That's good to hear!

Ye Gods! You are a better person than me - I normally just 'play the game' with these things, then doze or doodle by mid-afternoon, and somehow get through. I enjoyed the lunch, anyway!

I can see why!

used the 'dance with the devil' bit as inspiration for a little rp ficlet...between Shades Alvarez (from Luke Cage) and an OC who I've created as his father.
*
The torture had been overkill, but Shades had kept his mouth shut, watching with all the anonymous passivity that his ever-present sunglasses allowed. Second-guessing Graves’ intent, or questioning his actions, was a sure way to get on his bad side. Graves wasn’t the sort of man you crossed…not unless you wanted the same sort of treatment that poor kid had been given. And for what? Not providing a bit of intel that he could not possibly know Graves might be interested in?

One did not get in bed with the devil, literally or figuratively, without expecting to be burned. Sooner or later, Shades would face that crossroads too.

Shades had his secrets too. Watching that kid suffer, he couldn’t help but wonder when one of those secrets might turn on him and bite him in the ass.

Especially this secret. Through the hall window, he watched the hospital staff unplug the tubes and needles from the man on the bed, a man no longer bandaged like something out of a horror movie. Shades had feared, for an irrational brief moment, that the removal of the bandages would reveal no one beneath, like the invisible man. If any secret might be used against him, it was this one.

He had been tasked with keeping an eye on the scientist, so he had an excuse for being here off and on…especially today for this monumental event. It was best that he see to the man’s health himself. And with Alvarez being a common enough name, no one had, to his knowledge, suspected the two were related. Why should they be? They had about as much in common as a monkey had with a flea.

Which one of them was which was open to debate.

The patient looked good. Red-skinned from the irritation of the bandages and now the delicate cleaning the nursing staff was offering, the sloughing off of layers of dead skin that still showed the affects of the burns he had sustained. The experimental treatment had gone well, however, as he was not horrifically disfigured. Only pink…soft…fleshy from the disuse of muscle tissue. And though he had been disconnected from the IV fluids that had fed him and maintained his induced coma, he was not yet awake. That would still be many more hours, possibly a day or more, before his body flushed the last of the medications from his system. Only fluids to keep him hydrated, and the ever present heart monitor, were still attached, the catheter still in place.

Until the man awoke, there was little Shades could do. Even when he did wake up, would he want to see his wayward son? For that matter, did Hernann want to see him?

He supposed he would find out. Tomorrow or the day after.

“Call me when he’s awake,” he grunted as he grabbed the arm of the nurse now coming out of his father’s room. “I want to know the minute it happens.”

“Of course, sir…” she stammered. Maybe she was afraid of him. Maybe she was afraid for her job.

Maybe she was afraid the man would never wake up.

Hernann would know the answer soon enough.