Archive of Our Own

“Hey, you’re not a narc, are you?”

Herbert doesn’t even look up from the lab equipment, tongue peeking out as he measures out another dose of troponin. They’ve got two batches of reagent brewing, one as a control and a second one with minor tweaks. Dan does know that it’s absolutely crucial that they are identical except for the variables they’re testing, but his question is time-sensitive, so he clears his throat.

Herbert drops the pipette and gives Dan a flat look, as if to say isn’t that obvious, you fucking moron, I steal cadavers on the regular. Herbert hasn’t actually called Dan a moron, ever, but whether it stems from a genuine appreciation for Dan’s contributions or an awareness that Dan’s help is already contentious and apprehensive at times, Dan cannot tell. He waits Herbert out anyways.

“I’m not a narcotics officer, clearly,” Herbert sneers, lips pulled back in a droll smile. “What is this about?”

“I’m getting the amphetamines today,” Dan reminds him. He even put it on the calendar that hangs in their kitchen. He’s circled the date in a green highlighter and all. Herbert doesn’t really go into the kitchen though, not in any regular capacity anyways, unless he’s forced to by hunger pangs, and then he just raids the pantry for whatever calorie-dense food he can eat while working. Dan has seen him bite into a stick of butter before, and despite all the horrors he's witnessed, that one haunts Dan the most. “And I was thinking about picking up something more.”

They’ve had to resort to street drugs as hospital security measures got tighter, at least in the pharmacy. It comes with the challenges of having to test each batch for purity and kind. Honestly, Dan misses the days of medical school when getting amphetamines was as easy as pinching some from storage during inventory. He had a feather-brained pass, on account of the concussion and all the trauma. Now, if he was a little feather-brained, his medical license would get revoked.

“Something more?” Herbert quirks a brow, and rubs his knuckles nervously, like a raccoon. Even the dark rings around his eyes suit him. Dan would never tell him that, but he’s kinda cute sometimes. “I’ve tried it with other stimulants, but the reaction was further delayed. Maybe an addition of ephedrine would be beneficial, but I don’t think… your guy… would have it.”

Dan thinks that Herbert should be a little less contemptuous of Dan’s connections, given that it’s the only way they can keep on brewing the reagent. Dan might not like his guy much, either, but they would be shit out of luck without him.

“Ephedrine should be easy enough, the palliative care ward uses enough of it to not notice a couple doses going missing,” Dan muses.

Herbert hums, eyes wide with interest. He reaches for his notebook, buried underneath a mountain of newspapers. They’ve started doing the crosswords competitively to kill time when the reagent was synthesizing. Herbert is not good at them, but he insists on keeping the game running. Their current score is 10:2 for Dan, a fact which never fails to delight him.

He shakes himself off.

“No, that’s not what I meant. I was thinking of picking up some weed.”

Herbert scoffs. Dan scowls, crossing his arms. He won’t point it out, but it’s pretty rich coming from a guy who used to shoot up research chemicals mixed with amphetamines on the regular.

“Marijuana is for burnouts, Dan,” Herbert sniffs, and turns his wide, wet eyes on Dan. The heavy artillery. Dan’s just a man. “You are not a burnout.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Dan sighs, and uncrosses his arms. He rubs at his forehead, as if it will get rid of the headache brewing there. “But it’s just something I used to do to relax, you know, take my mind off things. I haven’t been sleeping great.”

“I am not your doctor nor am I your priest,” Herbert says, a little acidic. It’s not even true. At this point, Herbert is more Dan’s doctor than the GP registered on his insurance. Dan avoids her, her prying eyes, and the steep out-of-pocket costs like the plague. “Do as you wish.”

“Okay,” Dan shrugs, because that at least means that Herbert won’t bar him from the lab, and will happily restrain himself to just bitchy little comments. Dan can live with that. In fact, he already does. “Do you want something else?”

“As you so astutely pointed out, we can get ephedrine at the hospital,” Herbert snipes. He’s clearly not happy about it, but, well, he’s gonna have to live with it. He hesitates for a second, eyes darting to the two beakers over their twin Bunsen burners. “Maybe pick up some E.”

“E?” Dan asks, feeling suddenly very uncool. He used to be cool. He got invited to all the parties in undergrad. Could never manage a keg stand but could shotgun. Blow smoke rings. All of that. Herbert doesn’t look like he’s been at a party in his life, so Dan thinks that he should pull back on the slang a little. Herbert sniffs again, rubs his knuckles.

“God damn it, Herbert, I’m sorry I’m not as familiar with street drugs as you are.”

“3,4-Methyl​enedioxy​methamphetamine,” Herbert finally relents, seeming faintly embarrassed about it. “It has a more positive effect on the emotional states than amphetamines but is still a stimulant. Cutting the current stimulants with it might resolve the issues of hostility we’ve encountered.”

Issues of hostility we’ve encountered, what a nice way of putting ‘uncontrollably violent’, Dan thinks. A perfect fit to put in the challenges section of a grant application. So Herbert wants to put party drugs in corpses to make them chill out. He wonders what they’ll do next, put on meditation music during reanimations? He feels a pang of longing for being stoned.

“Sure, okay, whatever,” Dan sighs. “Just write it down for me, please.”

***

The dealer, Patrick, is an asshole Dan treated three months ago after hazing went wrong-er than usual. He offered Dan an eight ball as a tip to keep the nature of his injury a secret and to instead log a regular slip-and-fall in the shower. Dan, feeling benevolent and familiar with embarrassing injuries, did as he asked, but refused the coke. He did take a number though, just in case.

Patrick's still in the fraternity that sent him to the ER, which Dan would love to judge, but he’s still friends with Herbert despite Herbert also having sent him to the ER through ill-advised schemes. Patrick insisted on doing the deal in the house, which feels decidedly less shady and scummy than the under-the-bridge setup Dan has been imagining, but Dan has not missed frat houses. The body odor emanating from every single piece of furniture does however make him feel better about the state of his own house. He considers asking to see their fridge, swabbing it, and seeing if he can grow bleach-resistant mold from it. That would delight Herbert for sure.

Patrick laughs when Dan recites Herbert's request, barely stumbling over the phrase.

“You mean MDMA?” His smile is pissing Dan off, but it's not like he can do anything about it. Despite what Herbert thinks, he’s not exactly well connected. Patrick is truly their last resource. “Molly and Tina, it's a girl party, huh?”

“It's for research,” Dan says flatly. He doesn’t know what the hell Patrick means by girls party, but his reputation around town is bad as it is.“We're doing tests on the purity of street drugs.”

That's the cover story they have, at least, should the cops come sniffing. Dan's not fully convinced that it'd work; that's why he keeps a crisp hundred dollar bill in his wallet, perfect for bribery. It’s more delicate and carries less possible jail time than Herbert’s precaution, i.e. a gun.

“Suuure, bro, research, yeah,” Patrick laughs, again. Dan’s eyelid twitches. He gives Dan a once-over. “You could use some research, man.”

Dan has no illusions about looking hip. He's a busy guy, he can't be expected to keep up with fashion, but he did think that the polo shirt he dug up from the back of his closet was not outrageous, nor were the jeans. Life is unfair and miserable, and he’s letting a frat bro with a terrible bristly moustache poke fun at him, but he does secure the amphetamine and a couple colorful pills in dime baggies.

“Is that all?” Patrick asks, perfect customer service voice. Dan hesitates. He doesn’t want to spend any more time here than he has to, but dear god, he deserves a treat, doesn’t he?

“Do you have weed?”

“Yeah, man, of course I have weed,” Patrick scoffs, but he does go back to digging through this fishing tackle box. “Tina, Molly, and Mary Jane. Wow. Ladies’ man, huh? I’ll throw you half an ounce, free of charge, Doc.”

And then, he throws Dan a horrible wink.

***

Dan’s bong was tragically lost between moves. He has a suspicion that Herbert had something to do with it, the damned hypocrite, but a lot of things have gone missing during the move. Herbert has few possessions, outside of research materials, but about half of his collection of antique surgery implements was similarly lost, so maybe the bong just met a similar fate. Dan’s not going to bring it up, anyways.

Dan is still capable of rolling, maybe with not any exceptional skill, but enough to not get him laughed out of parties. It’s a headtrip to be hotboxing his bedroom, a Talking Heads tape spinning on low volume, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. It’s almost like he’s back in high school.

The weed is shit enough for it, certainly, no wonder Patrick was giving it away for free, but it’s been months since Dan’s smoked, so it doesn’t really matter. A joint and half an hour later, he’s coasting on a pleasant, fuzzy high that should get him sleeping any time now. He’s not some horrible insomniac, but he’s missed the ease with which he can get comfortable. He wonders if that’s how life is for cats.

“Dan, we have a gas leak,” Herbert informs him as he goes into the room, not even bothering to knock. Not necessarily an indication of urgency; for all the insistence on privacy at the start of their cohabitation, Herbert has long forgotten to return the same courtesy to Dan. In this case though, Dan can acknowledge that a gas leak is kind of serious, but he can’t smell anything.

Dan cracks his jaw in a yawn, sits up groggily. Herbert’s got his fists balled up, back ramrod straight, practically vibrating. He looks kind of funny like this, clearly losing his shit but wanting to emanate a sense of rational calm.

“Really?” Dan sniffs again. Maybe the weed is drowning out the smell. Maybe his nap was going to be a forever one. No, he can’t think about that, can’t freak himself out. He’s not letting Herbert ruin his high. “You smell gas?”

“Well,” Herbert drawls, shuffling his feet a bit. “No. But my olfactory capacity is limited, as I’m sure you’re aware. But! I am sleepy.”

Dan sighs, and relents. Herbert has ruined his nose by inhaling far too much formaldehyde; to be honest, Dan’s amazed that that’s the extent of the damage. He drags himself out of bed, walks around the upper floor of the house, sniffs around, Herbert following in his wake. He doesn’t smell jackshit. Besides, he realizes, there’s no gas installation in the house. Their heaters are electric, and so is the stove; when they bought the house, they had to rip out the old appliances original to the house, because Dan drew the line at shovelling coal to keep warm. Herbert should know this. Is this just an attempt at ruining Dan’s evening off? Dan wouldn’t put it past him, but there’s some genuine anxiety to the drag of Herbert’s feet, the curl of his shoulders.

“Maybe you’re just sleepy,” Dan says, already starting to walk back to his room. He doesn’t want to be having this conversation. He wants to curl up to have a nap, and perhaps investigate the depths of their freezer for pizza later. Herbert’s bullshit should not interfere in these plans, though that’s a foolish hope. Herbert has a way of interfering with everything in Dan’s life. “How long have you been up?”

“I got sleepy suddenly,” Herbert counters, rather than admit that the answer is probably way past the advisable timeframe. He’s still following Dan. Dan doesn’t want to shut the door in his face, but he really wants to actually use the benefits to sleep, instead of arguing with Herbert at half brain capacity. “Cohesive with carbon monoxide poisoning.”

“Carbon monoxide is heavier than air, it would not get up all the way here,” Dan reminds him, eyes rolling up in exasperation. Oh. The vents between their bedrooms are shared. “Shit, my bad. I hotboxed my room, it must have floated over to yours. You’ll be fine, just sleep it off.”

“Sleep?” Herbert scoffs. “Dan, I had plans.”

“Night shift?” Dan asks. He doubts that Herbert has one, because they take the same ones, so it must be the lab work, but double-checking never hurts. He’s giving up on getting Herbert to leave, so he just slinks back under the covers. Cozy and warm, pleasantly heavy across his limbs. He rubs his legs together and sighs. Incredible.

“Real work, Daniel,” Herbert protests. Ohhh, full name. Truly the high school experience. Dan snorts a laugh and buries himself deeper underneath the covers. He’s so cozy. God, cats have it so good. “I was going to check response times in tissue depending on decay.”

“Okay,” Dan says, turning his back to Herbert. Like with most things concerning Herbert, he can’t do anything about it, so he resolves to ignore it. It would be nice, he thinks, if Herbert were to join him, to drape his body over Dan’s as an added blanket, for once not as a shock-preventive measure but just for the simple joy of it, maybe pet Dan’s hair a little on top of it, but that’s a pipe dream. Herbert is Herbert. “You go do that.”

                                                ***

He wakes up well-rested for once, and pads down to the kitchen. It’s six a.m. and he’s feeling chipper. Wow. He hasn’t felt that way since Herbert moved in, even when he did manage to drag himself out of the house to do a jog around the neighborhood. Well, around the graveyard now. He sets the coffee brewing while humming a tune that’s been stuck in his head, one commercial jingle or another. He opens the fridge, set on making a good, nutritious breakfast for once, and gapes.

The shelves are almost bare. Dan knows that he tends to fall behind on grocery shopping, and Herbert’s habits when it comes to the trivial, life-sustaining purchases such as groceries or toothpaste has crossed the line from frugal into pathologic a long time ago, but things haven’t gotten this dire in a long while. He forages three measly strips of bacon, thin cut, two eggs that he prays haven’t gone bad yet, and the empty wrapper of a stick of butter. In the crisper drawer, he finds a sprouting half of an onion, and take-out sauce packets, and not much else. There’s half a jug of milk left. He tries to recall when the last time he went grocery shopping was, and expects to come up blank, but no, he remembers that it was last Saturday. On Friday, a highway pile-up came into the ER, and they—meaning Dan—dragged three full bodies home, and Dan sprained something in his back. In the morning, Herbert made him pick up extra bleach after his shift, to get the blood out of the carpet, and Dan decided to stock up on food as well, to look less suspicious.

“Herbert, I think we may have raccoons,” Dan calls out into the house as he gets started on making some scrambled eggs. An investigation of the cupboards rewards him with the butt ends of a loaf of bread and some crumbs. It will have to do. By now, Herbert should be up and about, even if he did deign to sleep, and not just coast through the night in the lab, but no response comes. Dan pauses. “Herbert?”

He plates up his eggs, and coffee mug in hand, goes to investigate. The lab is empty, as is the living room. The downstairs bathroom, which Herbert claimed as his own after Dan refused to share the upstairs one, is unoccupied as well, and when Dan swings the door open, no condensation lingers on the mirror. Dan frowns. It can’t be. No, surely, Herbert must have gotten up even earlier. Maybe a call from the hospital came, promising something interesting like removing shrapnel from a skull or maybe even a chance to assist in neurosurgery. But just to be sure, Dan creeps back upstairs, but instead of going for the first door, he chooses the second.

Despite Herbert’s continued invasions of his privacy, Dan has not been returning the favor, though less of any kind of respect or good will, and more out of self-preservation. With middling success, Dan has done his best to impress onto Herbert the kind of common sense rules he thinks a man in his thirties wouldn’t need laid out for him, such as “wipe your feet before you go on the carpeted upstairs, because getting blood out of carpet is hard” or “do not leave dirty dishes—including lab glass that housed specimens—because we will get mold.” But Herbert liked to keep watch over his—sometimes in a very literal sense—pet projects, the kind of things that Dan doesn’t understand nor would want to, like mold colonies grown on brain tissue, which show some sentience, or odd assemblies of limbs that can skitter around like a spider.

Still, things must progress, so Dan gathers his wits, braces himself for an attack, be it from an escaped pet project or Herbert himself, and swings the door open. The room is dark, curtains drawn. There’s a lingering scent of damp, just like the rest of the house, though intensified by the staleness of the room. Herbert’s nowhere to be seen. Dan’s hackles rise.

Out of all of Herbert’s childish, immature, mean-spirited habits, Dan hates his juvenile “pranks” the most. Dan’s nervous system has yet to return to baseline sensitivity; every time it feels like his nerves are less on the fritz, a new horror breaks afresh from the lab to make him jumpy. Herbert has no consideration for Dan’s nerves, just like he has no consideration for Dan’s privacy. He will hide in the dark and jump out like a deranged jack-in-the-box at every opportunity. Even if Dan doesn’t get gotten by an errant experiment, he’s still likely to expire before forty, from a heart attack.

He holds his breath for one Mississippi, two Mississippis, three… But nothing leaps out at him. Dan eyes the lump on Herbert’s bed. If there’s a trap to disarm in this room, it’s here.

“Herbert?” He hisses. No answer. Cautiously, he prods at the lump. A grumble reaches his ears, though muted by the pillow. Something beneath the sheets wriggles, so Dan leans back, but it’s just a foot, black-socked, though the sock is worn through on the heel and on the toe cap. Fascinated, Dan watches it push against the mattress, the toes spreading until the big toe peeks out from a hole, and then contracting, another sleepy grumble coming from the pile. It is, Dan thinks reluctantly, rather sweet, like a cat stretching mid nap.

Herbert is asleep.

The realization almost knocks Dan flat on his ass. As carefully as he came, he leaves the room, giddy. He digs into his eggs and considers the matter. Of course Herbert would be light-weight, but it was just a contact high. Yeah, Dan did hot-box his own room, but Herbert’s bedroom is connected to the rest of the house, too. But were Herbert on the tail end of a reagent high, about to crash, then maybe— Maybe this was a soft cushion for him to land on. And, Dan thinks as he mops up the remains of his eggs with the butt end of the bread, maybe they don’t have raccoons either. Maybe, despite all of Herbert’s grumbling about weed being for useless burnouts, there are some merits to it. It’s just about making Herbert see it.

By the time Herbert emerges an hour later, oddly loose-limbed, a plan has formed in Dan’s mind.

He has to time it carefully. Herbert keeps his injections regular, 5CCs biweekly, but that’s just one of the factors to consider. They cannot have an ongoing experiment in the lab—not that Dan himself would feel great about being high with a ticking time bomb in the basement—because Herbert will not be dragged away from that, not for love or money. They cannot have a shift the next day. Herbert must be creeping up towards withdrawals, but not so closely that it makes him disagreeable and grumpy. Really, Dan thinks as he watches the dubious mass that once used to be a person rise from the autopsy table, this is far more advanced than any kind of scheduling they do in the lab. The thought to apply similar standards to their actual work fleets through his mind briefly, but then is immediately discarded in favor of blind panic when the mass rears back to strike.

He does get his opportunity eventually, though. It’s been a slow week at the hospital. No bodies to steal, just a measly pair of kidneys and a post-fireworks accident detached pinky, which Dan gagged while bagging up. Nevertheless, it’s not enough even for one of Herbert’s creations, so nothing should intrude. Herbert keeps his injection schedule private, on account of all the “nagging” Dan does, i.e. being entirely reasonable about not liking his roommate injecting research chemicals roughly every other week, but Dan knows the signs. The irritability, the muscle spasms, the yawning: all there, to the point of Dr. Harrod snapping and telling Herbert to take a cool five before he can assist in surgery again.

By the time he gets off work, he’s practically giddy. He sets up shop on the couch in the living room, bold as brass, right where Herbert’s eyeline ought to fall as he’ll emerge from the basement, kidneys and pinky put on ice. It’s almost like preparing the work bench for an experiment, he reasons as he sets out his tray and rolling papers, so Herbert should at least appreciate it from that perspective.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

“Stinking up the house again?”

Dan smiles wanly, and swallows the comment about how he’d take weed smoke over formaldehyde and decay any day. He is being gracious and showing good will about this. He will not be tricked into a petty argument. Besides, he remembers, it’s not like Herbert can actually smell it; he’s just being ornery on principle.

“Just relaxing.”

Herbert eyes him contemptuously, lip furling, clearly raring up into a rant about the evils of marijuana as if possessed by Nancy Regan. His spine is straight as a ruler, and between the glasses and the Mormon outfit, Dan gets a flash of every single afterschool special he’s had to sit through. Of course, the notion of him being a corrupting influence on Herbert is ridiculous. If anything, it’s the other way around, Dan justifies. The similarity is in superficial aesthetics only. Really, he thinks, if anything, he’s being a good influence right now. Herbert will eat, sleep through the night, and perhaps the stick up his ass will dislodge enough to stop the tension headaches Herbert pretends don’t exist.

“I thought you might like to join me this time.”

Dan pats the couch encouragingly. He’s cool. He’s chill. He would like his roommate and friend to have better lifestyle hygiene than a feral raccoon, and if getting him stoned up to his eyeballs is the way to do it, he shall bear that burden.

Herbert sniffs, offended. “I do not need to relax,” he says, tensely. “I am perfectly fine.”

Dan chews his lip.

He cannot sell it as a therapy. Herbert’s beliefs on what counts as science (e.g. surgical interventions, MRIs, and bi-weekly supplementation of a 5% solution of the reagent) and what counts as drivel (e.g. good bedside manner improving patient outcomes, any kind of vitamin supplements, dentistry, and the whole field of psychology) is firmly set. All of Dan’s attempts at changing Herbert’s mind, even on a matter as simple as a toothache, have resulted in Herbert giving him a pitying look. Even if Dan had concrete evidence on hand, Herbert has already made-up his mind about the matter. Besides, if the incident last year when Herbert got the flu is anything to go by, Dan should not be gunning to get Herbert as a patient either way.

Dan manages to mask his shudder into a casual shrug. Time for a radically new approach. Herbert may like to present himself as a rational if not cool-headed scientist, detached from other people’s opinions, but Dan knows better. It’s a low play, the kind of moronic peer pressure that shouldn’t work beyond grade school, but desperate times call for drastic measures: “I thought it may be nice to hang out, as friends. I’ve missed you.”

“Is that so?” Herbert’s eyes practically flash with interest as he chews the words out. Dan shrugs again, trying to seem put out. He’s not a great actor by any means, but there’s a lot riding on this. And there is some truth to it, even if he feels scummy for stretching it like this—he does like spending time with Herbert, God help him. He’s never claimed to have great self-preservation instincts.

“Yeah, I mean…” Dan drifts off, wipes his face in such a way that may cause Herbert to imagine a sniffle instead of a snicker. “But it’s okay, I can pack up. Maybe I can find a different smoking buddy.”

“Please,” Herbert scoffs. He’s practically vibrating with the tension, all muscles taut, and starting to slowly inch towards the couch, hands flexing, as if prepared to grab onto Dan should he flee. Bingo. Dan bites down on his cheek to stop his lips from curling up. “Who would that even be? I can’t imagine that there would be many takers. We’re professionals.”

“Actually, Ernest—you know Ernest? From the morgue—has invited me over to smoke before,” Dan corrects. It’s not even a lie, even if Dan has no desire to follow up on the invitation. Truthfully, Dan is far less social than Herbert assumes him to be,

 “We’ve seen each other around at parties back in M1. He’s chill. It’s fine, I can go call him up, I’m sure he’s free—”

Time for the finishing move to really sell his commitment. Dan rises from the couch slowly, telegraphing the motion in a way so exaggerated that anyone with more social graces than Herbert would immediately clock it as a bluff. Herbert, though, falls for it immediately, hook, line and sinker. With a yelp, he materializes at Dan’s side with a pitiful pout bowing his pink lips.

“There’s no need for that,” Herbert clips out. “No, I don’t think that’s wise. Who knows what you may babble out in an inebriated state. No, that’s not wise at all. If that’s what it takes, I shall… participate, just this once.”

“Really?” Dan asks with all the Gee, me? Out of all the geeks? that he can muster. It’s much harder to slip into this mindset as a grown man rather than a pimply teen, but Herbert’s blind when his own ego is concerned. Case in point: Herbert preens, neck stretching like a sunflower stalk following the sun, pink lips curving into a smug smirk. Let him think he won. “Thanks, Herbert.”

“Of course, we will have to make up for the lost lab time later,” Herbert continues. He settles on the couch, prim and proper, warm thigh pressed against Dan’s. Distractingly close, almost, but Dan’s had time to grow used to Herbert’s nonexistent idea of personal space by now. If Dan was pressed—though who would press him about this matter, he cannot say—he would say that it’s almost pleasant, the unwavering, curious presence. It helps that he’s had Herbert’s gaze on his hands in situations with far higher stakes than just rolling a joint, but he makes sure to be extra careful nonetheless. A heart rolled into the catch, a tight pack, a perfect seal on the rolling paper. Herbert’s eyes track that as well, following Dan’s hands up to his mouth, focused on the flash of Dan’s tongue. It’s fine. It’s normal. Herbert’s just a curious guy. There’s no reason for Dan’s neck to be heating up. It’s just two good buddies smoking. Nothing weird about that.

“Perhaps you ought to call your little girlfriend and let her know you won’t make it this weekend.”

Dan looks up at Herbert, honestly confused. He’s about to protest that there’s no girlfriend, but his words dry up in his mouth. Herbert’s gaze is laser focused, as intense as the heat of a surgical lamp. Dan shudders for no reason at all. Actually, no he’s shuddering because that gaze is usually directed at a wet specimen or a DOA rolling by on a stretcher. It’s only natural to be uncomfortable. Still, it’s good that Herbert is paying attention; he’s in, he’s committed, he’s going to go through with it.

Dan clears his throat, hands off the joint to Herbert. Their fingers brush, and something tickly like static zings up Dan’s spine. It’s no big deal. Their hands have brushed before. Hell, he’s grabbed Herbert bodily to haul him away from danger, pulled on his wrists to get him the fuck out of dodge. They’ve sewn each other up. This is nothing. Still, he feels compelled to clear his throat again.

“You should get the honors,” he explains, waving his hand as if to summon a better explanation out of thin air. Nervous sweat gathers on his hairline. He pretends to pat his pockets for a lighter and surreptitiously wipes his palms on his jeans. For good measure, he pats his thighs once more, and then makes a production of noticing the lighter right by the rolling tray, hands that off too, this time making sure to give Herbert ample space to grab on. There. “You know, hit the green and all.”

“I see,” Herbert says, but the expression on his face suggests that he does anything but see. His fingers are clamped around the catch like it’s a specimen of dubious freshness. Dan is not one to use all those five dollar words—he made sure to promptly forget all the SAT vocabulary he’d hammered into his head to get into pre-med at Johns Hopkins as soon as he was secure in the blissful comforts of a STEM track—but he would say that Herbert is perplexed.

“You smoke it like a cigarette,” he says patiently. Herbert’s eyes bug out from behind his glasses. He’s still holding the joint how an ordinary person would hold a slimy worm, pinched between his index finger and his thumb with far too much force, arm outstretched. Dan blinks. Voice wavering, he decides to ask, “You do know how to smoke a cigarette, right?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Dan,” Herbert snaps. Dan raises his hands placatingly. Herbert always gets snippy when Dan questions him on common knowledge, though given his track record, Dan thinks that he ought to have a little humility. Herbert has put a frozen pizza into the oven still in the shrinkwrap foil before, and would have eaten it too, had Dan not run into the kitchen, alarmed by the acrid scent of burning plastic. “Of course I do.”

As to prove it, Herbert brings the joint to his mouth. His tongue darts out, makes contact with the paper. Dan swallows. The flint wheel of the lighter crackles, a wavering orange flame spouting forth. Herbert leans down into it. Dan’s holding his breath. It feels momentous. It feels like with the first inhale, Herbert will be irrevocably changed from a high-strung nerd, both irritable and irritating, and emerge as a cool, chill guy that has something resembling a circadian rhythm. Dan can almost taste the new life.

And then, Herbert gives a raucous salve of phlegmatic coughs, and Dan’s dreams shatter. He sighs, gives Herbert’s spasming back a cautious pat, like he used to do with Rufus whenever he struggled with a hairball. He doesn’t know what else he expected. Herbert brushes him off as soon as he regains some measure of composure; his eyes are bloodshot and a thread of thick saliva hangs from his pouting mouth. Dan winces, wipes it off with the edge of his sleeve with probably far too much care. Herbert is never this gentle when wiping the blood off Dan's face. Herbert sniffs pathetically.

“There you go, buddy,” Dan soothes, willing down the nasty smirk that’s threatening to float up onto his face. Herbert sends him a glare, but the effect is lessened by how evidently bruised his ego is. “Easy, now.”

“This is idiotic,” Herbert seethes, but raises the joint again, less boisterously. Even with the newfound temperance, he still starts hacking up a lung. Between gasps for air, he wheezes out, “and you find this relaxing?”

“No, okay—” Dan breaks, stealing the joint back. He has an idea, a squirmy, ill-advised one, one which is sure to blow up in his face, but he’s gone too far to abandon the venture now. He’s not going to get another chance, especially not after Herbert has nearly choked to death. “Not like this. I—”

He cannot make the words pass through his lips. It’s not like it’s going to be any worse than the things they’ve done to each other. Herbert won’t punch him. Herbert is weirdly tolerant of… certain things, for all of his other prejudices. But it’s not something done, not between buddies. He takes a hit, feels the burn of the smoke snaking down his anxiety-tight throat, the rush of an exhale fizzing through him. He tries again.

“It’s simple.” It’s clearly the wrong thing to say as Herbert bristles, bleary eyes squinting with suspicion. Dan swallows. “I will inhale for you, and just— baby bird it to you.”

“Baby bird it to me?” Herbert’s eyebrows have crept up above the wire frames of his glasses, lips bending with disgust. Dan’s cheeks burn. “Excuse me?”

“I’m explaining it wrong.” Dan groans and waves him off. There’s an easier explanation, but he doubts that Herbert will like it any better; Dan’s anxious hindbrain certainly doesn’t. Hey buddy, let’s just put our lips together— No, no contact necessary, ha, could you imagine? No, I certainly can’t. It’s not kissing, Herbert. But get real close to me, and look deep into my eyes— “Just, inhale when I exhale.”

And to stop himself from rambling on, he takes another lungful of the sweet, resinous smoke and lunges forward. He clamps his free hand on Herbert’s nape, right above the collar, lest Herbert thinks that Dan is going to throttle him. The skin under Dan’s palm is warm and sweat-damp, Herbert’s hair bristling against his fingers, but Dan can’t focus on it, can’t focus on the hitch in Herbert’s breath, can’t focus on the flip in his own stomach. He’s got one mission.

It can’t last more than a second or two, but to Dan, it feels like eternity: Herbert’s eyes widening, his nostrils flaring, the way his jaw drops, revealing the small, crooked teeth and the pink tongue balancing on them. With his heart racing, Dan opens his mouth, breathes out, slow, and, from half-lidded eyes, watches the thick smoke curl between their faces and then disappear as Herbert inhales.

Dan’s head swims as he pulls back. It can’t possibly be the weed, but what else could it be?

“Good?” Dan asks. He almost doesn’t recognize his own voice, rough and low, so he clears his throat. Herbert is looking at him in some type of way, as he tends to do, but this type of keen observation is different from Herbert’s usual estimations of whether Dan can be bribed into digging up that fresh burial, and what exactly it will take. This is, Dan realizes with a shiver, Herbert working something out, like a tricky chemistry equation or what procedure a patient requires. Dan needs to get him high enough to shut off the higher reasoning part of his brain, expeditiously.

Herbert blinks owlishly, slowly. “Acceptable.”

“Then let’s do it again,” Dan says, and before he can chicken out, pulls in another lungful.

It gets easier with each consecutive hit. Shotgunning forces Dan’s breath to slow, the stress dissipating on each exhale. By the third one, the feeling of being chased fades away; by the fifth, his mind has blanked almost entirely, just focused on the sensation of the soft couch, the warmth by his side, the buzz in his skin. His eyes flutter closed, weighed down by the creep of the high. Herbert, too, grows lax in his hold. The rigid tendons underneath Dan’s fingers soften, the neck bowing forward. There’s a warm pressure of a palm pressing into his shoulder, and a burning thigh seeping through the denim of his pants. Herbert is close. That should worry Dan, but he can’t summon up the capacity to care. He’s just… content.

Dan is still content when Herbert sways forward. When their lips brush. It’s not a big deal, honestly. It’s natural with close quarters and loopiness, and it’s barely a touch. Dry, momentary, barely anything. Not unpleasant, or, or… Dan’s thoughts run syrupy as he sucks on the joint. Hell, his high brain supplies, it’s nice. Herbert has always had nice lips, hasn’t Dan always thought that? Plush and obscenely pink, whether bending into an offended pout or into a smug smirk. Dan has thought about them a lot. The barometer of Herbert’s moods, the proverbial heart on Herbert’s sleeve. (Better than the literal alternative—he smothers the idea before Herbert can catch wind of it and add it to the experiment schedule.)

Look. Dan likes kissing. There’s just something about being this close to another person, to the press of lips, to figuring out the individual rhythm and pressure, the rumble of a pleased noise in a connected chest. It’s just… nice. He’s kissed a lot of people in his life, some important, some not, but even if the relationship ended up a disappointment, he’s never regretted a kiss. So, it’s instinctual, really, when Dan presses back. It’s a force of habit to turn that brush into something lingering, something slower.

Kissing Herbert is different from kissing other people, but of course it would be. It’s Herbert. Everything would be different with him. But it’s not a bad different, not exactly, even if Herbert lips are clumsy and tense, more so pecking back than actually engaging, even if Dan can feel stubble on the cheek beneath his palm, even if Dan’s not high enough to forget that it’s probably a terrible idea. And then Herbert’s teeth bump into Dan’s, painful and clacking. Dan hisses and pulls away. Fuck.

“Wait a second,” Dan mutters. “Just… Herbert, wait just a goddamn second.”

He unglues his heavy lids to re-orient himself, and his breath gets stuck in his chest. His head is spinning, and the pain in his teeth is radiating upwards into his sinuses, and this is a terrible fucking idea, possibly the worst he’s ever had, even worse than the time he snuck Herbert into the morgue on the gurney, but he’s always been a little bit stupid outside of a classroom, and… And Herbert looks so pretty like this, with his dark lashes splayed on his rosy cheeks beneath the smudged glasses and with his dark hair mussed and touchable, looking rumpled and wound up and so, so different from the rigor mortis stiff ornery man Dan has had time to grow tired of. It’s a terrible idea. This is not what Dan had in mind, obviously. He has never thought about it before, even, cross his heart and hope to die. But then Herbert tongue flashes out, wets his plush bottom lip, curious and a little shy, and Dan has honestly never considered it before but now that he has, he simply cannot think of anything else.

So, what else is there for Dan to do but to balance the still smoldering joint on the rim of the ashtray and kiss Herbert properly? With a gentle hand, he cups Herbert’s cheek to angle his jaw better. No more bumped teeth. No, this should be nice, nice and easy. It’s not one of Herbert’s experiments to require overthinking. Even in this, Herbert proves to be a good student. His frame softens, melts into Dan’s as Dan pets down his jaw, and the kiss changes from a stumble into a lazy dance. Dan shivers, skin breaking out in goose bumps. His hunch was right: they can just fit together, as natural as their workflow in the lab.

Herbert sighs and then his bony hand is clawing into Dan’s sweater to pull him even closer; shoulder tight against shoulder, thigh against thigh. There’s some kind of desperation right beneath it, the very same kind that’s making Dan’s breathing speed up, but Herbert won’t deepen the kiss. It’s just the same dry press of lips, tingling down Dan’s spine, but no escalation beyond the pressure against his shoulder increasing as Herbert shoves himself forward. Does Herbert not want it? Does he think that Dan doesn’t? But why the bodily contact, then? Why cling like this? Is it just to tease? Or…

Or does Herbert not know how to?

Dan’s head spins. It’s a ridiculous idea. Of course Herbert would know how to kiss. Of course. They’re not clumsy teenagers, even if Dan’s mature higher reasoning took a hike, leaving him with nothing but the same moronic sensory-seeking part that would get him into trouble in high school. Of course Herbert has kissed people. But… The hand Dan has in the bristles of Herbert’s hair clenches as he inhales sharply with the realization. But, he thinks as he sinks his hand into the short hair on the back of Herbert’s head, who would be kissing Herbert? Herbert, who is prickly and stiff and rude, and who has no friends, who has never glanced at a woman beyond assessing her as a future corpse. No, this is yet another thing that Dan will have to teach him, another first for Dan to claim as his own.

That thought starts a fire deep in his belly; the kiss is no longer something mechanical, something instinctual, done on rote—no, now Dan needs to kiss Herbert, and kiss him thoroughly enough to make him shiver and gasp, to see just how Herbert’s flesh will give under his palms. He swipes a tongue along the tight seam of Herbert’s lips, at first gently, carefully, just how he would treat a first date—but then even with his thoughts running slow, he knows it’s still Herbert. Slow and gentle will make Herbert bristle under perceived condescension. Besides, the excited thrum under Dan’s skin demands a swift course correction.

He pushes harder, his free palm coming to rest on Herbert’s jaw, pressing his thumb right beneath the cheekbone, until Herbert gives with a gasp. The inside of Herbert’s mouth is blazing hot, tasting faintly of smoke. He seems to not be quite sure of what to do with his tongue or lips or anything at all, but it’s okay, Dan can make it good for both of them. He brushes Herbert’s tongue with his own, flicks it at the hard palate, withdraws to suck in a lip; Herbert grunts, seems to try to replicate—so Dan does it all over again, unrushed but consistent, as purposeful as he can make it. Here, this is how to apply pressure; this is how to worry the flesh with your teeth for a thrill; this is how to lick back without slobbering. The air between them grows heavy, their breaths short and tinged with sound; Herbert’s quiet, startled ahs and cut off groans, Dan’s own rumbling groans. Dan’s head spins, only half with the high. The hair under his hand slides easily, the cheek in his palm is pleasantly rough with stubble; smoother on each downstroke of his thumb, prickly and coarse on the upstroke. There’s no urgency here, just a languid, simmering warmth, pleasant as a hot bath or a summer afternoon.

But Herbert is pliant under his touch, and Dan’s always been a tactile guy when high. For want of a Rubik’s cube or a beaded curtain to run his hands through, he settles on Herbert’s shoulders and arms. The shirt he’s wearing is woven, the fabric slightly bumpy, a touch cooler than the flesh. The tie is silken, fantastic to rub between his fingers in a smooth slide. The knot comes apart surprisingly easily. Herbert’s waist is small, but even smaller once Dan squeezes his hands around it. Not quite small enough for his fingers to touch, but just the possibility of it makes Dan huff out a heavier breath, the warmth surging from a simmer to a boil. He could hold Herbert like this, haul him up and over, into his lap, Herbert’s thighs astride his own, see how it would feel to be trapped beneath the solid warmth. How it would feel to add the slight burn of friction to the wet slide of their mouths. The belt on Herbert’s waist is leather, tougher and even colder, with cracks around the tongue grooves. Dan can’t quite pull it out of the buckle, but he keeps on running his hands around it, squeezing where he can, smooth leather against the rough, itchy wool of the slacks, cool metal of the buckle against skin heat radiating over the fabric. His palms burn for skin on skin contact, but frustrated tugging yields no results. Herbert’s shirt stays firmly tucked. But this is not bad either; the flesh still gives beneath the fabric, and the contrast of textures trips up his stoned mind in the best way. He slides over the hard jut of hipbones right beneath that line, pets over the slight softness of the stomach, so different to the smooth expanse of Herbert’s back, and squeezes the hint of ass he can get his hands on. God, he can’t believe that no one’s ever done this before, that no one has grabbed Herbert, pulled him close, that no one has heard just what little noises he can make.

Herbert’s breath hitches and his teeth catch on Dan’s lip, too hard to be pleasant, but Dan moans anyways. Loud, reverberating in his throat, much higher-pitched than any sound he’s ever made. He blinks, startled, and leans back. It’s not a sound he makes, but it’s not a situation he finds himself in, anyways, so what would he know? The smoke has had time to dissipate, but his vision won’t uncloud. Herbert is panting mutely on the couch, barely upright, cheeks as red as Dan has ever seen them, eyes still closed. His lips shine with spit, swollen and redder than their usual pink from the kisses. His tie is undone, shirt collar askew, and his hair looks like he got the short end of the stick after a particularly unfortunate experiment. His glasses, though still on, are barely holding on, askew and right on the upturned tip of Herbert’s nose, clouded and smudged. He looks fucked out, Dan thinks, horrified. Dan’s dick disagrees though, giving a near painful throb. Oh fuck. He’s hard, harder than he can remember being in a long time, and it’s all because of Herbert.

Herbert, oblivious to Dan’s debacle, giggles dumbly from his slouch on the couch, rubs at his eyes. Dan’s head spins as he tries to reorient himself. What the hell is he doing? He just made out with Herbert fucking West. Dear God. His mouth dries up in an instant, heart speeding up to an anxious pitter-patter. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Dan swallows. He can salvage this. He just needs to distract Herbert. Give him something to focus on, something that’s not the tent in Dan’s jeans or the creeping dread visible plain as day on his face.

He dives for the TV remote with the desperation of a drowning man who just saw a life preserver. In three clicks, he finds something calm and sedate: a nature documentary. There, Herbert likes those, or at least likes complaining about them. For what feels like eternity, he watches a snail creep along a leaf. There. As long as he keeps his eyes trained straight ahead, as long as he focuses on the antennae and the mucus and the dulcet tones of the narrator, he can pretend that this is normal. He will not look at Herbert. He will not think about the puffy lips, nor about the whiny exhales, not even about the slim waist, so fucking grabbable—

“This one looks like you,” Herbert snorts between a fit of giggles. His forehead thumps heavy against Dan’s shoulder, breath misting hot and damp over Dan’s clavicle. Dan’s traitorous cock jerks in his pants again, zipper cutting in painfully. He swallows his hiss.

“The one with the brown shell,” Herbert adds in a wheeze, practically choking on the words. Dan nods, mute with terror. All the snails have brown shells. This clears up nothing. At the edge of his vision, Herbert's hand extends, finger pointing to the appropriate mollusk, but Dan won't get tricked like that. Oh no. He's not looking.

And then Herbert giggles again, shoulders shaking hard enough to thrum through Dan as well. Dan can’t laugh along, though. He unwinds himself carefully, angling his hips away. He’s on a mission. He will get away. There’s a refuge in the kitchen, far away from Herbert’s clever eyes and pink lips and slim waist. He only turns back once he’s securely behind a doorframe and yells, “The munchies are hitting! I’m gonna get some food!”

Dear God, please help him.

The kitchen holds no answers, but it feels safer anyways. Dan tries to calm his heart as he wanders listlessly from cabinet to cabinet. Food. He needs food, and water, and to not be so fucking high anymore. Fuck. He groans again, runs his hands through his hair. There, that’s good and grounding, tingly and tactile in just the right way. He pulls, just a bit, just to get that sting to ground himself more, to feel where his body ends, but all it does is remind him about his erection. Now, if Herbert were the one to do it, would he know how to grip instinctively, or would it be another thing for Dan to teach him—? But why would Dan want Herbert to do it, anyways. This whole thing was a mistake, a high, dumb mistake. Dan doesn’t want Herbert to pull his hair or to kiss him, or— Actually, Dan should stop listing all the things he doesn’t want Herbert to do. Just to be safe. Just not to jinx it. He does, however, adjust himself in his pants, traps the erection against his waistband. There, all better. Out of sight, out of mind. Food. Focus, Cain.

There’s a soda in the fridge, one of Herbert’s nasty diet 7-Ups, already open with carbonation gone flat, but it’s pleasantly cold as Dan gulps it down. He sticks the empty can to his burning cheeks, and continues his search. Not much in the fridge, as usual. There’s a pizza place takeout menu still stuck to its door, but last time, they refused to deliver, thinking that the cemetery address was a prank. Besides, Dan’s not really feeling up to facing other people right now. From the closest cabinet at his eye-level, he pours a bowlful of Herbert’s sugary, tooth-rotting cereal. No milk. Something chalky and crunchy for the weirdo.

From the depths of the freezer, between a sad attempt at meal prep and a zip-loc bag with dubious contents inside (meat? experiment components? Dan cannot tell, and cannot think about it too hard at the moment without nausea swaying him), he unearths a pizza. He squints at the cardboard packaging. The instructions seem simple enough: preheat the oven, take the foil off, stick it in for fifteen minutes. Okay. Plenty of time to get re-acquainted with reality. He can follow simple instructions, give his hands something to focus on.

Oven set on, Dan sticks his head underneath the tap. He gulps down handful after handful of the metallic, mineral-tinged water, letting it run down his chin and neck. Dear God, if you let me sober up, he thinks with a desperation he hasn’t felt since bargaining to survive the gut wound in Peru, I swear I will never do drugs again. I will straighten out. I promise. His words fall on deaf ears though; as he sways upwards, the dry, cotton feeling in his mouth returns, skin tingling spitefully. He slides down onto the floor in a rather pathetic heap. At least the tiles are radiating a soothing, grounding cold.

What was that, actually. He's never thought about kissing another man in his life. Well—that’s not strictly true. But before, the thoughts came with a blaring red alarm going off in Dan’s head, the same way thinking about touching a hot stove or seeing if the reagent really does taste like a lemon-lime soda. The kind of brief insanity that everyone experiences, and then shakes off with a shudder; brains testing boundaries when bored, poking at things the way toddlers shove whatever they can into their mouth. And yet— He liked it. He liked it a lot, which is part of the problem. It would have been one thing to act on instinct, put his hand on the proverbial stove and jerk away with a hiss of pain. But no. The stove sure was hot, but in a way that Dan failed to anticipate. He would, if he’s willing to have a rare moment of honesty with himself, want to touch it again. He puts his face into his hands and groans.

The oven dings. Pre-heating done. Dan actually has very little idea of what pre-heating an oven accomplishes, but unlike Herbert, he is content to follow the instructions. Not every authority needs to be questioned, even if it comes in the form of an anonymous list on the back of a cardboard box, which is unpleasantly damp with melting frost. Dan was always a pleasure to have in class. Dan can follow instructions. He’s a good assistant. Herbert doesn’t appreciate that enough. With a world-heavy sigh, the type given by a family dog on its last legs, Dan gets up off the dingy floor, and, heroically remembering to take the plastic off the frozen pizza, sets it into the oven. Then, he resumes his slump on the floor.

It has to be the weed. The thought floats through his mind with a stunning clarity. It's gotta be, that's the only explanation. The weed’s got something wrong with it. He’s heard of drug experiments on college campuses, shady agents from either side of the Iron Curtain trying to brain-wash kids. Secret agent shit. Perhaps he got a bad batch, a batch that’s meant to mess with his head. He doesn’t feel particularly taken with communism, but maybe they’ve got different strains. Communist Indica, Homosexual Sativa. Nothing is ever free, and no one ever does Dan a good turn. That’s the universal law. Thinking that he’d get half an ounce as a bonus was clearly delusional. It’s not the first time he’s ever had to admit to himself that he severely miscalculated, but it is perhaps the most humiliating. Dan rubs his face, presses the balls of his palms into the hollows of his eye sockets. He got Gay Weed hoisted off on him. Perhaps, this is exactly what he deserves.

Still, the thought of Gay Weed soothes something in him. It’s not his fault. Dan is normal. He is a regular, normal man, with a relationship to his roommate as regular and normal as it can be, given the circumstances. Being haunted by said roommate’s pink lips and thin waist and shiny eyes and clever hands is, really, no different than being haunted by said roommate’s experiments or deranged giggles. The rest of the effects, which are on the way to dissipating, are just a result of the Gay Weed. It has nothing to do with Dan in his sober state. Okay.

But, he thinks, staring at the grime crusted into the grout of the kitchen tiles, listening to the said deranged giggles drifting in from the living room, it does mean that he is currently in possession of a pass for the gay thoughts. On account of the Gay Weed. It’s a startling position to find himself in. Dan has never ever in his life had a pass on gay thoughts before. Despite his current predicament, he was a man capable of a great deal of self-restraint and discipline. There’s a box in the back of his mind where he shoves things he Cannot Think About; there go all of his doubts about the work, the throat-tickling nausea of an exploding specimen, the remnants of grief about Meg and about every patient he’s lost since. And, of course, the Thoughts About Herbert Which Are Neither Appropriate Or Productive. The box, by now, is bulging. It’s so tempting to poke at it with his freshly appointed pass, and Dan’s self-restraint is limp, on account of the cotton mouth and the scent of baking pizza and the buzz in his skin.

He pokes at the box.

                                                ***

Herbert has been at the forefront of his thoughts from the very start.

It was not easy to ignore him, even if Dan wanted to try. And God, did he try. He would tell Meg that Herbert was easy to ignore, that he was no bother, that Dan could be normal still. In most respects this was true. Most people could ignore Herbert, or have feelings no more complicated about him than simple annoyance at his arrogance. Even now, with Herbert having seeped into every aspect of Dan’s life, with his thoughts softened by the high, Dan can admit that separating himself from Herbert would take much less effort than he likes to say it would. Ultimately, he did choose to help Herbert relax—he did want to spend more time with him—and, tomorrow, he will follow Herbert down into the basement, to work on another corpse that will not rise correctly. That is his lot in life.

But Herbert did stick out to him. Even before Herbert claimed himself as the master of life and death with the grandiosity of a stage magician, he was magnetic. Like a cut-out from an old movie, celluloid thin, all stark contrast and clipped consonants, drawing Dan’s eyes to himself again and again. He did not invite touch, but Dan thought about it. Oh boy, did he think about it. In the abstract: would Herbert be cold to the touch, like the morgue? Just how expensive were the suits he wore? Would they feel thin and threadbare around the elbows, on the knees? What could’ve made a man into a creature like this, disagreeable and proud and so very alien? In the not-so-abstract: when Herbert, freshly moved in, emerged from his bedroom with his hair in disarray, Dan made an aborted move to smooth it out. Herbert jerked backwards, eyes shining with something that made the bottom of Dan’s stomach fall out, and Dan swore to never reach out first ever again.

In the first week of their co-habitation, Dan thought about Herbert a lot, even if he didn’t see him all that more often. Herbert made good on his promise: he was quiet, he did not hog the bathroom, he produced no dirty dishes. But he also made no overtures to socialize, not even to study or commute to campus together. The absent spaces seemed to only whet Dan’s curiosity, sharpening it into a point, something to play with and see just how far he could press before his skin broke and bled. During one of their last study dates, when Meg was already rigid and stiff with discomfort, Dan pressed that edge too far in.

“Do you think that Herbert is sexy?” he asked. He was trying to triangulate the reason for his fixation. Jealousy was a normal reason to be obsessed. Of course, he had no rational reason to fear Herbert; Meg loved him, that much he knew. Maybe she wasn’t ready to marry him, maybe she wasn’t ready to move in, but he knew that she loved him. Herbert, even with all of his academic prestige and mysterious lump sum of money and mystique, would not be a threat, as long as Meg loved him. He smiled wanly to communicate that fact.

Meg looked up from her notes with an expression as if Dan had asked her whether she often had mealworms and other assorted insects in her breakfast cereal. Dan tilted his head to show that yes, he was aware that the question is strange, but he would appreciate an answer either way.

“Not particularly, no,” she said, polite as always.

Dan nodded, lips pursed. He did not feel the knot of fixation lessen. That was worrying.

“I think he could have a certain… appeal,” Meg tried, noticing Dan’s distress. “But, Danny, he’s just so damn creepy. I don’t know. I don’t think any of my friends could get past that.”

Dan exhaled sharply, and latched onto the explanation like a drowning man. “Yes, okay. Sorry. I was thinking we could set him up, get him out of the house that way.”

He hadn’t been thinking of it at all. Instead, he had been thinking that Herbert’s hands were graceful, and that the mole above his top lip made it real hard to not stare at Herbert’s full mouth as he went on another diatribe in class, and that, really, maybe Herbert did look like a Mormon, but that there was something appealing about that, too. But now he knew that the thought was bad, so into the box it went.

And in the box it stayed, along with all the other stray observations, like the pink glimmer of Herbert’s freshly shaved jaw in Peru humidity, like the weight of his grip in Dan’s hand as he pulled them out of the morgue, not cold and corpse-like at all, and like the curve of his spine, sinuous even when Herbert stood ramrod straight. Like Herbert’s toes, sleepily wriggling out the hole in his sock, and like the fact that Dan knew for a fact that he could lift Herbert. And in the box, it would stay, only to be peeled open whenever Dan had the excuse of Gay Weed.

Naturally.

***

“What’s cooking, good looking?” Herbert sing-songs as he slides into the kitchen. He’s taken his shoes off, and is now gliding on the tiles in just his socks. There is, still, a hole on his toe. Dan has just enough time to think that his speed is considerable enough to be worrying before Herbert’s socket foot slams full-throttle with his ribs, and Herbert goes ass over teakettle, giggling all the while, all elbows and knees perfectly aimed to jab into all of Dan’s soft spots. With some delay, Dan groans from the floor.

“Pizza,” Dan wheezes, overwhelmed once more. “In the oven.”

At that, Herbert coos with interest, upturned nose flaring as he sniffs the air. Dan doubts that Herbert can actually smell the food, given his olfactory impairment, but it’s a nice show of participation. Then, Herbert spots the bowl of dry cereal on the counter and Dan can pinpoint the moment the thought processes for him, the glassy eyes widening, and his hand—slim-wristed, with bony knuckles, felt so nice petting Dan’s neck—shoots out to grab it.

As Herbert crunches down on the dry cereal, limbs still entangled with Dan’s, Dan tries to get his bearings back. Tries being the key word; it proves incredibly difficult. Herbert like this is a hapless, touchable human, Dan realizes sharply. He’s not just someone to have an intellectual debate with (that will inevitably devolve into a screaming match), he’s got a body that can be touched beyond shaking and throttling, a body that can react in ways beyond dope sick retching and malnutrition-induced shakes. The hands that create morbid doodles with many limbs, and are currently encrusted with sugar and crumbs, can wind through Dan’s hair. He can smell Herbert, something sweaty leaking through the layer of a pine cologne and sweet smoke, and feel the heat of Herbert’s skin beneath his thin shirt, far too close. Herbert’s legs are long for someone this short. Dan can feel the knobbly knees through the thin wool of Herbert’s slacks, which, in turn, means that he can imagine how these knees would feel squeezing around his waist, which, in turn, means that he’s back to being on the verge of a panic attack.

Dan wheezes a thin, strained breath. His heart hammers against his ribs in an insistent, clenching rhythm, a spindly cold shooting through the tips of his fingers and toes. This is bad. This is, in fact, terrible. More terrible than when he realized his roommate was willing to decapitate a man, and even worse than realizing that Dan apparently had it in him to hack a body that was a patient just minutes ago and carry them out of the hospital in a plastic bag labelled lunch. It’s a catastrophe. Every single of those after school PSAs were right. Weed does cause homosexuality, insanity, and possibly death. He sure feels like he’s going to die. He’s going to die, buried under Herbert’s lanky, knobbly legs, cereal crumbs all over him.

“Mollusks really are fascinating creatures, Dan,” Herbert meanwhile says, seemingly obvious to Dan’s agony. It’s a wonder; usually, he has a bloodhound’s nose for death. “Did you know that their mucin has fantastic regenerative properties? I have been thinking about it, the doodles usually have quite a lot of raw tissue exposed. Perhaps snail infusions could help…”

Herbert’s hands find their way back to Dan’s hair, playing with it idly. It’s not nice, not when Herbert’s fingers are sugar-sticky and he’s less petting and more rubbing the strands together, undoubtedly giving Dan even more split ends. Dan whines to communicate that h feels like a snail, thoughts slow and slimy, and Herbert is pouring salt on him. Herbert is killing him. He kicks his legs in a panic.

“Oh,” Herbert mutters, blinking. “Oh, Danny, are you alright?”

Dan wheezes. What does he say to that? No, Herbert, I am not alright, I will never be alright again, and it’s all your damn fault? He moans pitifully and hangs his head.

“I think I’m greening out.”

It’s the only acceptable explanation. Herbert frowns, and the hand in Dan’s hair stills.

“You do seem pale.”

Dan wants to say something snarky to that, like is that your medical opinion, Doctor West? but he cannot get the words out, on account of the fact that he’s dying. Herbert’s frown deepens, a pout joining it. Pink, shiny lips, puffy with kisses. Dan swallows thickly, tries to get his breathing under control.

And then, mercifully, Herbert is moving. The moment stretches for forever, neither of them possessing the adequate limb coordination for a smooth detangling, but Herbert is trying his damndest to not step on Dan any more. In a slow, unrelenting movement, like during surgery, Herbert manipulates them onto the floor into a less convoluted heap, having them lie side-by-side. Dan’s lungs inflate properly for the first time, oxygen rushing to his head like a geyser. But his liberation is only momentary; taking advantage of Dan’s sudden laxity, Herbert crawls back on top of him again, blanketing Dan with his body.

“Shhh…” Herbert says, spraying cereal crumbs everywhere. “Just breathe. Everything is okay. It’s fine. No one’s after us, Dan. We’re at home, in our kitchen.”

Oh. It’s the same protocol that Herbert used to initiate in Peru, when the shelling and the groans of the dying made Dan’s limbs leaden and his vision blurry. For once, Herbert is trying to help. Dan gives a bone-deep sigh, and relaxes into the embrace.

The floor is pleasantly cold. Even if the tiles are hard and starting to really dig into Dan’s hip and shoulder, that, too, is grounding in a way. Along his spine, Herbert is warm and heavy, present and alive. His breath mists over Dan’s nape. The panicked part of Dan’s brain wants to freak out over essentially spooning, but Dan now has the wits to tell it to shut up. It’s nice. He can focus on his own breathing, feel the push of his lungs against his ribcage on every inhale and the fall of his sternum on the exhale. Herbert’s hand is on his shoulder, squeezing gently, so Dan knows that he’s still there. Dan lets himself float in the bubble of relative peace.

As the thunder of his own heartbeat recedes, he becomes aware that Herbert is still talking. He has a nice voice, not too deep or too high, and he speaks clearly. Crisply, with enunciation careful enough that Dan, even with what feels like only half a working brain, can process it.

“...snails are underappreciated, really,” Herbert is saying. “Did you know that they have teeth, Danny? Little teeth on their tongues. Almost like the cats you like so much. But snails don’t scratch or bite or mess up lab equipment, do they? Useful creatures, not just garden pests. When I was a small child, I used to study them. Well, as much as a child can study anything, really.”

“You seem like the kind of kid who would pour salt on them to see what happens,” Dan mutters thoughtlessly. Even years on, he’s still not convinced that it wasn’t Herbert who killed Rufus, but it’s a moot point by now. Even if Herbert had killed the poor cat, he makes an alright replacement for it; warm, cuddly, prone to making messes and then refusing to apologize for it.

Though, Dan thinks as he flops onto his back, Herbert’s hair is not as soft as cat fur. It’s kind of bristly actually, coarse and spiky under his fingers, but Herbert nuzzles into the touch, just like Rufus used to. They tangle once more, Herbert’s head coming to rest on Dan’s now-steady chest. He’s kind of heavy, but in a good way. Dan can still breathe. It’s not constricting, just… a dull pressure, a sense of presence. Oftentimes, Dan feels like nothing in his life will stay. Things and people just slip through his fingers like smoke; the life he’d thought he’d have nothing more than a mirage now. But Herbert is solid, unmovable, always there, even if Dan would want him to scram. This time though, he wishes for no such thing.

“Well, that’s just part of the experiment. Observing the effects of a substance on a tissue sample,” Herbert says with a scoff, and then giggles. “Dan. Dan. Dan.”

“Yes?” Dan hums more than asks. He’s relaxed too much; his eyelids feel heavy. The couch calls back to him, even with its poor back support and worn cushions and being the place where he kissed Herbert West, that is to say, ruined forever and ever. But, since it’s ruined already, that means that it’s a guilt-free zone. He could cuddle up to Herbert. Maybe he could even go further than the innocuous barely-there spooning; he could shove his nose into Herbert’s neck, throw a leg over a bony hip, sling his arms around that slim neck, for once with no intention of throttling.

“Dan,” Herbert says once more, strangely solemn. “I think I was wrong.”

A hysterical laugh breaks out of Dan. He had never expected those words to pass through Herbert’s lips, and it only took getting Herbert stoned up to the gills to get them. Holy fuck. Herbert stares at him impassively, lips pursed, as if waiting out Dan’s fit, and that only makes it worse. Dan’s entire body is shaking, tears pressing at the corners of his eyes, stomach starting to cramp. Herbert’s face cracks, joining in on the giggling. Holy shit.

“What were you, ah, wrong about?” Dan eventually manages to wheeze out.

“The snails,” Herbert says, the giggles still tinting his voice. His lips are trembling with barely contained laughter, reddened eyes shining with mirth. Dan’s insides turn gooey and sweet, like the inside of a fudgy brownie. Oh, a brownie… He licks his lips. Fuck. Something sweet, or, no, something salty would kill right now. Oh, maybe they should do edibles next time— Oh, no, Herbert is still talking.

“You would not be an ordinary garden snail.”

What high praise. Ha, high praise, indeed. It sets Dan off again into a laughing fit, slumping right back into Herbert’s back, head lolling onto the bony shoulder. High praise. High praise. High praise. It plays in his mind on a loop. There’s a scent clinging to Herbert’s skin, right here in the crook of his neck. The skin of his throat looks soft, vulnerable, but higher up, the texture looks rougher. Stubblier. It was prickly and coarse under Dan’s hands when he held Herbert’s cheek. But the skin on the throat, around Herbert’s bobbing Adam’s apple, is pale, pinkish almost. Frighteningly thin. It would probably bruise easily, were Dan to put his mouth there. High praise.

“You should be nicer to me,” Dan whispers to that patch of skin. Vulnerability for vulnerability. “Tell me something nice.”

Herbert snickers. “I told you you would be an exceptional snail. A Cuban Painted Snail, perhaps. Isn’t that nice?”

Dan hums, considers it. It is nice, but… He scrunches his nose. Dan nuzzles in closer, sticks his nose to that patch of skin that’s been calling to him. It soothes something in him. Herbert shudders, but does not lean away.

“Tell me something else.”

“You are bright.” The words, rasped out, vibrate through the thin skin right into Dan’s nose. It feels strange, but not bad. Not bad at all. “You are a good diagnostician. You can run fast.”

“And you,” Dan mumbles with all the authority he can muster, “are bad at this.”

“What do you want me to say?”

The words should be confrontational. Herbert’s usually slicker with his excuses and explanations, but the fight has slipped out, once or twice, when Dan caught him doing something he definitely should not have been doing. Frustrated, short, shirt collar caught firmly in Dan’s grip. But now…

Now, it sounds like Herbert is genuinely asking. Unsure, small, honest. All the things that Herbert is not. But Dan considers it anyway. What does he want Herbert to say? Herbert could call him funny, though it’d probably be a lie. Herbert could call him a good assistant, though Herbert’s opinion of Dan’s assistance seems to be not nearly as high as at the start of their collaboration. He could say that Dan has nice eyes. That, Dan thinks, is true. He could tell Dan that he smells nice—

Dan sniffs the air.

“Hey, what’s that smell?”

“Why are you asking me?” Herbert bitches back, all of the softness and insecurity gone from this tone, frame tensing up. “You know full-well that I cannot—”

“Oh, fuck,” Dan hisses, already scrambling upwards. “The pizza, Herbert, the fucking— Hand me the dish towel.”

In the end, the pizza is salvageable. A little char is good for flavor, and Herbert prefers his food crunchy anyways. Dan can just cover his in ketchup, let it soak in until it remoistens the blackened crust.

“I had an atlas,” Herbert says, and then bites into his slice of pizza with a snap.

“Oh, yeah?” Dan intones with polite curiosity. Herbert shares about his life so rarely, always in such disconnected ways, that Dan has only the vaguest outlines of his past, mostly put together days if not weeks after the initial reveal. But betraying any genuine interest in Herbert’s past makes Herbert clam up, as if it wasn’t a regular conversation between roommates of a couple years but a police interrogation with Herbert as the chief suspect. Worse, actually, now that Dan thinks about it; had Herbert (or either of them, really) been so restrained with the cops, their lives would be significantly easier.

Herbert motions to his puffed out cheek, jaw swinging like a cow chewing cud, and so, Dan is condemned to his own thoughts for another minute.

The thoughts are not good. They’re back on the couch, though a respectable distance apart now. The bag of Gay Weed stares Dan down as he munches on his pizza mechanically, hoping to not chip a tooth. He really can’t afford a dentist’s visit right now. But they’re a respectable distance apart, and Dan’s not thinking about that patch of skin on Herbert’s throat anymore, and he’s not thinking about Herbert’s waist, or even about Herbert’s hands. He’s just thinking about the pizza and about not chipping a tooth, and about how it’s a damn crime that the Miskatonic University Hospital doesn’t offer dental insurance to its residents.

“Of snails.” Herbert licks his fingers. It’s incredibly distracting. But Dan will not give in. He has his pizza to eat. “When I was a child. I really was fascinated with them. When I say you would be a good snail, I say it with authority.”

Strangely, it does send a warm thrill through Dan. But that’s just another thing not to think about.

***

Dan tries to not let it weigh on him. He’s well-practised in that; he doesn’t think much about the dead cat in the fridge or the noises Meg made after she came back, or even about how the humid heat of the tents in Peru made the stench of infected wounds all that much worse. He is efficient like that, for the most part, and if it results in the occasional overload that leaves him semi-catatonic, well, so be it. He’s already had his breakdown over Herbert already, so he declares himself fit to move on with his life.

So when he has the stray thought or two about Herbert’s neck, or when he notices that Herbert’s pink lips contrast starkly with the green of the reagent, or when his hand brushes against Herbert’s waist while passing by him, he just compartmentalizes. Much like he refuses to do the morbid calculus of assessing a not-yet-dead patient’s viability as a future experiment at work, he refuses to indulge in the thoughts about Herbert. There is a time and place for that, and that is only while under the influence of the Gay Weed. As long as the Gay Weed sits locked away, so will his thoughts. It’s pretty simple, Dan thinks, and elegant, which are two adjectives he cannot use for anything else in his life.

But, much like with any other thing in his life, Dan also cannot help thinking that this time, it will be different. Every time a shift gets rough, every time he has to scrub guts and viscera from his hair, every time Herbert makes him take a “souvenir” from the OR biohazard waste bin, Dan thinks about that ziploc of Gay Weed. Maybe it was a fluke. Maybe it was a temporary mind-scramble, like how people post-CVA can wake up speaking a different language. Maybe, Dan thinks in especially weak moments, it was Herbert’s fault somehow. Maybe Herbert managed to manipulate him through some subliminal messaging in a desperate bid for loyalty. Frankly, Dan wouldn’t put it past him.

Dan manages to hold out until Herbert’s new and improved formula containing the MDMA sends the subject on a manic rampage, smashing half the lab up. Dan spends his allotted dinner time picking shards of lab glass out of his foot, locked up in his room. From the recesses of his closet, The Gay Weed, which is, most importantly, Free Weed, calls out to him.

He’s just not gonna tell Herbert, he decides as he’s rolling his joint. It will be his little secret. He opens the windows and closes his bedroom door, creeping around his room like a thief. It will all be fine. Dan deserves to relax after the day he’s had. Herbert is likely to stay in the lab anyways, muttering spitefully at the corpse about not behaving. He will be none the wiser, and he will not wander into the field of Dan’s vision to cause any problems. It will all go smoothly.

He manages to inhale twice before there’s a knock on his door.

“Dan,” Herbert says.

His neck is pale and a little damp with sweat. Unmarked. Last time, Dan barely left a hickey, which was good for his mental stability at work, but now, he thinks about that little reddish bloom that hovered beneath Herbert’s jaw for two days. Dan licks his lips. He is still mad at Herbert, of course. That is very important to remember. But Herbert would probably be very mad about having been given a hickey. It would be unprofessional. Highly unprofessional, and juvenile, and there would be a fresh wave of gossip at work about it, which Herbert claims to hate (even if in the lab, he will shamelessly repeat all the rumours he’s picked with a glee more fit to an especially vicious teenage girl rather than a man of thirty), and it’s not like anyone would know it was Dan who’d given it to him, so really, perhaps it would be a fitting punishment for ruining Dan’s evening after all.

“Dan.”

“Huh?” Dan sways back, blinking hard. He’s been leaning into Herbert, caging him against the doorframe. Right. Herbert’s eyes are huge, blown black, and his breathing is a little harder. The little freak is probably still excited about the experiment, or maybe he just shot up, or maybe he amputated the corpse’s hand and taught it how to tapdance. Or maybe he just got winded on the stairs. Dan cannot make himself look at the other explanation. The joint in Dan’s hand still smoulders but barley, so he takes another hit to keep it lit. Blowing smoke straight into Herbert’s face is very tempting, but Dan is still somewhat polite, so he turns to the side. “What do you want, Herbert?”

Rather than answering, Herbert shoulders past him, barging right into the bedroom. Dan ought to protest, ought to put a stop to this somehow, but he’s still thinking about Herbert’s neck. It looks just as tempting from the back. Maybe Dan could clamp his teeth there. Herbert would not expect it, not with his back turned. Dan has shaken Herbert with his hands before, but it was not nearly as satisfying as he’d expected. Maybe teeth are the way to go. See, Dan thinks, it’s not gay. It’s violent. He’s been having violent urges towards Herbert for the entire time he’s known him. Nothing out of the ordinary. Before he can settle the matter of whether that’s any better, Herbert opens his mouth again, and the irritation flares back to life hard enough to drown out any guilt.

“I think we should discuss the results—”

Dan cuts him off with a groan.

“Nope, not happening.” Dan waves the joint towards the door. “Not today. Get out.”

Herbert, rather than complying, situates himself on the bed, prim and proper, and squints up. His sleeves are still rolled up, the corded muscle of forearms on display, but Herbert is toying with the cuffs, fidgeting with the buttons. Herbert has nice forearms. His knees, which Dan has only ever seen once or twice, are knobbly and perpetually bruised, and his legs are oddly thin in comparison to the rest of his body, but his forearms are nice. Maybe Herbert knows that, maybe that’s why he never wears shorts but rolls up his sleeves frequently. Maybe it’s just a way of getting Dan transfixed and unable to resist.

It suddenly becomes crucial to Dan that Herbert does not roll his sleeves down. It cannot be allowed. He may be weak, may be easily manipulated, but if he’s gonna be caught in the trap, he may as well get the cheese. Settling down on the bed, he bats away Herbert’s hands. Then, before he can do something stupid like grab Herbert’s hand and entwine their fingers, he busies himself with the joint. If he can get high enough, Herbert will declare the whole thing pointless and leave by himself.

“You are upset with me,” Herbert hedges. Dan snorts, choking on the exhale.

“Yeah, no shit.”

“In our line of work, trial and error are inescapable, Danny.” Herbert hums and leans back. “We must experiment to make progress, and, I should say, I think we are making progress. Though the latest subject exhibited a mania, it was not aggression, merely excitement. Perhaps it’s just a matter of dosage…”

This does not spell good things for Dan’s plan of getting rid of him in a timely manner, but it does expose the muscle in Herbert’s arms spectacularly, so it’s not like Dan’s going to complain. Perhaps this would be another good place to sink his teeth into. He could, like, climb on top of Herbert. Herbert is close enough for that. And what would Herbert even do about it? Dan’s heavier. Stronger. He could bite to his heart’s content. Maybe Herbert would even make some of those noises that Dan’s been pretending he doesn’t remember, those cut-off whines and chest-deep rumbles, and maybe Dan could even feel them vibrate against his mouth.

“...Dan?” Herbert peters out when he notices that Dan isn’t listening. Dan blinks. Oh, yeah, he’s toasted. Nicely toasted, not charred, not burnt, not fried. But he’s feeling it now. Oh boy. Dan nods, slowly. Behind the glasses smudged with remains of viscera, Herbert’s eyes widen and his damnably pink lips bow down. “Don’t be mad at me.”

Straight for the jugular. Dan hisses through his teeth. Herbert is unfair. Unfair and brutal and way too smart, when it suits him. Rather than using it to play on Dan’s soft, squishy emotions, Herbert should save some of his intelligence for experiments that don’t blow up in their face.

“That’s not how it works, Herbert,” Dan mutters, though between the languidity in his bones from the weed and Herbert’s shining eyes make it really hard to be firm. He can hardly make Herbert understand why his comments upset normal people when sober, so in his current state, it’s entirely a lost cause. Right now, his objective should be to get Herbert as far away as he can. Dan concentrates really hard. Curt, polite, but firm. Straight to the point. Straight, before Dan can have any doubts about straightness. “I think I just need some space. To, uh, think. And process.”

“We should smoke together,” Herbert says, leaning in. His hand creeps towards the joint, still loosely pinched between Dan’s pointer and thumb, but Dan’s reflexes are still faster, even when dampened by the smoke. Herbert pouts up at him. Dan chuckles.

“Oh, no, I don’t think so, buddy,” he wheezes. No, thank you very much, Dan’s wised up. His thoughts are circling dangerous territory as it is. No, he will not be tempted. Not even if his hands tingle with a memory of how soft Herbert’s flesh was under his grip, how the rigid, unbendable man can melt with the right guidance. How it was him and no one else that made him like that. To emphasize his point, he shakes his head, pointer finger raised. “No.”

“I’ve also had a stressful day,” Herbert points out. His voice strains into a whine. “I suffered as much as you have.”

That, Dan thinks, is not really true in any meaningful sense, but Herbert bravely continues on: “And I don’t want to fight. Isn’t it nicer when we don’t fight? Isn’t that what the peace pipe is all about?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to say that anymore,” Dan mutters, but his heart is not in it.

He needs a plan. He will inevitably fold to Herbert’s badgering. He needs to finish the joint before Herbert inevitably talks him into sharing. He’s too close, leaning in. The huge bug eyes that he keeps trained on Dan are already glassy. Ah shit. A contact high. This time, when Dan takes a hit, he turns his face away, as if that will do anything at this point. But symbolic protests and precautions are all that he has left in his life, so at least he’s consistent.

He could not have foreseen that Herbert would grab him by the jaw, five ice-cold fingertips biting into his skin and tugging him right back. Dan’s eyes just about manage to bulge beneath his heavy eyelids before the cold pinpicks migrate, and then there’s two fingers in his mouth, index and middle, pressing down onto his teeth and sending a swoop of heat through his stomach. Honestly, Dan thinks as Herbert leans in to suck down the escaping smoke, the fingers were unnecessary. His jaw would’ve dropped all by itself.

And yet, there is something intriguing about their weight, the way that his jaw is being forced open. On instinct, he licks into the gap between the fingers, tongue prodding at the skin that’s rough from having been washed too many times, tasting the faint salt of sweat. To have Herbert’s undoubtedly nasty fingers in his mouth should freak him out. Even with all the pre-surgical and post-experiment scrubbing, there’s bound to be some grime beneath his fingernails; besides, God only knows if Herbert washed his hands after touching chemicals; beyond the salt, once Dan’s cleaned it away, there’s the soapy-bitter layer of something, dissolving into the saliva that’s starting to pool in his mouth. Dan is surely getting poisoned like this. But he’s not worried. It just feels strangely good. Grounding. There’s even something appealing to the slight twinge of pain as Herbert’s fingers hook further in.

“There we go,” Herbert says as he exhales, eyes shining with mischief. Dan looks at him dumbly. His lips feel wet; there’s saliva seeping around the stretch. Jesus Christ. “Now, why did you have to make this so difficult, Dan? You always have to make things so hard.”

And then Herbert shakes him around by the jaw, thumb coming down to clamp around under Dan’s chin, like Dan is just a misbehaving dog, refusing to drop a toy from its teeth. With his free hand, Herbert plucks the smoldering joint from Dan’s limp fingers, and takes the tiniest hit, like how a nerdy kid giving into peer pressure at his first proper party may puff on a cigarette. He’s pacing himself, Dan observes passively. There’s no spasm in that white, unmarked throat, no watering of the eyes. A faint wrinkle of concentration has appeared between Herbert’s dark, angled brows, as if smoking the remains of a joint required all the mental power of dissection. It’s probably a bad idea still, but Herbert looks almost elegant like this, for all the fumbling it took to get there.

Besides, the fingers in his mouth take priority. Now that Herbert’s attention is elsewhere, the hold on his jaw has loosened. He can mouth at the digits, scrape his teeth around the prominent knuckle. It’s an interesting sensation, to have his mouth this full. The fingers are prodding back at his tongue, weighing down his lips how a light kiss would, though less delicate. They feel bigger than they ought to. Herbert’s hands are slim, long-fingered, but not especially broad. Herbert had to spindle his fingers apart when he clung to Dan’s shoulders before. But now, in his mouth, they’re the only thing that he can think about. He wonders how it feels for Herbert. Is his mouth hot? It’s surely wet, but is it a pleasant sort of wet or gross and slimy? He doesn’t want to be a gross, slobbering thing. It feels nice for him, so Herbert should get something out of it as well, he figures. It’s, like, reciprocation. It’s only fair. So, when Herbert is distracted with another hit, he wraps his lips around the digits, and sucks.

Herbert coughs around a startled moan, eyes flying open. Dan can’t really grin, not when his mouth is occupied, but he’s sure it shows through the squint of his eye. Herbert wavers for a second as Dan continues his assault, and Dan’s back to having the upper hand—literally. With both of his hands unoccupied, he can cradle the back of Herbert’s head and pull him in until Herbert collapses against his chest. Smashing their mouths together takes more coordination than he’s capable of, but he can lick through Herbert’s fingers until his breath mists Herbert’s lips, get at him that way. It works; Herbert, with a pathetic mewl, breaks and closes the gap between their mouths.

The kiss is better this time, Herbert remembering the previous lesson well. There’s no hesitation or awkwardness now, both of them chasing the heat spreading through them. The spit-sticky fingers withdraw, landing back on Dan’s jaw, but Dan barely has a reason to mourn them when they’re replaced by Herbert’s tongue, hot and heavy, pressing into his mouth. With a satisfied groan and without his permission, Dan’s hands slide down Herbert’s frame to grope at the flesh beneath the bloodied shirt. The chest he’s got a hold on may be missing the swell he’s used to, but there’s still enough give to sink his fingers in until Herbert squeaks. From there, it’s a smooth path down the narrow waist that’s been haunting him, and then he can grab around Herbert’s thighs.

With a heave, he lugs Herbert into his lap, just like he should’ve done the first time around. Herbert’s ass is bony, but the pressure it puts on Dan’s erection still makes him moan into Herbert’s mouth. He may not have the best purchase point, but he can pull Herbert down to meet the jerky little thrusts he can manage. It’s so fucking good like this, lazy and messy, even though Dan’s pretty sure that, between the fact that Herbert is still shoving his tongue way too far in and clawing at his back too hard and that he can smell the dried blood on the collar of Herbert’s shirt, this is the worst makeout he’s ever had. He never wants it to end.

Their mouths come apart with a wet smack, and for a second, Dan has the uninterrupted view of Herbert’s red, upturned face, soft lips parted around frantic panting, eyes screwed shut behind his smudged glasses. This is a bad idea, some part of him thinks, Herbert is an asshole and you’re supposed to be mad at him. Who cares, the overwhelming majority responds. Hey, remember the thought you had about Herbert’s neck?

Dan does remember. He laves a broad stripe up the straining tendons of the neck right in front of him, and then bites down at the junction of the shoulder. Herbert howls through gritted teeth and squirms in his lap, hips working artlessly. Dan can help with that, too; with his hands up on Herbert’s hipbones, he nudges Herbert into a rhythm, slow and heavy, enough to send sparks of pleasure down his spine but not so distracting that he needs to abandon his project of marking up Herbert. He latches his lips onto Herbert’s exposed throat, worrying at the flesh as if he could suck the sounds straight through the skin.

“Da-ah-an,” Herbert whines, fingers tangling in Dan’s hair. It only makes Dan work harder, more obsessively. He’s blisteringly hot under Dan’s hands, barely dampened by the swath of fabric he’s wrapped in, and when Dan looks through his lashes, his neck is already starting to purple nicely. It satisfies something deep in the pit of his stomach. “Dan, my shirt— Please—”

Right. Right, Dan can do something about that. There’s more skin to mark up hiding beneath the white shirt, and Dan’s got two hands that can do something about that, even if it means letting go of Herbert’s hips. Except, apparently Dan cannot do something about it, at least not competently, because as he tries to tug the shirt off Herbert’s shoulders, it gets trapped around Herbert’s elbows, because Herbert is still clutching at Dan’s hair. They tumble sideways onto the bed.

“What are we doing?” Dan pants out. Suddenly, the realization that he’s trying to disrobe his cranky roommate in his own bed hits him. His cranky, assholeish roommate, whose antics got glass into Dan’s foot and ruined his weekend. His cranky, assholeish, undeniably male roommate, with a forest of chest hair and stubble and low, masculine groans, who stuck his fingers into Dan’s mouth not twenty minutes prior.

“Make-up sex,” Herbert responds, and then occupies Dan’s mouth again with his tongue.

Right. Make-up sex, because Dan is still supposed to be mad at Herbert, on account of the experiment and the glass in his foot, and the ruined weekend. Dan bites down on Herbert’s tongue in retaliation, but does keep on working at Herbert’s belt. This time around, he’s determined to get it undone.

“For make-up sex, you need to have apologized in the first place,” Dan grumbles, and tugs Herbert’s trousers down. Long legs indeed, hairy calves and injection-marked thighs, pale and hairy, squirming to kick the pants the rest of the way off. Long socks, going halfway up Herbert’s calves, clipped to fucking garters resting just below knobbly knees. Dan inhales sharply.

God, Herbert is hot like this. Unfairly hot, even though he’s basically just writhing in the sheets uselessly, glasses askew, making little noises into Dan’s ear every time Dan kneads the flesh of his thighs, fingers inching up towards the waistband of his underwear. Suddenly, he’s overhot; his own t-shirt, stretched out and soft though it may be, is choking him.

He cannot get it off, though, not when he’s lying down, but he’s already pulled it up halfway over his face, trapping himself even more. His arms are stuck, somehow. His heart rate is speeding up. He cannot die like this, strangled by a t-shirt so worn-out that there’s holes in the armpits and by the collar, in bed with his horrible roommate. It’s too embarrassing. And yet, it feels as though he may. There’s simply not enough air in the cocoon he’s made for himself. He flops back onto the bed flat onto his back, trying to suck in air, and grimly resigns himself to his fate. Daniel Cain, valedictorian at John Hopkins’s premed program, salutatorian at Miskatonic, promising young surgeon, dead at 29, strangled by his own shirt because he got too high, and fell for his horrible roommate’s scheming. Again. It’s somehow worse than dying in the lab, though he supposes there’s going to be slightly less of a public uproar over this. Just barely.

And then Herbert’s hands are right there, snaking around Dan’s ribs and travelling up, nails catching on the sensitive skin and raking through the patch of hair on Dan’s chest. Dan exhales in relief. His savior, for once. Except, Herbert’s hands are not moving up. They’re lingering on Dan’s chest, worrying at his nipples, and soon, there’s something hot and damp descending onto his stomach, and Herbert’s long shins and knobbly knees are knocking into his own. Dan whines, trapped in the confines of the shirt still, unable to do anything but lay there and let Herbert do his best with figuring out how to move into the ‘shirts off’ part of the makeout.

With his hands trapped and unable to see anything, Dan can only focus on the feeling, and, truth be told, Herbert is not doing terribly. It may be the buzz of the high that’s amplifying it, but between Herbert’s thigh pressing down onto his crotch at an angle perfect for grinding, and his mouth, slowly mapping the contours of Dan’s chest, one lingering, sucking kiss at a time, Dan’s pretty sure he’s going to come in his pants.

“Jesus, Herbert,” he wheezes out between strangled whines. Herbert’s mouth has found a nipple, and he seems to be testing just how much teeth Dan can tolerate before he tries to wriggle away. Turns out, it’s a lot more than Dan thought he would put up with. No one has ever really put that much focus on his chest, and it’s making him feel hot in a weird, new way, each graze of Herbert’s small teeth sending him closer and closer to the edge, the electricity simmering in his spine starting to coil into something sharp and pointed. “Hold on—Wait— Herbert, help me out of this fucking shirt—”

Herbert pops up with a gasp. Dan can’t see him, and, Jesus, does he want to. Herbert must look wrecked, if the heavy breathing is anything to go by. He thwacks his arms uselessly against the bed, and Herbert, the fucking asshole, has the audacity to giggle. The weight on Dan’s thighs increases, as Herbert presumably sits back, just so he can laugh at Dan’s misfortune. How typical.

“Herbert!” Dan hisses, thrashing harder. “You fucking asshole, help me, or I swear to God—”

“You will what?” Herbert asks, chuckling again, because he’s the worst human being on Earth, and Dan has no idea why he puts up with him. “Dan, I don’t think you’re in any position to make demands—”

But, what Herbert forgets, too caught up in his triumph, is that Dan is still the stronger one between them. In one fell swoop, Dan manages to free himself from his t-shirt, throw it over his head, and flip their positions. Herbert lands on the bed with an indignant squeak. Beneath half-lidded eyes, his pupils are blown black, and his naked, pale chest is heaving for air. Dan would very much like to say something clever, but all of his words escape him. He can’t think past Herbert like this, covered in a sheen of sweat with pink cheeks and shining eyes, the bruises on his neck and collarbones darkening rapidly, hairy thighs splayed around Dan’s hips. The thin fabric of his briefs is soaked, and even through the layer of sweatpants, Dan can sense the bloom of heat where they’re joined. God, Herbert is enjoying this; not just the power trip, not just getting Dan pleading and squirming, but Dan’s turned him on. He’s turned on his weird, annoying, frigid roommate, and found a warm-blooded human being underneath the mask. It shouldn’t edge him closer to coming, but it does.

“You still haven’t apologized for anything,” Dan breathes out, thrusting forward, shamelessly grinding into the heat. The second that Herbert’s head falls back with a strained groan, Dan is back on his neck again, attacking the skin with all the pent-up frustration he has. At the moment, he cares less about teaching Herbert good sex etiquette or making it good for him; he just needs to leave a mark, to feel the flesh give between his teeth. The knot of heat in his stomach tightens with the friction and every helpless, pathetic groan that Herbert lets out.

“Dan,” Herbert whines, hands scrabbling at Dan’s hair to pull and twist, though Dan cannot tell if Herbert is moving him away or pressing him forward or just seeking purchase. The sting feels good on his scalp, too. Everything feels good, and easy, and Jesus, Dan is for real going to—

“Danny, please, I’m sorry.”

—come. It slams into him like a slow rolling wave, wrecking through him from the very scalp that Herbert has been clawing all the way down to his toes, curling against the bedsheets. He shakes as he grinds against Herbert, mouth unlatching around the collarbone he’s been tormenting to let out a mewl. He tries to collapse, but Herbert makes him ride the aftershocks, hips gyrating up and side to side, too frantic, too desperate, until the friction turns from sweet to painful.

Dan rolls off Herbert with a hiss and stares up at the concentric rings of water-damage on the ceiling. He’s just come in his pants from dry-humping his weird roommate. His mouth kind of hurts, swollen and tender from the kissing, and so do his nipples. He hasn’t come in his pants since he was a teenager. He should be freaking out. He should be having a crisis, Gay Weed or not. But he’s not. He’s still mellowed out, floating on both the orgasm and the high, and honestly, the situation is really rather funny. Of course Herbert apologizing would get him off. Of course. Hey, actually, maybe Herbert should apologize more often.

But before he can dwell too much on his predicament, Herbert moans another Daaaan. Right. Dan should probably help him out, even if he’s a rude asshole and there’s nothing that Dan would like better than to fall asleep.

“C’mere,” Dan mutters, already rearranging himself onto his belly and trying to move Herbert’s legs, without much success. Herbert almost knees him in the jaw, but eventually, Dan manages to get Herbert lying back still enough that Dan can crawl between the V of his legs without further risk of injury. The hair on Herbert’s legs feels nice under his hands, softer than he’d expected. Smoother, almost, than the prickle of regrowing stubble after a wax or shave. He can pet whichever way he desires, it all gets pleased little hums from Herbert. He can even put his cheek down onto one thigh, taking the strain off his neck. It’s cozy, and Dan has the stray thought that he could get used to it. The only downside is the rapidly cooling cum in his underwear smushes unpleasantly against his skin, but kicking them off would require way more coordination than he knows himself to be capable of, and he’s not risking fabric entrapment again. Whatever. “I can blow you.”

Herbert makes a strangled noise and looks down, chin squishing into his neck. He looks overwhelmed. Dan’s conscience wakes up a little. Herbert probably has never had sex, if his kissing record is anything to go by; although if anyone was to have sterile, clinical sex without kissing or touching anything other than genitalia, it would be Herbert. Probably for the purposes of collecting DNA samples or some other thing. But maybe this is a big deal to Herbert; maybe he doesn’t want it like that. But Dan can smell his arousal, earthy and musky, and it’s making his mouth water, just a little. He thinks that Herbert would probably like Dan to blow him, at least a little bit, So, Dan blinks hard and refocuses. He just needs to ask.

“That okay?”

“Yes,” Herbert breathes out. “Yes, please do. Daniel. I would like that.”

Dan breaks into hysterical laughter, face rolling against Herbert’s hip to muffle the sound. What a weirdo. But that’s permission enough to tuck his face into the white fabric of Herbert’s underwear, to mouth at the wet spot and soak it through even more. He tastes different than what Dan has grown used to, but Dan can’t put a finger on what, precisely, is so different about it. It’s not a bad difference, anyways, and everything about Herbert is different than what he’s used to.

He can’t do anything acrobatic, but he’s been told he’s good with his mouth. It may be different, because of Herbert’s whole… deal, but how different can it be? And it’s not like Herbert has anything to compare it to; Dan can give him the worst head in existence, and it will still probably get him off. Hell, that may be just what Herbert likes, given the rest of his preferences.

But it seems that he’s not doing terribly. Herbert is making more of those cut-off groans, audible even through Herbert’s thighs twitching up and closing around Dan’s ears, and his hips keep on rabbitting up into Dan’s nose painfully. After a particularly rough thrust, Dan decides that enough is enough, and pulls Herbert’s underwear down, this time, without tying himself into a knot.

He’s always liked giving head, and the cushion of the high and recent orgasm only makes it better. He practically floats as he licks through Herbert with his eyes closed, drinking down the wetness that’s gathered between his folds, letting Herbert grind his t-dick against his nose. Occasionally, he is also a tingling scalp, whenever Herbert’s hands clench in his hair, and a throat that can whine at the sparks the pulling sets off. It’s a nice feedback loop, horny in a languid, unrushed way. Dan’s already gotten his, and Herbert could use some patience, anyways. Once he’s cleaned up the slick dripping from Herbert’s hole, he moves up, tongue flat and extended, something more solid for Herbert to rub against.

“Dan,” Herbert bites out, tugging uselessly at Dan’s hair, thighs squeezing painfully against Dan’s ears. “Come on, please. I said I was sorry—”

Once sober, Dan needs to seriously consider whether Herbert’s pigheadedness has caused him to develop a fetish for apologies, because it makes his spent, oversensitive cock jerk in his pants. It would hardly be the worst effect that Herbert has had on his psyche, but perhaps the most pathetic, clearing even Dan’s new tendency to have crying fits in the supply storage at work. But Herbert is saying sorry, so Dan should reward it.

Herbert’s t-dick is easy to find, hard and swollen, big enough to wrap his lips around comfortably. He can breathe easier like this, sucking deeper on every inhale, flicking his tongue against the tip on every exhale. Slow and methodical. Grounding. Herbert’s arousal is dripping down his chin and there’s more of those noises, strangled and broken, like Herbert is getting choked, and that makes Dan claw his fingers deeper into Herbert’s thighs, trying to get closer. He gives an experimental roll of his hips down into the mattress, and moans. It’s no longer too much. It just sends a pleasant thrum of heat. Maybe, after Herbert comes, he would like to return the favor, or at least lend Dan a hand. Maybe first Herbert could stick his fingers in Dan’s mouth again, this time with purpose. But before then, Dan will continue to float as he sucks and licks, noting every twitch and jerk of Herbert underneath him.

Eventually, Herbert’s groaning cuts off, frame going dead still. He yells through gritted teeth and Dan’s hands clamp down on instinct, just barely avoiding a knee to the head. He does, however, get a foot kicked right into his upper ribs, and that makes him unlatch with a heaving breath. Herbert cries out again, this time in protest, so Dan dives back, licks him through the aftershocks. As Herbert’s belly stops fluttering, Dan’s head rolls to the side, back onto Herbert’s thigh. Dan looks up with half-lidded eyes, and tries to assess the situation.

Herbert seems wrecked. Sweaty, disheveled, and still shivering. His other leg—the one that kicked Dan in the ribs, Dan notes—has drawn up, the black sock bunched around a slim ankle. Herbert’s mouth is red and spit-shiny, and his chest is still rising and falling rapidly. His glasses, which have stayed on somehow, are hanging onto dear life at the tip of his nose, smudged beyond usefulness. He’s… cute. Dan smiles smugly. He did that. He wrecked Herbert.

Dan licks his lips absently and wriggles upward, so he can put his head on Herbert’s belly, chin digging into the softness there. Maybe he does have another round in him, but probably not now. No, now, he thinks he would like to ride the wave of sleepy relaxation. Maybe he could crawl up over Herbert, press his nose back into the crease of his neck, and fall asleep like that, cradled by Herbert’s thighs. It’s not a bad idea, surely. This way, Herbert will also have to sleep. Under the weight of Dan’s body, he won’t be able to run off to the lab to wreak havoc. Dan will be able to sleep soundly through the night. Two for one deal. But it’s also comfortable down here. Warm. His feet are hanging off the bed, but with Herbert not down in the basement, the chances of a rogue creature escaping the lab to grab at Dan’s ankles are slim to none. So maybe he can just stay right here.

“I got it!” With a gasp, Herbert shoots upright and starts scrambling to button up his shirt. “I figured it out. It’s so simple, I can’t believe I haven’t thought of it before—”

This time, Dan does not manage to avoid a foot to the head as Herbert fumbles his way out the bed. With a pained groan, he rolls to the side, clutching at his pulsing cranium. Oblivious or unsympathetic to his pain, Herbert is tugging his socks back up.

“Come down to the lab as soon as you gather your wits,” Herbert fires off, and, before Dan can ask him if he’s finally lost his fucking mind for good, Herbert bolts out the room, footsteps thundering down the stairs. And then, there’s blessed silence.

Dan sighs, resigned, and buries himself in the sheets. Whatever. He will deal with it tomorrow, because he is not “gathering his wits,” what a fucking way to phrase it, before then. That’s for sober Dan to deal with.

***

In the morning, Dan wakes up with his underwear unpleasantly stiff and with one mission. After dealing with the first order of business and making himself presentable, he has one goal. Pure focus. With the same determination that allowed him to ace his MCAT while running on three hours of sleep, he marches straight into the bathroom and flushes the remains of the Gay Weed down the drain. There, all gone. No more temptation. Now, onto the more difficult part of the operation.

He finds Herbert back in the lab, hunched over a microscope. He doesn’t seem to have slept. His hair is still messy, but whether that’s Dan’s work from the previous night or the result of Herbert working out some complex problem, Dan cannot tell. The shirt is still bloodstained, and buttoned askew, but that may be the result of another failed experiment. The marks on his neck, up high and a splotchy burgundy, perfectly mouth-shaped, can claim sole ownership of, unless Herbert’s bright idea was to experiment with octopi limbs in his creations. It sends a strange squirm through his gut.

“Herbert,” Dan starts, his best authoritative tone locked and loaded. He will make this abundantly clear, no more vagueness or half-truths. He will explain the situation to Herbert, and tell him that there is simply no more Gay Weed, so if Herbert was betting on being able to sway Dan in this way the next time an experiment goes on a rampage, he is out of luck. “What did you mean yesterday, when you said it was make-up sex?”

“Dan!” Herbert glances up from the microscope, and his face splits into a grin. Jesus, his lips are still swollen, still plush and a deep, rosy pink. Dan shivers in anticipation. “You must see, I have a sample tissue from the latest batch, it’s simply remarkable. I haven’t tried it on the gross anatomy yet, but it’s showing real promise—”

“Herbert,” Dan repeats. “What. Did. You. Mean. Yesterday.”

“Technically, it was earlier today,” Herbert says, just to be pedantic. But he’s not bothered or embarrassed, just enthralled in the new discovery. His eyes keep on skirting back to the petri dish, front and center of the lab table. Dan sighs, and sits down on the corner to effectively block Herbert’s eyeline. That, unfortunately, gives him an unobstructed view of Herbert as well. He is still not wearing pants, with his long, hairy legs on full display beneath the table. The tails of his shirt cover his lap, but Dan is praying to a God that he’s fairly sure doesn’t exist that even in his mad rush to the lab, Herbert at least made a pit stop in his own bedroom to put on underwear.

Herbert’s eyes skitter upwards, though they do pause on Dan’s neck, where undoubtedly, he’s also sporting some hickeys, if the smug pride that appears on his features is anything to go by.

“Dan, between the two of us, you’re the one with all the, akhem, conjugal experience. Make-up sex is an effective strategy to resolve any leftover frustration after an argument, is it not? It paves the way to a reconciliation between partners. And,” here, Herbert sweeps his gaze over Dan meaningfully, “has it not worked? You’re back in the lab, despite your protestations yesterday. Now, hand me that marker, I ought to label the sample. Remarkable, I tell you. Remarkable. You know, it was you who gave me the idea. Despite your initial aggression, you became so much more docile after ingesting THC…”

Dan blinks. He isn’t sure where to start with all the incorrect things that have passed through Herbert’s mouth. He does pass over the marker, but only to steal a moment to compose himself.

“Herbert, we are not partners,” is what he starts with, because that seems to be the fulcrum on which Herbert’s argument rests. Herbert’s eyebrow ticks up, but his attention is split, the marker squeaking against the glass of the microscope slide. Dan raps his knuckles against the table to get his attention. “Not like that.”

“We’ve lived together for five years. Our futures are tied together. We share a mortgage. We eat together, work together. I iron your shirts for work, and you shine my shoes. And, as of recently, we’ve had sex,” Herbert lists off rapidly. Dan’s stomach flips with a sense of unease, as it tends to do whenever Herbert’s madness starts making sense. “We spend our free time together, even, which you have frequently attempted to initiate. I used to dismiss you in the past, but now I see the error of my ways. I’m sorry, Danny, I didn’t mean to make you feel… neglected with the amount I work.”

Neglected, Dan mouths. It is true, Herbert is who he spends most of his time with. He does enjoy Herbert’s company, however reluctant he may be to admit to it. He does wish that Herbert would hang out with him more often, outside of the lab. He does kind of wish that they’d watch more nature documentaries together. But… He wipes a hand down his face. Neglected. Like he’s Herbert’s nagging, sexually unsatisfied housewife. Actually, nevermind that. Herbert is, apparently, convinced that they’re dating, despite the fact that they’ve never gone on a single date. Though, knowing him, Herbert would think of the morgue break-ins and cemetery graverobbing as the height of romance. Truth be told, Dan cannot come up with a more appealing idea on the spot, so maybe there is something to it. But the principal thing remains: he is simply not gay.

“Yes, but…” Dan trails off. His arms cross over his chest, defensive on instinct. But they’re not… dating. “I’m not…”

“Neither am I,” Herbert says, entirely too casually. Dan’s eyebrows tick up towards his hairline. Now, he hates to stereotype or assume. He’s a progressive guy. He voted for Mondale back in ‘84, despite all the grief that he got from the Halseys about it, and Dukakis this past fall. But… He’s always just sort of figured that Herbert was gay. He for sure didn’t like women. Though, if Dan thinks about it, Herbert doesn’t like much of anyone.

…Except Dan.

Dan’s heart sinks as Herbert continues talking.

“I didn’t even consider the possibility of, ah, carnal entertainment before you seduced me. My inexperience made me reluctant to make the first move, and while I appreciate your gentlemanly instincts to give me time to adjust, I prefer directness. But I had a good time and would not be opposed to doing it again in the future, so perhaps I ought to reconsider.”

“I seduced you?” Dan wheezes out, head spinning. He sags on the table, headache brewing. God, leave it to Herbert to obfuscate and turn the matter on its tail entirely. “Herbert I—”

“You did kiss me first, did you not?” Herbert blinks up at him owlishly from beneath the glasses. Dan opens his mouth to protest —surely, there’s some way he can deny it. Surely, he did not make the first move— and even if he had, then surely, he is not responsible for how things progressed. “And then, yesterday—you were the one to turn it into something else. I was content to merely split a joint, mellow out this way.”

“You stuck your fingers into my mouth,” Dan points out, somehow still feeling like he’s in the losing position, which is patently insane. What other way is there to take someone shoving their fingers into his mouth? How was him simply going along with it escalation? Yes, maybe he did haul Herbert into his lap, maybe he did crawl over him and— But Herbert is the one who initiated. There’s no other way to read the situation, Dan is sure.

“You’ve been at it for a while,” Herbert adds as if he hadn’t heard Dan’s objection at all. “It took me a while to catch on, but eventually, all of your semi-nude wandering and touching me got through. Again, Dan, be direct. Ask for what you want, I tell you; it’ll take you far.”

“...Thank you, Herbert.” Dan blinks, hard. Herbert not only has been thinking that they’ve been dating for God only knows how long, but apparently, has been thinking of Dan as some devious seductor, trying to tempt him away from lab work and into his bed. Which, was Dan willing to be generous, is partially correct. Dan would love for Herbert to sleep more, and spend some time away from the lab, and, well… He sighs. “It was the weed, Herbert. But it’s gone now. I think there was something up with it; it made both of us more susceptible to, I don’t know, unusual urges. If neither of us is, uh, you know, then it must have been the weed. The Gay Weed.”

“Interesting hypothesis,” Herbert mutters, seemingly actually thinking it over. He taps the marker against his lips rhythmically, and that’s the only reason that Dan’s eyes trend downward. He swears. He licks his own in return and shrugs. Herbert inhales. “Well, if that’s the case, we ought to test it. I am sober. Are you?”

Dan nods slowly, not quite sure what he’s signing up, and then Herbert surges up. This time, there can be no doubt that it’s Herbert who takes the initiative: he yanks Dan down by the collar, and kisses him, surprisingly softly. Dan flounders for a second, expecting a wave of revulsion or at least decisive nothing that would clear him of any gay charges, but… It’s nice. Herbert has nice lips, and although he’s still a little clumsy, he’s moving against Dan’s mouth with confidence. Dan’s hands, which curled into Herbert’s shoulders to brace against the impact, relax. It’s nice, Dan thinks with a mournful resignation. He wants to open his mouth a little, to take Herbert’s lower lip between his teeth. He wants to flick his tongue against it, just a tease. He wants to pet along Herbert’s shoulders, and he wants Herbert’s hands, which have landed on his thighs, to stay there, sweeping along the denim. He doesn’t even want to hurry it along, or get Herbert’s hands to stray towards his crotch for the pure sexual satisfaction of it.

He is kissing Herbert sweetly, lazily, how a Sunday morning kiss ought to go, and he’s enjoying it. Jesus Christ. Maybe they are dating. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not the worst thing he’s ever thought of.

“So?” Herbert asks, parting with a smug smile. Dan huffs, amused.

“You first,” he dares, still petting Herbert’s shoulders. They are nice shoulders, he thinks. Maybe he could cajole Herbert into going back to bed, and seeing how they fare as pillows.

“Satisfactory,” Herbert replies. “I venture that marijuana consumption had no impact on my enjoyment of our encounters.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t the weed,” Dan admits. He sighs. “God damn it. I just like you.”

“Oh, good,” Herbert says, turning away. In a flash, he’s up. And Dan does mean in a flash literally; Herbert has not, in fact, put underwear on since last night. Oblivious to Dan’s face heating up, Herbert practically skips towards the medical transport cooler. “In that case, you won’t mind helping me with a reanimation. I think we’ve got an arm, fully intact from the shoulder down. It’s crude, of course, but—”

“I see a lot more make-up sex in our future,” Dan muses, watching the curve of Herbert’s ass peek out from under the shirt as Herbert bends forward to start rummaging through the contents of the cooler. Jesus Christ. He’s really going to suggest an experiment while completely naked from the waist down. What is Dan’s life? “Why don’t we head upstairs and get an early start?”