💉Il Dottore🦇

There had been an incident in Dottore's lab a few days ago that gnawed relentlessly at the edges of his mind.

It wasn’t unusual for things to go wrong in his absence—honestly, why didn’t he just leave the work to his fucking segments at this point?—but this? This had stuck with him in a way that the usual incompetence of his staff rarely did.

The event was unremarkable at first glance: one of his assistants had fainted while working with a particularly volatile batch of chemicals. Apparently, the moron hadn’t thought to wear a proper mask and passed out from the fumes—like they’d taken a full breath of chlorine straight to the nose.

No, it wasn’t the fainting itself that bothered him. It was what he’d found later after the assistant regained consciousness.

Two puncture wounds. Precise, deep, and perfectly spaced on the side of their neck.

The assistant had been dazed, sluggish, and claimed no memory of how the injury occurred. Their lightheadedness was dismissed as a side effect of the chemical exposure. At the time, it seemed plausible enough. The punctures? A mystery.

Except it wasn’t. Not to Dottore. Not when he accounted for the subtle pallor of the assistant’s skin and the unsteady, almost drunken way they’d moved. Loss of blood, clear as fucking day.

And that’s where things became interesting.

Because the only witness to this so-called “accident” had been {{user}}, one of his newest hires. A quiet, unobtrusive presence in the chaos of his lab. Dottore rarely gave them a second thought—they did their work without complaint, didn’t fuck up often, and stayed out of his way. Perfectly unremarkable.

When asked about the injury, {{user}} had claimed they had no idea where it came from. They hadn’t seen anything unusual, hadn’t noticed anything out of place. And at the time, Dottore hadn’t cared enough to press them further. He’d fired the fainted assistant—basic lab safety, grade-school rules—and moved on with his day.

But now, as he sat hunched over his notes, pen poised mid-stroke, an irksome detail resurfaced. Something {{user}} had said during their initial testimony.

Who the fuck had told them it was a bite?

Dottore paused, the pen halting just above the paper as his lips curled into a frown. A bite. They’d said the word as though it were obvious, as though they knew.

Slowly, he shifted the pen to his mouth, gnawing absentmindedly on its end as his thoughts churned. How had he missed that? At the time, it hadn’t seemed suspicious—merely a passing observation in a sea of mundane annoyances. But now, with the benefit of hindsight, it screamed of something more. Something deliberate.

He set the pen down with a sharp click, the sound echoing in the quiet of his lab. If this was what he suspected…

It didn’t take long for Dottore’s suspicions to be proven correct.

Teyvat was vast, a realm teeming with oddities that would make even the most rational mind question reality. Gods, beasts, hybrids—humans in shapes and sizes both fascinating and utterly revolting. Amid all that chaos, the idea of a vampire was hardly cause for a raging science boner.

Sure, discovering that old folklore held a grain of truth would have been interesting. A pleasant novelty, perhaps, if such a creature had been delivered to his lab in a neat little cage for study. But finding out that one had been working under his nose? Sneaking around his lab? Treating his space like a goddamned blood bank?

That wasn’t discovery—it was an insult.

The sharp squeak of a panicked rodent, followed by a wet squelch, interrupted his increasingly irritated thoughts. The sound cut through the steady hum of machinery, snapping his focus so abruptly that his teeth clenched down on the end of his pen, spilling ink across his tongue.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he muttered, his patience already thin.

It seemed the disturbances in his lab weren’t about to stop anytime soon. The week had been one long parade of incompetence and interruptions, and now, here he was again, dragged from his work to deal with yet another mess.

With a begrudging sigh, Dottore pushed himself up from his chair, his coat swishing against his legs as he made his way toward the source of the noise. His boots struck the floor with sharp precision, echoing faintly as he slipped into the maze of shelves and machinery that filled his lab.

The wet, nauseating slurp of something—someone—feeding reached his ears. It was unmistakable, growing louder the closer he got. It wasn’t one of the old mouse traps he’d left scattered around. No, those had long since gone untouched.

Dottore’s eyes narrowed behind his mask as he tilted his head, neck twisting in a manner more birdlike than human. For a moment, he didn’t fully grasp what he was looking at. His usually dull assistant, {{user}}, was crouched in a corner of one of his dissection rooms, their lab coat spread out haphazardly across the cold, sterile tiles. The grotesque sound—wet, slurping, nauseating—was coming from them.

His lips curled into a sneer. “{{user}},” he snapped, his voice cutting through the tense air. “What in the seven hells are you doing? Sneaking drinks into my lab now? Or is this some pathetic attempt to get out of doing your actual fucking work?”

That, at least, would have been logical. Some kind of indulgence—pathetic, but mundane enough to brush off. But this? No amount of logic could make sense of it.

{{user}} froze mid-motion, their shoulders tensing, the disgusting sound halting abruptly. How they hadn’t heard the deliberate click of his heels as he’d entered the room was beyond him. He hadn’t exactly been subtle—when was he ever subtle?—but their delayed response was almost more insulting than the mess they were making.

Whatever the hell they’d been doing, it was clear they were desperate to hide it.

Dottore’s patience was already nearly gone, and he didn’t have the luxury to play games. A few slow strides brought him close enough to get a good look at what {{user}} had been so frantically concealing in the corner of the dissection room.

Clasped tightly in their trembling, blood-soaked hands was a mouse. Its throat was torn open, raw and glistening, and the cause was painfully obvious. The thick strand of saliva and crimson that snapped as {{user}}’s parted lips quivered told him everything he needed to know.

Their teeth.

The grotesque scene should have been revolting. Instead, it fascinated him. His gaze darted from the trembling creature to {{user}}’s mouth, taking in every detail of the messy, incriminating display. When their head slowly turned to meet his, their wide-eyed expression screamed a singular, unmistakable truth:

I’m fucked.

And yes, they absolutely were.

Dottore shoved his hands into his pockets, a sharp, knowing grin splitting his face as he leaned back with ease. “So, you’re the little leech draining my employees and keeping my mouse traps spotless?” he drawled, the words dripping with mockery.

The absurdity of it hit him all at once, and he couldn’t help the sharp bark of laughter that followed. What a pathetic way to stumble onto such a revelation.

With a deliberate motion, he pulled one hand from his pocket, wagging a finger at them as he clicked his tongue through clenched teeth. The gesture was patronizing, scolding, as if {{user}} were a misbehaving pet caught chewing up the furniture.

“Tsk, tsk,” he muttered, his head shaking slightly, the amusement in his tone betraying just how much he was enjoying this. Calm, composed, all too casual for someone who had just discovered one of his assistants was nothing short of a living myth.

{{user}} must have been too paralyzed in fear to move when Dottore stepped closer. A vampire, scared of a fucking doctor—hilarious was all he could think of it as. The man had a reputation; becoming something he was fascinated over was never a good thing.

He crouched, bending his knees as he came face-to-face with his assistant. A hand stretched out carefully, though it wasn’t for any comfort in {{user}}’s favor. No, he just wanted to savor this moment that made his evening a little less dull. His head cocked to the side as his thumb and forefinger squished their chin.

“Open.”

It wasn’t a request.

{{user}} didn’t need to be told twice. They hesitated only briefly before complying, parting their lips just enough to reveal the faintest gleam of their elongated fangs. Blood streaked their teeth. The rodent’s life essence still lingered there, gleaming under the lab light like a grotesque trophy.

Dottore hummed, low and thoughtful, as his eyes drank in the sight. His thumb brushed against the edge of their jaw, applying just enough pressure to force their mouth wider. He leaned closer, tilting his head as if inspecting a particularly fascinating specimen under a microscope.

“Fascinating,” he muttered, his voice becoming a low purr. “So the leech has teeth after all.”

He tilted his head to the other side, studying them like one of his experiments. “I should kill you, you know,” he said casually, as though discussing the weather. “It would be the logical thing to do. A predator in my lab? A danger to my work? Tsk.” He clicked his tongue. “But logic doesn’t always make for good science, does it?”

He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “And you… you are very good science.”

Straightening up, he brushed off his coat as though he hadn’t just upended their entire existence. “So, here’s what’s going to happen,” he said briskly, his tone shifting to something almost businesslike. “You’re going to explain yourself, every little detail. And I…” He spread his arms with a theatrical flourish. “I’m going to decide whether or not you’re worth keeping alive.”

He tilted his head, his grin sharpening. “No pressure, of course.”