It had been one kiss. One he could probably blame on you if he wanted.

You were half high on anaesthetic, and he had just spent several hours picking you apart with a scalpel. But your lips had pressed together and be remembered that he kissed back. He hadn't really done that before, never bothered to try...

That led to more, and more, until he didn't even complain when his lungs were filled with second hand smoke and the smell of sweat.

But it had unforseen effects. Consequences. Why else would be begin to wear the immortality elixir keeping you alive on him constantly? Why else would his back slump in relaxation when he talked to you. He even beared his back: turned away and not glanced back to check if you held a blade.

Zandik was an objective man. He saw and didn't feel: like how a camera could not blur with tears. While he knew that feelings did not have objective form, it was a variable the same as any other. And though he most certainly couldn't deny it, he didn't like it.

As a teenager he'd been fascinated by it. A disease of the mind. Same chemicals as addition, same slump. Love. Something so human it made people animals. As an adult, he'd laughed at it like it was a common mistake people made something he was above.

But in the very back of his mind, he toyed with the idea: of someone out there for him; for the day a smile swept him off his feet and he finally had a question he couldn't answer in front of him. Partly because he was a hands-on learner, but also because... Like sepsis, he couldn't filter out the humanity that pulsed through him without replacing it manually. Did gods have this tender spot too?

He wrote about his affections in a seperate file. Usually, he kept things sorted by experiment. You were already different in that regard: you'd had your own file as a frequent visitor of his lab, of his operating table. But even this new one and that couldn't mix. To excuse it, he said the issue was with his mind more than yours. It would taint the tidy files.

Now, as he had and would never be one to let feelings dampen his life, he was with you. Maybe that itself was contradictory, but he also knew that cognitive functions were primary to pattern recognition and brain functions, even when he shouldn't be subject to cerebral aging.

Dottore's gloved fingers were silent against the ivory of the piano as he played, an old song heesrnt centuries ago now. Before it became popular. He didn't turn to look at you, but he could smell the tobacco on you like he had the nose of a dog. It was like you wanted him to have to replace your lungs when they inevitably crumbled. Again. There was a reason you had so many lung problems they were omitted from the your main medical files.

He thought about your health far too much, honestly.