I'm Obsessed

He could use himself, Pen/tio/us during their omg they were roommates era, or hotel members in the present day as subjects for observation and testing, documenting symptoms in objective, detailed notes,,,

Mayyybe he tries to catch a cold on purpose for his experiments even, whether from Pen or hotel members or elsewhere (from work from work from work please give it to your hot tv boss B/ax do me this one simple favor please— 🥺)

And uhhh excuse for talking about symptoms in-depth,,, smth smth “ooh, you seem to be afflicted with a particularly vicious strain of rhinovirus! How… perfect” with a way too evil-looking smile and giggle. Smth smth “and how do you feel right now, my dear? Oh, that bad? Fascinating…” smth smth counting sneezes smth smth keeping hourly records of fever smth smth documenting progression of the illness maybe even of contagion

After quite a lot of long, studious nights overworking himself in an already ailing state, he sure he’s finally done it! His symptoms seem gone—he’s succeeded! He’s created a cur—

I have a book about the common cold specifically that details researchers giving themselves, one another, and paid human subjects colds in an attempt to test treatments, and there's a WHOLE section of the book dedicated to this pursuit it's lovely.

But also the fact that there is no cure for the common cold because over 200 unique viruses are responsible for it and they're constantly reproducing and evolving.

Bax does all of this research and as a result he has a collection of live cold bugs of varying strains in stasis in his lab that he can weaponize at his whim, even if he's had no luck with a cure.

sketchy drawings below (and a little bit of fic-ish-ness)