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No Anaesthetic

Summary:

What was it like for Vincent to willingly let his worst enemy touch him to treat his gunshot wound?

This is an alternate POV from the first chapter of Beyond Judgement!

Notes:

This drabble was the result of an ask on Tumblr, requesting an alternate POV of a chapter I'd already written. If you don't want spoilers, please go read Beyond Judgement Chapter 1 first!

But if spoilers are okay, here's the context: John is treating Vincent's bullet wound to save his life. They've just started their collaboration, and Vincent doesn't trust him at all yet.

Work Text:

The first scream whited out his vision. It wasn't just pain, it was the feeling of cold tweezers pressed against something internal that was never supposed to feel pressure. It was the hard, slick metal of the bullet dragging against his insides on the way out. It felt wrong. He did bite down on the tie in spite of himself, his eyes squeezed shut and his fists clenched into the fabric of the couch cushions almost hard enough to tear them. When he came back to himself a moment later, he was gasping.

No anesthetic in the house, insufferable. Fuck you, Wick. You show-off. Barely even human. "This is gonna sting." His outrage gave him just enough fuel to scream, muffled, through the splash of antiseptic into the bullet wound, burning like hellfire inside him. It was worse than the tweezers by a long shot. He really yowled, like some wild cat. He had to stop making so much noise. Stop giving this asshole the satisfaction. When his eyes had finished rolling back in their sockets, he tilted his head up to scrutinize the face of the man he hated. He had to be enjoying this. Had to be gloating over every sound Vincent made.

But his face was impassible as he dabbed at the edges of the bullet hole. No sign of pleasure. Yeah, well...he was probably just a mindless brute anyway. Somehow that was even more embarrassing. Vincent wasn't even enduring torture, just being prodded by some nobody who didn't care one way or the other if he lived or died. And yet he was making a scene over it.

As if this couldn't get any worse, John picked up a needle. "Stitches."

Why bother with the warning, asshole? It doesn't make it hurt any less. But he needed all his focus to hold his breathing steady. He felt faint. Don't scream again. He locked his jaw in place and his eyes onto John's face, refusing to look away from him this time. He was going to glare at him through this entire process.

The needle began to rise and plunge and he held his breath in the effort not to cry out. Narrowly, he succeeded in shoving everything down. The pain seemed to settle into his bones instead, a deep tension freezing him slowly in place. What was happening to his body? He was getting so cold. Tighten up even more, don't shake. Mercifully, the center of his chest was starting to go numb. Everything was a little numb, in fact. Maybe he had simply short circuited and couldn't feel anything more. Well, good enough...but he hated the way it made him want to lie down, to go to sleep, to be in something resembling an embrace. In the wake of rage, a despair sunk into him.

John's face suddenly seemed very abstract, very far away. He could look at it for what it was - a heavy, soft thing, bristling with stubble, soulful and dark beneath brows knit together. He looked almost...concerned. What could he possibly be thinking? Pitying me, probably. He was too humiliated to even hate him for it. He just let his eyes go dead and rode out the deep wave of shame that rocked through him.

It was then that his phone went off. It was a welcome distraction - anything to get him out of this woozy trance. If one more thing went wrong, he felt ready to break entirely...

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