of teasing in his voice as he speaks.
“You're the last thing I’d ever want to look at,” grouses Dottore, picking at the toys on the assembly line. Under the darkness of the factory, the doll in his hand looks slightly eerie as he turns it over in his hands. He glances at the sewn smile and the half-finished hair, then at the annoying, self-absorbed brat next to him. “This thing looks like you, by the way.”
“You wish.”
“Indeed. To say it looked like you would be an insult to the poor doll.” Dottore’s grin grows even wider. Pantalone can practically picture the sparkle in his eyes as he says those words.
“You’re horrible,” he protests, but there’s no venom in his words.
“Says the one who just murdered an entire factory of workers and its manager single-handedly.”
Pantalone wrinkles his nose.
“Firstly, he deserved it,” he argues. “Secondly, it was nice. I've missed the Fontaine air. And you've done worse.”
“That’s the pathetic excuse you're going with?”
Nonchalantly, Pantalone shrugs, pushing his glasses back up his nose in feigned innocence.
“What can I say? That factory owner had it coming.”
“You’re terrifying. I wonder why I ever got involved with you,” sighs Dottore as he rummages around in the toolbox and comes up with a needle.
Pantalone glares at him playfully. “Takes one to know one, doesn't it, Doctor dearest?”
Well, he can’t deny that.
He cracks a smile.
“It’s rare to find someone who doesn’t bolt the moment they see me.”
“With that hideous face? I’d be on the verge of bolting too, were you not such a useful asset.”
Dottore just snorts in reply. Their relations reach deeper than assets and both of them know it.
And it’s surreal, the way the Regrator has so many sides to him that he can switch between in a matter of seconds. How soft he is right now, with hair hanging limp over his face and rosy cheeks, the violent murderer from ten minutes ago nowhere to be seen.
He hums as he stitches black thread into the doll’s head, forming a little lock of black hair.
Pantalone’s lips purse in an attempt to disguise amusement as he examines the way the Doctor’s legs swing while he pokes the edge of the needle into the doll’s clothes. Somewhat childish, somewhat endearing.
Archons, how can someone this old still act like he’s six?
“Stop fidgeting,” he chides like a great-aunt at a family gathering, elbowing the older. “Would it kill you to sit properly?”
“A person who’s sprawled on his desk signing paperwork starting from five in the morning daily has no right to accuse me of such crimes.”
The scientist has a point.
So his lip curls and he leans over to stare at the stitches on the doll. “Your needlework is atrocious, Dottore.”
“Like you could do any better.” scoffs Dottore, holding it up next to Pantalone’s face to compare the two. The banker snorts and pokes the dangling hands, flicking it so it dangles limply.
“I accept your challenge.”
“Don’t bet on it,” warns Dottore with that ridiculous grin of his.
“I don't know where you learned to sew, but I would not trust you with a needle.” Pantalone looks reasonably disgusted when Dottore struggles to keep his grip on the string, jabbing himself several times in the process and swearing loudly. “Here– let me fix it–”
He reaches down and repositions Dottore's rigid hands, only for them to slump back into their clumsy pose once more.
“I'm a very trustworthy doctor.” he huffs, angling his chin and frowning. “I studied at the Akademiya.”
“You never even finished school,” retorts Pantalone, sifting through the toys in the box. A cockroach skitters out through the cracks in folded cardboard, and he squeals. Actually squeals.
Then there's an unceremonious crash and an ear-shattering scream as the banker drops everything he's holding and grabs his partner as a human shield.
“Get that thing away from me!” he almost screams, shrinking down behind Dottore, who flashes him that terrifying toothy grin and puts the doll down for a moment.
Then he reaches over, plucks the cockroach up by the leg, and dangles it right in front of Pantalone's face.
“Look! Isn't it cute!” he says happily.
The poor insect wriggles helplessly.
Within seconds, his partner is screeching on the other end of the room with his gun held out in front of his face.
“No. No it is not!”
“Look at it! It wants to be friends with you!”
Pantalone's face is a picture. He's never been this furiously red before. He's also shaking in terror. To even think he was the same man who massacred an entire factory– unthinkable, really.
Dottore is tempted to take a photo. Very tempted.
But he's nice! So he won't!
Instead, he chuckles and stabs his needle down on the wriggling thing in his hand, skewering it down.
Then he glances up at the cowering man in the corner who looks as if he might vomit.
“There! I saved the day! Nothing to be scared of!” he crows, hurling the insect skewer away. There's a clink as it falls somewhere between the cogs and wheels in the machinery system.
Pantalone offers him a cursory glance as he begrudgingly puts his gun away and walks back, trying and failing miserably to look dignified. “Disgusting.”
“I just saved your life! And besides–” Dottore shrugs, picking the doll back up and sewing a strand of yarn to its head, “who would've thought the high-and-mighty Regrator who murdered hundreds was…scared of a little cockroach? Never took you for a squeamish one, that's for certain.”
Pantalone sniffs disdainfully and wrinkles his nose. “You're so mean,” he groans. “Sometimes I wonder why I still talk to you.”
“You're dating me, sweetheart. You know what I'm like.”
Yes, he knows him in and out. Flamboyant, annoying, self-absorbed.
(But also honestly kind of sweet when he wants to be, which is basically never.)
“Hm.”
The statement isn't denied nor confirmed, but there's a new note of happiness to the Regrator's voice as he offers that neutral, non-committal hum of his.
“And— done!”
With a flourish, Dottore presents the doll to Pantalone. It’s a rather unflattering little thing, he notes, with the messily sewn black hair and closed eyes and the words kick me sewn onto its coat. It looks absolutely horrible and nothing like him.
He can't help but chuckle.
“Well?” says Dottore expectantly. “Doesn’t it look exactly like you?”
“It’s appallingly low-quality. Even for your standards.” Even so, he tucks the hideous doll into his coat pocket.
“Low-quality, just like your face!” Dottore claps his hands together excitedly. “It's nice to see the degree of accuracy to which I manage to make these things.”
“You are so rude.”
“Hey, the doll is cute.” protests Dottore. “Even if you don’t seem to appreciate my efforts.”
Pantalone curses at him in his rural Liyue dialect, then hops down from the assembly line, pushing a corpse aside with the tip of his boot to make way for them both.
“It looks abhorrent.” he grumbles, crossing his arms and toeing halfheartedly at a severed head. “You're talentless.”
“Your words really do wound me,” replies Dottore in his theatrical manner, watching Pantalone reach down and swipe the factory keys from his nearest victim's pocket.
“Shut up,” Pantalone grouses, sticking his chin in the air and slipping the key in the padlock, then sliding away the dead bolts. “And don't prance about like that. You're going to attract unwanted attention. We've already spent too long in this damned place.”
“Coming from the one covered in blood.”
Pantalone scowls and pushes open the door. The hustle and bustle of Fontaine's industrial district greets them, the workers heading to and fro. Some of them glance at the odd pair with curiosity.
He throws them his well-practiced death glare and motions for Dottore to follow him, taking a shortcut into the alley nearest him and silently wishing he'd planned his escape routes better.
“I can’t believe I was coerced into watching you make a gruesome doll of me in an abandoned factory. Next time, I’m making you one with your signature ugly smirk.”
Dottore strolls after him, wading his way through puddles of mud between dim alleys. The doll’s head peeps out of the folds of that coat, mouth stretched in that little stitched smile.
He mirrors that grin, taking his lover’s hand as they walk, heels stained with blood.
“I’d be honored.”