Dunning-Kruger

His body didn’t give him much of a choice in the matter, given that his knees had given out and Zayne had to lower him to the floor. Sylus was glad he’d decided to go with hardwood flooring in this particular safe house—it would make cleaning up all the blood much easier later.

“Allow me to attempt another argument for taking you to a hospital,” Zayne said as he left Sylus long enough to start turning on lights. Fortunately, the curtains were already drawn over the windows. “Specifically, you need an operating room.” He returned to Sylus and pulled his shirt open to examine the wound again now that there was light.

“Exactly how long do you think a surgical team is going to be able to remain in the room with me?” Sylus gritted out. “And that’s saying nothing of the fact that anesthesia probably won’t even work on me.”

Zayne let out an irritated growl. “Well, your evol is taking too long to heal this for my liking,” he snapped. “And you’ve lost too much blood as it is.”

“Fine, then you do it,” Sylus snapped back.

“Excuse me?!”

“You heard me.”

“Have you lost your mind? I have no surgical equipment here, this place hasn’t been properly sanitized, I’d be working completely alone—”

“Luke and Kieran can bring in whatever you need, my evol will take over healing as soon as the bullet is out, and you’re the only doctor I trust anyway,” Sylus interrupted.

Zayne’s mouth snapped shut at that and he and Sylus glared at one another.

“This is going to be incredibly dangerous, even for you,” he finally said, obviously fighting to stay calm. “Never mind the amount of blood you’ve already lost, cutting you open without being able to sedate you could send you into shock. Not to mention how difficult it will be for me operating on a still-conscious patient completely alone.”

Sylus reached up and grabbed Zayne’s hand. “Zayne,” he said with as much force as he could muster through the agony radiating from the center of his chest, “you know I’m right. I can’t go to a hospital. And even if we went to one, you know you’d wind up operating on me by yourself anyway.”

Zayne swore under his breath and looked away for a moment. Then he drew in a breath. “Alright. Get Luke and Kieran on the phone. In the meantime, do you have any first aid supplies here?”

“There’s a first aid kit in each of the bathrooms,” Sylus answered, pointing down the hallway that was just off of the living room. Without a word, Zayne stood up and went to find them.

In the meantime, Sylus pulled out his phone and called Luke. “Boss-man, where’d you go? You and Doctor Li missed all the fun!”

“I was getting him away from the ‘fun,’” Sylus answered. “Tap into Mephisto, he has our current location. And stand by, the Doctor needs some equipment brought to us as soon as possible.”

“Sure thing, boss-man,” Luke answered. “By the way, you don’t sound too good.”

Sylus couldn’t help smiling. “Don’t worry about it for now,” he said. Just then, Zayne came back with three first aid kits in his arms as well as several towels. He knelt back down next to Sylus and arranged one of the towels under his head and the rest around his torso.

“I have Luke on the phone,” Sylus told him as he put the call on speaker. “He and Kieran are waiting.” In the background of the call, Luke called Kieran over.

Sylus held up the phone while Zayne listed off everything he needed, opening up a first aid kit and pulling out a pair of nitrile gloves and a bottle of hand sanitizer. As he spoke, he rolled up his sleeves and cleaned his hands, then pulled on the gloves and started tearing open packets of gauze, pressing them to the opening of the bullet wound.

“Holy shit,” Kieran muttered on the other end of the phone, and Sylus could hear him tapping at his phone as he wrote everything down. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of most of these things.”

“We’re sending this list to Onychinus’s doctors, they said they should have everything ready and over to our position within the hour,” Luke said. “We’ll get it over to you the second they get it here.”

“Good,” Sylus told them both. “Also, make sure those bodies are cleaned up before Linkon’s police find out what happened.”

“We’re already on that, boss-man,” Kieran said. “It’ll be like we were never here.”

Sylus ended the call there and didn’t bother putting away his phone, instead laying it on the floor near his hand.

“I think I should go ahead and prepare you now for what I’m going to do,” Zayne said as he grabbed some fresh gauze and applied it. “It may lessen your chances of going into shock once I get started.”

“I already knew there’d be more involved than simply cutting me open and digging around in there until you found the bullet,” Sylus couldn’t resist quipping.

“Mmm,” Zayne hummed. “Aside from the cutting, I’ll have to use a rib spreader in order to get to your heart, and, in turn, the bullet. Or it’s fragments if it’s shattered.”

“Let me remind you my evol will heal everything as soon as you get the bullet out,” Sylus said.

“That wasn’t why I said all of that. I said all of that because it’s going to add to the pain you’re already in,” Zayne replied. “In addition, you’re going to have to do your best to not move. If my hand slips, your evol might not even be enough to undo the damage. And whatever you do, do. Not. Look.”

“I’ve seen what’s inside of a body before,” Sylus argued.

“There’s a monumental difference between seeing someone else’s internal organs and seeing your own,” Zayne countered. “Look, the fact that you’re even still conscious, much less alive, is nothing less than a miracle. And I have every intention of doing my best to keep you that way, so I need you to take my word for it and do exactly as I say.”

A smile pulled at Sylus’s lips. “That, Doctor Zayne Li, is why you’re the only doctor I trust. Don’t think I’m not aware that you barely tolerate me, yet even in spite of who I am you’re still going out of your way to help me when most other doctors might have left me for dead or just turned me in to the Deepspace Hunters by now.”

A flush spread from the bridge of Zayne’s nose and across his cheeks as he looked away from Sylus. “I don’t ‘barely tolerate’ you,” he said as he changed out the gauze once again, opening up one of the other first aid kits to dig out more. “You’re arrogant, insolent, audacious, shameless, you get on my nerves to a frankly astonishing degree, and even knowing you is dangerous all on it’s own. In spite of that,” he stopped and drew in a breath, “for some reason I don’t understand, I actually like you to the point where I don’t want to stay away from you. And to be honest, turning you in to the Deepspace Hunters never once crossed my mind, much less leaving you for dead.”

Sylus blinked up at him, speechless. The blood loss must be getting to his head—did Zayne just admit to liking him?

No, it couldn’t be blood loss. Sylus prided himself on his ability to read people, especially since his aethercore gave him the advantage of being able to see their innermost desires.

But Zayne was extremely good at not showing any of his emotions, and generally that’s where Sylus would have used his aethercore on someone. But he hadn’t wanted to do that with Zayne, and when he really examined himself, it was because he was worried that he would see that Zayne didn’t feel nearly as strongly for Sylus as Sylus did for him.

It was a strange sensation to be wrong about someone. Even after everything he’d said about Sylus’s personality—which was all true, by the way—Zayne still found something about Sylus worth liking, even if he didn’t know what that something was. More than that, he’d willingly admitted that something in himself didn’t want to stay away.

Sylus was far from disappointed to hear Zayne say what he said. He suddenly wanted very badly to forget his vow he made to himself to take things at Zayne’s pace and show him just how thrilled he was at what Zayne had said.

Later, perhaps. Such as when there wasn’t a piece of metal embedded in his aorta causing him intense agony.

Zayne couldn’t bear the thought of meeting Sylus’s eyes again after he’d said what he had to him. He instead focused his attention on trying to staunch the bleeding, which had slowed only marginally. He hoped Sylus’s people were on their way with those supplies, because he had to get that bullet out now.

To be honest, it was rather bewildering to Zayne that Sylus’s evol hadn’t closed the entire injury and expelled the bullet by now. The red-black mist hadn’t stopped it’s attempts to close up the wound. However, it still hadn’t succeeded in closing it up at all. And pressing all this gauze wasn’t doing much good. He already had a small pile of it by his knee, and there was only so much in those first aid kits he’d found.

As he continued his efforts, his mind turned entirely without his permission to what he’d said to Sylus. Specifically to when he’d said he didn’t want to stay away from him. The words had just left his mouth without him even thinking about it, and he hadn’t realized until they were out there that they were true. It was equally true that he didn’t understand why.

Yvonne had been right, it seemed. Even Zayne himself was starting to not believe that this was simply scientific research.

Before he could ruminate further on that thought, the doorbell rang. “Lie still,” he said to Sylus as he pulled off the gloves and dropped them on the pile of bloody gauze. He stood and went to the door, checking the monitor to the side of the door first. It was Luke and Kieran, and one of them was holding a first responder’s bag.

Zayne opened the door with the intention of letting them in. That, unfortunately, was not what happened.

“We got everything—oh fuck!” Kieran had started, but immediately cut himself off, a hand flying to his mouth. Without another word, he nearly tore his mask off, turned to the hedges next to the door, and started emptying his stomach.

“Boss-man, what the hell happened?!” Luke demanded, swallowing heavily as his own hand came up to his own mouth.

“What does it look like?!” Sylus snapped.

Luke drew in as deep a breath as he could manage and held the bag out to Zayne. “Sorry, Doctor, we’d love to come in and help, but…”

Zayne took the bag from him. “That’s perfectly fine, just take care of yourselves. I’ll manage.”

“Some of the others are here as well. We’ll all stay on guard from out here.” With that, Luke turned to check on Kieran.

Zayne shut the door and made sure the lock engaged before he turned and headed back to Sylus. Once he’d sat back on his heels, he pushed the first aid kits aside and started unloading the bag, which had been packed almost to bursting with the equipment he’d asked for. Each piece had been sealed in plastic, which he tossed aside as unloaded everything onto a metal tray, which had been sitting on top of everything. There were also sealed packets of masks and gloves in one of the pockets.

“I’m about to get started,” he announced to Sylus as he put on one of the masks and then thought of something. Without a word he pulled his own belt off.

“Doctor, I don’t think this is the time to—”

“Bite down,” Zayne ordered. He’d folded the belt over and was now holding it to Sylus’s mouth.

“What?”

“I can’t give you a painkiller, nor can I sedate you,” Zayne explained. “You’re no doubt going to clench your jaw. This will help to make sure you don’t break any of your teeth.”

Zayne could see the split second where Sylus debated arguing with him, but it passed rapidly and he obediently opened his mouth. Zayne tucked his belt between his teeth, then reached over to either side of him and tucked the corners of the towels into his hands.

“Remember what I said, do your best not to move. And don’t look,” Zayne reminded him as he adjusted his glasses, then coated his hands and arms in hand sanitizer and pulled on a fresh pair of gloves. Then he picked up a scalpel and drew in a deep breath.

If Sylus had thought getting shot hurt like hell, it was nothing to the fresh, searing agony of being cut open. His jaw did in fact clench around the leather in his mouth that had a faint trace of Zayne’s pheromones on it, and his hands fisted in the towels at his sides. His eyes squeezed shut and he couldn’t stop the growl of pain that escaped.

Zayne was speaking as he worked, but Sylus could barely hear his voice. Not that it would have mattered, since he wouldn’t have been able to understand any of the terminology he was using, anyway.

It seemed no sooner had the pain of being cut ended than the deeper pain of metal being inserted between two of his ribs and then those ribs being slowly spread out of their natural position replaced it. The pained growls became screams, and only sheer willpower coupled with Zayne’s hand on his sternum kept him from moving.

The pain leveled out once the instrument stopped, and Sylus forced himself to draw in a ragged breath. Zayne was still talking to him, but the exact words still weren’t registering in his brain.

So it was Zayne’s voice that Sylus made himself focus on as he willed himself to stay still and keep breathing.

“………was right,” Zayne was saying, and it sounded like his voice was coming from far away. “The bullet is lodged in your aorta and is partially shattered.”

Sylus cracked his eyes open, a few tears escaping. The temptation to look down at himself was powerful, but he ignored it and forced his gaze on Zayne.

He swore he had yet to see a more beautiful sight. Zayne was fully in surgeon mode with every bit of his attention on his task, and Sylus wondered if this was how he always looked when he was working.

So he chose to watch Zayne, who was still talking out what he was doing as he traded one instrument for another. While Sylus still didn’t understand anything he was saying, his voice at least was a lot more clear.

“Pulling the biggest fragment out…now,” Zayne announced right as Sylus felt something that didn’t belong being pulled loose, and a few more tears—this time of relief—slid from his eyes.

“This is…not like any bullet I’ve ever seen…” Zayne trailed off as he held up a pair of forceps. Clamped in the end of them was the majority of the slug that had caused the main damage, and something about it caught Sylus’s attention.

“L’me shee,” he rasped around the belt still clenched between his teeth. He tried to spit the belt out, only to find it was stuck. When had his fangs descended?

“Leave that in your mouth, I’m not finished,” Zayne chided as he held up the bullet in Sylus’s field of vision.

Sylus squinted at it to find it was just as he thought. Embedded in the copper was a dully glowing blue vein.

“Annimadder,” he said, a growl edging his already-wrecked voice.

Zayne’s brow furrowed. “I’ve only ever heard of anti-matter bullets, but I’ve never actually seen one.”

“Shupposed to shuppress shomeone’sh ebol,” Sylus explained.

“This one must have been fairly weak, then, since it didn’t completely suppress yours.”

“N’t g’nna shtop me f’rm killin’ th’r bossh,” Sylus muttered.

Zayne only shook his head and rolled his eyes. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” he said as he dropped the bullet on the tray next to his knee. “Now keep still for a few more minutes, I need to get the remaining fragments out. Fortunately there aren’t that many, and I can see them all.”

“‘m p’rfctly j’stfi’d, ‘n my opin’in. ‘ou c’ld’ve b’n hit,” Sylus argued as he returned to watching Zayne work.

“As I showed you out there, I can take care of myself,” Zayne said as he dropped another shard of the bullet on the tray.

“D’sn’t m’n ‘ou sh’ld ‘lw’s h’ve to,” Sylus said softly.

Pink dusted Zayne’s cheeks again and he didn’t answer as he pulled another shard out and dropped it on the tray next to the others. Then another came out, followed by another.

Finally Zayne dropped the final shard onto the tray, and Sylus knew it was the last one without him having to say anything when he could finally finally feel his evol closing up the internal nicks and cuts.

“Keep taking deep breaths, I’m about to remove the Finochietto retractor,” Zayne announced. Sylus did as he said, and could feel the device releasing his ribs.

Sylus finally heaved out a relieved breath when the device was removed, and his evol took over in earnest. He could hear the metal instrument clattering onto the tray full of now-bloodied surgical tools next to him, and he looked up as Zayne heaved out a relieved breath of his own, his hands falling to rest palm-up on this thighs and his head falling back.

“If you ever make me do anything like that again,” Zayne heaved out, “I really will leave you for dead.”

Sylus couldn’t help himself; he laughed, albeit weakly. “D’ly n’ted, D’ct’r,” he said around the belt still in his mouth.

“Now just lie still and try to get some sleep if you can,” Zayne said as he pulled off the gloves and coated his arms in hand sanitizer again, then worked the belt out of Sylus’s mouth. “I don’t want to move you until I’m satisfied your evol has healed most of your injury. In the meantime, I’m going to clean up as much of this as I can, then I’m going to clean myself up. Do you have anything I can change into, or do I need to have your people go to my house?”

“There should be something in your size in one of the bedrooms,” Sylus said, his voice growing heavier with exhaustion.

Zayne nodded. “Get some sleep,” he said, standing up.

“Zayne?” Sylus murmured. His eyelids were starting to feel heavier.

“Yes?”

“Thank you,” he said as he sank into sleep.

Zayne watched Sylus sleep for a few seconds. For those few seconds, he had to admit that he was worried Sylus would stop breathing. When he didn’t, Zayne headed for the kitchen to find the trash can and some bags. When he found them, he returned and dug some biohazard bags out of the first responder’s bag, then pulled on another pair of nitrile gloves and began picking everything up.

Sylus had been right when he’d said they couldn’t go to a hospital for this—if they had, the entire facility might have had to be evacuated in the end. And Zayne would have been performing the surgery by himself as well. And then no doubt would have been the one to have to clean up the operating room himself.

Still, it was not a position any surgeon wanted to find themselves in.

He could only be grateful that Sylus’s evol was able to take over healing all of the damage once the anti-matter bullet had come out. And he very likely wouldn’t have to worry about infection, either.

Something about the entire situation still scared the hell out of Zayne, though. He genuinely had been afraid Sylus would succumb to his injury, and had only gone along with this entire insane plan of performing an impromptu surgery by himself because he was determined to not let that happen.

Could it have had anything to do with what he himself had said about not wanting to stay away from Sylus?

Zayne growled to himself as he threw everything into the trash can including the now blood-soaked towels he’d wedged around Sylus’s torso, then pulled off the gloves he was wearing and threw them on top. Then he tied the bag shut, and put that bag into another bag, and then another. Then he left it by the front door with the intention of handing off to Sylus’s people outside later to be destroyed.

That done, Zayne looked around the room, and then down at himself. While those towels had soaked up the majority of the blood, enough of it had still seeped out to soak into the legs of his slacks. And before that, it had gotten onto his shirt when he was helping Sylus walk. He definitely needed to get out of these clothes, and more than that, he could use a shower.

He looked over to Sylus, who was still sound asleep in the middle of the floor. His evol was still closing up the incision Zayne had made, and it already appeared as if Sylus had never been shot in the first place. In fact, the only real sign left that he had been injured was the slightly ashen pallor of his skin from blood loss.

Zayne drew in a breath and went to the nearby sofa, grabbing one of the pillows and the throw blanket arranged on the back of it. Then he returned to Sylus and slid the pillow under his head, then covered his legs with the blanket and tucked it around his waist. Satisfied that Sylus was going to remain asleep, he headed for the bedrooms to search for a change of clothes.

Zayne was woken up a few hours later by a hand on his shoulder and voice calling his name. He blinked, slightly disoriented for a second before he remembered where he was.

After he’d found some clothes and even some shoes that fit him in one of the closets, he’d stripped out of his own clothes in one of the bathrooms and taken a hot shower. The spray of hot water released the rest of the tension in his neck and shoulders from the events of the night, and he could feel exhaustion creeping up on him. When he’d finished his shower and changed into a t-shirt and a pair of sleep pants, he grabbed a pillow and a blanket off of a bed and took them into the living room. Once he’d satisfied himself that Sylus was still sleeping, he’d laid his glasses on the coffee table, then went to sleep on the sofa.

The gray light of early morning was filling the room, and Sylus was kneeling in front of Zayne. He must have just woken up himself, because he was still in his bloody and torn clothes from the night before. Dried blood still coated his bare chest and stomach.

“I’d let you sleep more, Doctor, but I seem to remember you saying something about having to work today,” Sylus said.

“Thank you, I do,” Zayne said as he sat up and reached around Sylus to grab his glasses. “How are you feeling?”

“I feel fine. You can check if you like,” he answered, holding up the stethoscope that had still been at the bottom of the first responder’s bag. Zayne slid his glasses on and took the stethoscope from him, then went through a basic check of Sylus’s vitals.

When Zayne listened to his heart, it was of course as if Sylus had never been shot at all. Most of his color had even returned to his skin.

“I shouldn’t even be surprised that all trace of injury has completely healed so quickly,” Zayne commented. “Now I’m going to advise a shower and a change of clothes.”

Sylus chuckled. “I’m on it, Doctor.” With that, he stood and headed for the bedrooms. Zayne waited for about a minute until he heard one of the showers running before he stood and headed for the other bedroom to change into something he could wear until he got home and could change for work. He decided to leave his ruined clothes behind after a brief debate—he could simply ask Sylus to throw them away. Even if he could have taken them to a professional cleaner, he doubted they were salvageable.

Once he was changed, he headed for the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. He decided against making breakfast. He’d only have just enough time to get back to the restaurant and to his car and then home to change and get his laptop bag before he needed to get underway to the hospital. He could grab breakfast in the hospital’s cafeteria once he arrived.

“Oh, good, you made coffee,” Sylus said right as Zayne had finished pouring himself a cup. Zayne turned to find him changed into a pullover sweater and a pair of gray slacks, his hair still damp.

“I’m going to recommend once you return home to eat something high in protein and then to get some more rest,” Zayne said as Sylus poured his own cup. “And call me later to update me on how you’re doing.”

“I’m flattered that you’re so worried about me, but I promise I’m fine,” Sylus said over the rim of his cup.

“It’s called doing my job as a doctor,” Zayne corrected as he sipped his own coffee.

“Whatever you say,” Sylus smirked.

Zayne only sighed and drank his coffee. Sylus, gratefully, didn’t say anything else as the two of them continued to drink their coffees while leaning against a kitchen counter. He was aware that Sylus was watching him, but chose to not comment on it.

When he was finished, he rinsed his cup at the sink and then turned to leave, double-checking his pockets to make sure he had his phone, keys, and wallet. “I need to get going. Remember to call me later,” he said as he headed for the door.

Sylus, of course, wasn’t far behind him. “I haven’t thanked you yet, Doctor,” he said.

“Yes, you did. Just before you fell asleep last night.”

“I mean properly.”

Zayne was almost to the front door, but stopped at Sylus’s words. “What do you mean ‘prop—’”

The rest of Zayne’s sentence was lost when Sylus grabbed his wrist and pulled him back, one hand going into Zayne’s hair as their lips met. At Zayne’s sharp inhale of surprise, Sylus slid his tongue through his parted lips and along Zayne’s own.

Zayne had no words to describe what was happening inside him. Part of him was still frozen with the shock of suddenly having Sylus’s mouth on his own, and another part wanted to melt into it, to slide his own hand into that thick silver hair to see if it was as soft as it looked, to slide his other hand under that sweater to trace all those rippling muscles and start mapping out each one, to pull him closer until there was no space left between them.

Yet another part of him wanted to shove Sylus away and run until he could think properly again.

Zayne found his eyes drifting shut and his free hand wrapping around Sylus’s wrist, his tongue continuing to slide along Sylus’s. Sylus took the opportunity to step closer and the kiss deepened.

The moment that happened, something shot through Zayne’s entire being that he couldn’t describe. Something that rattled him to his core.

He ignored the voice in his head that began screaming at him when he tore his mouth away from Sylus’s and then immediately shoved him away. He drew in a sharp breath, his hand going to his mouth as his face flushed.

“Zayne, wait—” Sylus started as Zayne blindly felt around for the doorknob behind him.

Zayne could only shake his head and look away as the door finally opened, words seemingly unable to come to him. The moment he was through it, he pulled it shut behind him and kept his gaze on the ground as he nearly ran in the direction of the restaurant.